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Reading an .ini file with Notepad using Windows 10
"Gene Wirchenko" wrote
| For my use of a text editor, I need the capability to reformat | paragraphs - lines to a specified column length. One would think that | is a basic text editor function... missing from Notepad++. | | Well, no, it is not. It is a word processor function. | 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. The only functional distinction between the two is that a plain text editor does not provide font properties -- bold/italic/colors/faces -- pasting images, or anything else that's not plain text. Formatting line length can be done in plain text. On Windows there are two basic, built-in, system window options for text: a plain Edit window that deals only with text, like Notepad, or a RichEdit, for "word processing". An Edit window only handles actual character encoding. Line returns are part of character encoding. Notepad++ is basically just a wrapper around the OSS editor component, Scintilla, which is designed to be a free, OSS version of a RichEdit window. RichEdit is what is in Wordpad/Write. If I remember correctly, it was also the original basis for MS Word. N++ includes most of what Scintilla can do. (As I noted elsewhere, it also includes an auto-completion popup, built into the Scintilla component, though the N++ implementation of that is pretty much useless as far as I can figure. But it certainly isn't a plain text editor function.) So N++ is really an improved version of Wordpad. Anyone could make a version on N++ by just dropping a Scintilla component on a window and hooking up menus to it. But N++ is using that functionality to produce a plain text editor combined with a barebones code editor. Personally I would put a code editor in a different category from a word processor or plain text editor. It benefits from RichEdit functionality but people will generally want to save the result as plain text. For instance, an HTML file won't work in RTF format, but for writing it, RTF text allows one to see color syntax highlighting. So it needs to work graphically as a word processor but functionally as a plain text editor. There really isn't any reason to make a sharp distinction between word processing and a plain Edit window, unless all you've ever known are Wordpad and Notepad. Nil is using N++ as a word processor, to write HTML. I use it as a plain text editor. One might also use Wordpad as a plain text editor. For instance, if you want to print the page without the "Untitled" that Notepad puts at the top, you could do that in Wordpad. I added a line length function, similar to what Franklin wants, to my own code editor, which I use mainly for HTML and VBS. But I also use it for basic text operations. I add whatever function that I find I want regularly. What I wanted was to be able to insert carriage returns where the text wrapped, so that I could size the window to any width and end up with a text file formatted to that width. I often copy text from webpages that I want to save and want it to be easily readable later. For me, easily readable is 600-800px wide. Can Libre Office do that? I have no idea. Maybe. I don't want to drag out such a behemoth just to adjust line returns in plain text. That's a job for a text editor. |
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