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What are some common text editing programs?

From basic text editors to advanced word processing applications, there are many programs available to to view and edit text documents. Several Windows and Macintosh options are listed below.

Windows:

Company Program Name Price *
Notes
AbiSource AbiWord Free Cross-platform, open source word processing program similar to Microsoft Word; supports advanced page layouts and text formatting.
Boxer Software Boxer $60 Supports macros, color syntax highlighting and printing, HTML editing support, and Regular Expression searches.
Carolina Road Software Jarte Free Free word processor based on the Microsoft WordPad word processing engine; expands beyond the WordPad feature set; saves documents in a format compatible with both Word and WordPad.
ConTEXT ConTEXT Free Freeware text editor developed for software developers; includes syntax highlighting for many programming languages.
Core Software Solutions TextEdit Free Free text editor that includes syntax highlighting, macro support, and powerful search and replace functions.
Corel WordPerfect $299
(w/ WP Office)
Advanced word processor developed by Corel Software; can be used to create reports, letters, resumes, and brochures; included as part of WordPerfect Office.
ES-Computing EditPlus $30 Text editor, HTML editor, and programmer's editor; syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, and scripting languages.
Flo's Freeware Notepad2 Free Basic text editor based on Microsoft's Notepad applicaton; includes programming features such as custom syntax highlighting, regular expression search/replace, and bracket matching.
Helios Software TextPad $30 Supports custom commands and macros and efficient find and replace commands.
IBM Lotus WordPro $281
(w/ SmartSuite)
Advanced word processor; part of Lotus SmartSuite.
IDM Computer Solutions UltraEdit $59 Text editor that can be used for coding HTML, PHP, Perl, Java, JavaScript, and HEX files; includes FTP and SSH/Telnet support, code folding, syntax highlighting, and Ctags support.
Microsoft Notepad Free Plain text editor included with Windows XP that can open and create new text files; does not support any text formatting.
Microsoft Word $229 The most common word processor in the world; part of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft WordPad Free Basic text editor included with Windows XP; supports text formatting and rich text (RTF) files.
Notepad++ Notepad++ Free Source code editor that supports several programming languages; designed as a Notepad replacement; based on the Scintilla edit component.
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org Writer Free Fully equipped word processor that supports formatting, styles, and AutoCorrect; can import images and diagrams.
PSPad PSPad Free Freeware programmer's editor that supports HTML, XHTML, PHP, ASP, JavaScript, C, Perl, and other languages; includes syntax highlighting and rich text formatting.
Orangeline Araneae Free Text editor designed primarily for Web development; supports syntax highlighting for HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby; also includes a browser preview feature.
SciTE SciTE Free Free source code editor based on the Scintilla source code editing component; supports key commands for navigation and editing.

Macintosh:

Company Program Name Price *
Notes
AbiSource AbiWord Free Cross-platform, open source word processing program similar to Microsoft Word; supports advanced page layouts and text formatting.
Apple Computer AppleWorks $79 Basic word processing program that supports text and document formatting; included in the AppleWorks suite.
Apple Computer TextEdit Free Included with Mac OS X; can edit documents in plain text or rich text mode; supports HTML and Microsoft Word formats.
Bare Bones Software BBEdit $199 Professional HTML and text editor; supports syntax coloring and function navigation; AppleScript, Perl, and Unix scripting support.
Bare Bones Software TextWrangler Free General purpose and programmer's text editor; supports advanced text formatting, syntax coloring, and 'grep' searches.
Bean Bean OS X Free Free, open-source text editor for Mac OS X; designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable; supports rich text styles and various types of page formatting.
MacroMates TextMate $51 Advanced text editor for the Mac developed primarily for programmers; includes customizable syntax highlighting, foldable code blocks, word completion, and search and replace.
Microsoft Word $229 The most common word processor in the world; part of Microsoft Office.
NeoOffice NeoOffice Writer Free Word processor included with the NeoOffice application suite; based on OpenOffice.org, but designed specifically for Mac OS X; can open Word, WordPerfect, StarWriter, and other types of documents.
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org Writer Free Fully equipped word processor that supports formatting, styles, and AutoCorrect; can import images and diagrams.

Unix:

Company Program Name Price *
Notes
AbiSource AbiWord Free Cross-platform, open source word processing program similar to Microsoft Word; supports advanced page layouts and text formatting.
BSD Vi Free Basic text editor included with nearly all Unix and Linux distributions; operates in either insert mode (for text entry) or normal mode (for typing commands).
Gnu Project Emacs Free Extensible and customizable editor that includes syntax coloring; includes an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language.
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org Writer Free Fully equipped word processor that supports formatting, styles, and AutoCorrect; can import images and diagrams.
University of Washington Pico Free Basic text editor integrated with the Pine (Program for Internet News & Email) e-mail client; includes paragraph justification, cut and paste functionality, and a spell checker.
Vim Online Vim Free Highly configurable text editor based on the standard vi editor; designed to make text editing more efficient for programmers; includes a basic Notepad-like mode called evim or Easy Vim.

* Prices listed are estimated retail prices and may change.

Know of an text editor that should be listed here? Suggest a program.


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