I spend a lot of time editing plain text files (mainly HTML,
Javascript, BASIC & C code) in notepad.exe in Windows XP Pro, and it's
started driving me up the wall. Now I guess this question probably
reads a little incoherently (!) but I'm hoping someone out there will
recognise what I mean & might know of just the thing I'm looking for..

The version of the Notepad.exe text editor that comes with this OS in
many ways doesn't seem as good as that which came with earlier
versions of Windows. It does now have a global search and replace
function which is really useful, but text selection seems to have gone
a bit buggy - sometimes when selecting longish areas of text in a wide
window, maybe spanning 2 monitors, especially with a horizontal
scrollbar set midway, the view will inexplicably jump to the far left
or right of the file. Sometimes, when trying to accurately select one
word, the highlighting will skip to include parts of adjacent
words/code.

I'm looking for a simple, clean (& free if possible, but not
essential) text editor I can use in Windows XP Pro, with the features
below and without the buggy behaviour noted above. The more 'no
frills' the better, I'm looking for as much control over each
individual character / word as possible, & ease & speed of use. I'd
rather avoid automatic function highlighting, HTML tag highlighting,
automatic code indentation etc, unless those features are completely
disablable; I want it to do what I tell it, not
what it thinks I want it to do.

1. Line numbering able to be applied / removed at will
2. Always displays text in the same, monospaced font.
3. Find feature, able to find instances of the search string within
words
4. Global find and replace function
5. Word wrap on / word wrap off feature
6. Easy to use, accurate and precise copy/paste function even in wide,
multi-monitor spanning windows with horizontal scroll set to midway.
7. Display font feature not bothered about at all. See point 2.
8. Right-click 'select all', 'delete', 'paste', something similar to
notepad.
9. Usable with standard mouse.

Someone who has used notepad to edit long lines of text without
carriage returns will probably understand what I mean about point 6.
It gets really frustrating! I'm essentially looking for XP's notepad
without that annoying behaviour, and an easily controllable line
number identification feature.

Anyways, claim the bounty if you know of such an animal. If there's
more than one possibility, a choice would be great & will receive a
tip. Thanks :)

Hi gan-ga,

Like you, I spend a lot of time coding - through the course of several
years I have come to enjoy five editors which meet all of your
requirements. In addition, all three are compact and require very
little in the way of system resources.

1. PROGRAMMER's FILE EDITOR (PFE)

"Programmer's File Editor is a 32-bit text editor primarily oriented
toward program developers. Though it contains features like the
ability to run compilers and development applications, it also makes a
very good general-purpose editor for any function at all. Features
include multilevel undo, active buttons on a tear-off toolbar,
automatic C-aware indenting, Unix file support, remappable keys,
keyboard macros, and more.
"
You can download this program from CNET's Download.com at:
http://download.com.com/3000-2352-904159.html

2. EditPad Lite 4.5

"EditPad Lite is a convenient text editor and Notepad replacement. It
has all the features a solid text editor needs. You can open as many
files at a time as you want, with no arbitrary file size limit. Each
file will have its own tab. You can convert between ANSI, ASCII, and
Unicode, and work with Unix and Mac files. You can search and replace
across all open files. It has unlimited undo and redo and powerful
print preview."

You can download this program from CNET's Download.com at:
http://download.com.com/3000-2352-10105023.html?tag=lst-3-1

3. UltraEdit 9.2

"UltraEdit-32 is a text and hexadecimal editor. It includes
column-mode editing, CR fix-up, insert and overstrike modes,
drag-and-drop support, bookmarks, font selection for view and print,
complete macro support, pop-up menus, numbered lines, tab settings,
automatic backup, a spelling checker, and conversion from DOS to Unix
file types. UltraEdit-32 also supports HTML Tidy, contains a sort
option in the function list, supports group projects, and more. Files
greater than 4GB are supported. Back/Forward functions take you to the
previous place you edited, scrolled from, or jumped to. It works
across multiple files. Version 9.2 features the highlight of a
function that a cursor is in; auto-complete; automatic highlighting of
brackets/braces as typing or positioning occurs; incremental search;
macros with one keystroke recording; and file tabs showing filenames
that may be dragged and dropped individually."

You can download this program from CNET's Download.com at:
http://download.com.com/3000-2352-10175357.html?tag=lst-3-23

4. EditPlus

"EditPlus is an Internet-ready 32-bit text, HTML, and code editor for
Windows. It offers many features for Web page authors and programmers,
including syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, Perl, C/C++,
Java, JavaScript, and VBScript. You can use a seamless Web browser for
previewing HTML pages, and FTP commands for uploading local files to
an FTP server. Other features include HTML toolbar, user tools, line
number, ruler, URL highlighting, auto-completion, cliptext, column
selection, powerful search and replace, and multiple undo/redo."

You can download this program from CNET's Download.com at:
http://download.com.com/3000-2352-9013400.html?tag=lst-0-1

5. TextPad

"TextPad is a full-featured text editor offering a spelling checker,
macros, and powerful formatting and file-storage options. Features
include color syntax highlighting, multiple workspaces, customizable
toolbars, a dockable document selector, and an alternative
tabbed-document selector. "

You can download this program from CNET's Download.com at:
http://download.com.com/3000-2352-7003169.html?tag=pop


All of the editors listed above are designed specifically for
programmers...the subtle differences between them are purely personal
preference. For this reason, many of the features that can be found
both helpful and annoying by different users are configurable. This is
likely the main reason why all of the editors above have received 90%
approval ratings or higher.

If you require any clarification on content above, please do ask and I
will respond promptly :)

Cheers!

answerguru-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Very happy with your answer thanks answerguru. Yet to download & have
a really good try out of these, but from the descriptions and reviews
I think you pretty thoroughly understood my question. Many thanks.

Hello again gan-ga,

Thank you so much for the great rating and generous tip!

answerguru-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Had a bit of time to look at some of these properly..

EditPad Lite is absolutely perfect - line numbering works a dream, as
does search & replace, & it doesn't try to drag the view to wherever
the cursor skips to.

Still got a couple of the others to look at yet, but you found me
precisely what I wanted with the above editor. If any of the ones I
haven't installed yet are any better, well that's a bonus.

Just a note for anyone finding this as a result of a search. Been
using EditPad Lite heavily for a good while now & I can say, it's
fine. Particularily impressed with the fact that it will do search and
replace using perl 5 - style regular expressions. Now that beats
notepad!