Comparison of text editors (English Wikipedia)

ConTEXT does not support regular expression backreferences in its search and replace function. [3] Archived 2007-12-18 at archive.today
Text Editor Features Archived 2007-12-18 at archive.today at ConTEXT.cx

atom.io

"atom-macros". Atom. 8 June 2022.

barebones.com

https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/notes-15.0.3.html. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
"Handling large files presents no intrinsic problems for BBEdit, though some specific operations may be limited when dealing with files over 2GB in size." BBEdit FAQs Archived 2019-07-29 at the Wayback Machine.
"TextWrangler is a RAM-based editor, and it uses system memory to hold open files. TextWrangler also represents open documents as Unicode, which uses two bytes for each character. Combined with an internal Mac OS X limitation, this means that you can open files up to 384 megabytes in size." TextWrangler FAQs Archived 2019-10-10 at the Wayback Machine.
"Bare Bones Software | BBEdit Comparison Chart". www.barebones.com.
"Bare Bones Software | Features". www.barebones.com.
"Bare Bones Software | TextWrangler Features". www.barebones.com. Archived from the original on 2017-08-11. Retrieved 2009-06-05.
"Bare Bones Software | TextWrangler Tour". www.barebones.com. Archived from the original on 2019-11-29. Retrieved 2019-11-16.

bxr.su

"Super User's BSD Cross Reference: /OpenBSD/usr.bin/mg/re_search.c". bxr.su.

context.cx

ConTEXT does not support regular expression backreferences in its search and replace function. [3] Archived 2007-12-18 at archive.today
Text Editor Features Archived 2007-12-18 at archive.today at ConTEXT.cx

debian.org

packages.debian.org

The JED base release comes with a basic CUA emulation, but it doesn't bother to bind lots of useful editor features. Also, like some other editors, 1 side of a region must be at the cursor. The main extension collections jedmodes/jed-extra and the "Red Project" have improved versions, tackling the former problem in particular.

emacswiki.org

GNU Emacs 27.1 includes built-in support for tab bar (per-frame) and tab-line (per-window). Earlier versions of GNU Emacs can use a tabbed document interface in a non OS-native way using the Tabbar plug‑in.

emeditor.com

EmEditor Professional supports Auto Complete via plug‑ins (32-bit or 64-bit).

geany.org

Geany uses its own tags file format, not compatible with ctags, see the manual.
"Geany".

plugins.geany.org

Geany supports spell checking via a plug‑in

ghostarchive.org

"Notepad++ - How to Remotely work on the Same File in Real Time". 11 January 2016. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12 – via www.youtube.com.

github.com

"Release 1.63.1". 23 November 2022. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
"Brackets 2.2.1 release". 22 March 2023. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
"Release 1.217.5.1".
"Release 1.4.1".
"Release 1.8.12". 14 May 2025. Retrieved 25 May 2025.
"Release Geany 2.0 · geany/geany". GitHub. 19 October 2023. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
"Release 4.17.5.3". 21 March 2023. Retrieved 6 February 2025.
"Release 12.0.1".
https://github.com/lavv17/le/releases/tag/v1.16.8. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
"Release 6.7.6". 19 December 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
"Release 0.8.1". 22 January 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
"3.6 final version change".
"src/usr.bin/mg at master · openbsd/src". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
"Release 3.3.4". 6 February 2025. Retrieved 25 February 2025.
"SubEthaEdit v5.2.4".
"Release 12.7". 1 June 2025. Retrieved 1 June 2025.
https://github.com/textmate/textmate/releases/tag/v2.0.23. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
"Release v9.1.0". 2 January 2024. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
"April 2025 Recovery 2". Retrieved 17 May 2025.
"LICENSE.txt". github.com/Microsoft/vscode. Microsoft. 17 November 2015.
"GitHub - rschroll/lt-spelling: Spell check plugin for Light Table". April 29, 2015 – via GitHub.
"Virtual Space is not implemented. · Issue #13960 · microsoft/Vscode". GitHub.
"GitHub - ffes/npptags: Universal Ctags plug-in for Notepad++". March 7, 2019 – via GitHub.
"NotePad++ Plugin. Allows to connect to SQL Servers, execute SQL commands and views results: vladk1973/npp.connections". June 21, 2019 – via GitHub.
"Feature Request: Integrated Shell/Terminal Access · Issue #14490 · atom/atom". GitHub.
"Multi-line find and replace in project · Issue #398 · atom/find-and-replace". GitHub.
"GitHub - FredKSchott/CoVim: Collaborative Editing for Vim". November 13, 2019 – via GitHub.
GNU Emacs can have Wordstar emulation, with the command M-x wordstar-mode, as found from ws-mode.el retrieved 2017‑03‑14. See also the "Emulation" section of the previous GNU Emacs manual. The WordStar mode, however, has been obsolete since GNU Emacs 24.5.
"GitHub - fabi1cazenave/cua-mode.vim: Make CTRL-ZXCV behave like in Notepad". February 26, 2019 – via GitHub.
"GitHub - likaci/ViFinder: Vim like Keybinding FileManager for OS X." October 13, 2019 – via GitHub.
"Vim distribution optimized for writing". Sep 16, 2021 – via GitHub.
"Support EBCDIC encodings · Issue #49891 · microsoft/vscode". GitHub.

