WeMayayana wrote:
"Chris" wrote

| I don't think most people make such a sharp distinction.
| And Notepad++ includes a number of extra functions that
| are "word processor functions", such as auto-indenting
| and color syntax highlighting. Those are also not typical
| text editor functions.
|
| Disagree. Those two functions are crucial features for writing code, which
| is a major function of text editors.
|

We seem to be getting into a lot of confusing
threads lately. In Win7 there's a big discussion about
the definition of "disk image". Here we're all disagreeing
about what an "edtor" is.

No, we're discussing what a "text editor" is and is not.

| I struggle to understand what you'd use syntax highlighting for in a word
| processor?
|

As I said in the part you snipped, I think of a
code editor as a 3rd thing. But they overlap. You're
defining it in terms of your own usage. If you paste
a logo and print it, it's a word processor. Anything
else is a text editor. If it offers different font colors
but you can't paste your logo, then you call it a
code editor.

I'm not making any differentiation regarding a "code" editor. For me it is
the same as a text editor.

Notepad++ wraps a RichEdit clone. Most code editors
will use a RichEdit window or something similar. They're
functionally word processors in that they can offer
pasting of images, large bold headings, etc. But that
functionality is usually not translated through to the
UI because it's not relevant in a code editor.

Colored text is formatting, not plain text.

I don't think you understand what syntax highlighting is and what it's
for...

It is not coloured text. It is a highlight. Coloured text, just like
italics/bold, would be encoded in the saved file and would be retained
regardless of which editor got opened it with. A highlight is an aid for
understanding the content/language that the text is written in.

Wordpad
is an example of formatting using a RichEdit window.
It allows for different fonts, bold, etc. in the same file.
That's word processing.

Yup and requires a specific file format for storing the information e.g.
rtf, docs, otd

What makes a code editor unique

They're not unique.

Notepad++ can save a ridiculous number of file types,
but actually they're all plain text. By that I mean that
once the file is saved it may be ANSI text or it may
be unicode text, but there's no data in the file other
than character codes that will be interpreted as letters
in some alphabet.

Conversely, a word processor will somehow save
formatting information in the file. An RTF file or a
DOC file contain the text plus images, font property
markers, etc.

Exactly. Except a text file is usually ASCII not ANSI.

Whether an editor can do something like
reformat to specific line lengths is a text function,
not a word processor function.

Yes, because it only works with fixed-width fonts and counts the columns.
Word processors can use variable width fonts which don't line up in
columns.

The reason for that
is because the line endings are part of plain text
character encoding. They're still there when you
save it out as a plain text file.

And that's about the only thing. Any colour or font specifics cannot be
saved.

What if you create a letterhead with a logo and
several fonts? That's a word processor function, right?
What if you then save that out as plain text? Was
it still written in a word processor or in a text editor?
Would that make MS Word a text editor?

Sure, but a very bloated and inappropriately used one. Of course, you'd
lose the logo and all the font definitions if you saved your word document
as a text file.


| Printing. Word processors are designed for printing. You *can* print from
a
| text editor, but you have to know how many columns will fit on the page.
| That number is printer and page size/orientation specific.
|
So what? You're saying that a program that prints
badly is a text editor

Not quite. I'm saying it is difficult to print well from a text editor.

Your definitions don't really mean
anything. They're all just your own personal distinctions.

They come from many years of using and seeing other people use text editors
and word processors. They are distinct use cases, but are easily confused
by those who don't understand what the difference between a text file and a
word processor file is. One is pure ASCII (maybe Unicode now) encoding
characters and the other is a binary (often proprietary) file format.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor

Any editor using a RichEdit window can print well.
It can call EM_FORMATRANGE to calculate how much
text fits on a page. Notepad++ can probably do that,
since it's built around a RichEdit clone. A plain text
editor -- truly plain text -- won't have that capacity.
But printing is a whole other topic. There's access to
the printer programmatically in Windows. Things like
margins can be set directly. The main difference
between programs is going to be in terms of what
the author thought was necessary functionality.
There's nothing preventing a plain text editor from
printing beautifully.

True. It is a function of the editor not the file format though. PDF, for
example, will print correctly on any system regardless of what was used to
create it.

| There are also converters to aid printing from ASCII text files and they
| ignore any formatting you may have enforced on the text.
|

?? I didn't understand that statement.

For example, there's a text format called Markdown (a bit like a simpler
HTML) which allows you write simple text documents. These can then be
converted into other formats (like PDF or docx) with a program called
'pandoc' for printing and/or sharing with others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

Latex is another example...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX