{"id":3268,"date":"2019-07-14T13:15:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-14T12:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mathscitech.org\/articles\/?p=3268"},"modified":"2024-05-12T13:41:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T12:41:54","slug":"npp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathscitech.org\/articles\/npp","title":{"rendered":"Notepad++ (Text Editor)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t done so already, you may want to start by reading the Preface to the Computing Series: Software as a Force Multiplier<\/a>, Sections 1-3.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. Notepad++: a programmable, extensible, feature-rich text editor<\/h4>\n

NotePad++<\/a> (NPP) is an open-source programmer’s text editor with outstanding built-in features that can be further enhanced with powerful plugins and extensively customized with your own configurations. NPPs features include syntax highlighting for a large collection of programming languages, code folding, recordable macros, cloned views, selectable shortcuts, tabbed documents, and a host of other capabilities.
\n But it is the plugins and customization that NPP an invaluable power-tool, capable of far more than text editing. NPP can serve as an automation engine, a complex calculator (for example between hex, binary, and decimal), or a light-weight IDE for any toolchain you wish. It is the second application (after Total Commander<\/a>) which I install on a Windows computer.<\/p>\n

This article describes a few of the dozens of capabilities. It also shares a pre-configured Notepad++ package that I use (20.0MB compressed, 50.0MB uncompressed, download here<\/a>), which contains the configurations and capabilities I use. The file is portable and self-contained: just unpack NPP to your drive (in a separate folder to your current running instance) and run notepad++.exe from there.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Notepad++,

Notepad++, by Don Ho, multi-view with syntax highlghting<\/p><\/div>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

2. NPP Background & History<\/h4>\n

NotePad++<\/a> is developed by the French software engineer Don Ho<\/a> first released in September 2003 (2 years after Ho’s graduation with an M.Sc. in Computer Science). The goal of NPP is efficient programming and low CPU consumption (Don Ho has interestingly tied the vision for his editor to be the lowest carbon footprint professional editor out there.) What this means is performance coding is key, for which reason NPP is coded in C++ using direct Win32 API and STL calls. An interview with Don Ho<\/a> is here, with a little history here<\/a>. After more than 20 years of development, NPP offers a highly attractive alternative to award-winning commercial proprietary text editors, (e.g. UltraEdit). (see Table 1).<\/p>\n

What came before?<\/h4>\n

Before the arrival of Notepad++, the best text editor at the time was UltraEdit<\/a> (UE), released in 1994 by Ian D. Mead, a year after Christian Ghisler started Total Commander<\/a>. Indeed, TC and UE were a pair made for each other, and UE was my text editor of choice, paired with TC as file manager, when I started out in software engineering in 2001. Over the next five years, Notepad++ caught up to UE, and by 2009, NPP was a worthy alternative, and rapidly adding features<\/a>. After seeing how quickly the column editing feature I had suggested had been implemented, I switched over at NPP v5.2 and haven’t looked back since.<\/p>\n\n

3. Built-in Features and Capabilities<\/h4>\n

Let’s look at a few of NPP’s capabilities.
\n

\"\"

Table 1: Notepad++ Key Capabilities<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n