gitlab.com

The JED base release comes with a basic CUA emulation, but it doesn't bother to bind lots of useful editor features. Also, like some other editors, 1 side of a region must be at the cursor. The main extension collections jedmodes/jed-extra and the "Red Project" have improved versions, tackling the former problem in particular.
JEDs Windows version comes with a pair of scripts that can convert UTF-16 text files (actually anything iconv can convert) to and from JED's internal UTF-8. The Red Project releases include an enhanced version of these scripts.

gnome.org

live.gnome.org

gedit supports single document window splitting via plug‑ins. [1] Archived 2011-12-14 at the Wayback Machine.
gedit supports multiple document window splitting via plug‑ins. [2] Archived 2011-12-14 at the Wayback Machine.
gedit supports Regex-based find & replace via plug‑ins ([4] Archived 2011-12-14 at the Wayback Machine).
"Gedit/Plugins/ColumnMode - GNOME Wiki!". Archived from the original on 2012-01-11.

projects.gnome.org

GEdit, when installed from MacPorts, runs in X11 and, therefore, does not have a native look and feel. However, precompiled native macOS binaries for GEdit may be downloaded from the GEdit project page, or from the GEdit FTP download server.

ftp.gnome.org

GEdit, when installed from MacPorts, runs in X11 and, therefore, does not have a native look and feel. However, precompiled native macOS binaries for GEdit may be downloaded from the GEdit project page, or from the GEdit FTP download server.

download.gnome.org

. 14 September 2024 https://download.gnome.org/sources/gedit/48/gedit-48.0.news. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

gnu.org

Emacs: 64-bit compilation on 64-bit OS can handle 2 GB files, otherwise the limit is 512 MiB. [9]
GNU Emacs

(1) According to a comment in the source file where the bidi support is implemented (http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/src/bidi.c accessed August 15, 2017), GNU Emacs doesn't fully conform to the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (Unicode Annex #9, a.k.a. UAX #9) in the way it wraps the lines of a bidi paragraph: "we are violating paragraph 3.4 of UAX#9. which mandates that line breaking shall be done before reordering each screen line separately."

(2) According to the online GNU Emacs manual (section 22.19 Bidirectional Editing, accessed August 15, 2017), for the purpose of changing paragraph direction, "Paragraph boundaries are empty lines, i.e., lines consisting entirely of whitespace character". This contrasts with the otherwise ubiquitous convention of regarding the newline marker (LF on Unix derivatives, including macOS, and CR+LF on Windows) as the paragraph separator in plain text documents. However starting with version 26.0.50, the bidi paragraph separator can be customized.
"GNU Emacs 23.2 NEWS -- history of user-visible changes".
"Buffers". A buffer's size cannot be larger than some maximum, which is defined by the largest buffer position representable by Emacs integers. This is because Emacs tracks buffer positions using that data type. For typical 64-bit machines, this maximum buffer size is 2^{61} - 2 bytes, or about 2 EiB. For typical 32-bit machines, the maximum is usually 2^{29} - 2 bytes, or about 512 MiB. Buffer sizes are also limited by the amount of memory in the system.
"Does Emacs have problems with large files?".
"GNU emacs manual - Narrowing".

lists.gnu.org

Stefan Kangas (23 February 2025). "Emacs 30.1 released". Retrieved 23 February 2025.
Benno Schulenberg (2 April 2025). "nano-8.4 is released". Retrieved 2 April 2025.

ftp.gnu.org

GNU Emacs can have Wordstar emulation, with the command M-x wordstar-mode, as found from ws-mode.el retrieved 2017‑03‑14. See also the "Emulation" section of the previous GNU Emacs manual. The WordStar mode, however, has been obsolete since GNU Emacs 24.5.
"AC.27 Emulation". GNU Emacs manual. Retrieved 2021-12-06.

git.savannah.gnu.org

GNU Emacs

(1) According to a comment in the source file where the bidi support is implemented (http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/src/bidi.c accessed August 15, 2017), GNU Emacs doesn't fully conform to the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (Unicode Annex #9, a.k.a. UAX #9) in the way it wraps the lines of a bidi paragraph: "we are violating paragraph 3.4 of UAX#9. which mandates that line breaking shall be done before reordering each screen line separately."

(2) According to the online GNU Emacs manual (section 22.19 Bidirectional Editing, accessed August 15, 2017), for the purpose of changing paragraph direction, "Paragraph boundaries are empty lines, i.e., lines consisting entirely of whitespace character". This contrasts with the otherwise ubiquitous convention of regarding the newline marker (LF on Unix derivatives, including macOS, and CR+LF on Windows) as the paragraph separator in plain text documents. However starting with version 26.0.50, the bidi paragraph separator can be customized.

hamberg.no

Kate supports an optional VI Input Mode Archived 2009-02-28 at the Wayback Machine.

infn.it

fi.infn.it

"The JED Editor" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-05. Retrieved 2009-12-08.

jedit.org

"jEdit Development". Retrieved 30 August 2024.
"Selecting Text".
jEdit: "HTTP is supported natively"

jsimlo.sk

https://jsimlo.sk/notepad/changes.php. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
"TED Notepad". jsimlo.sk.

kde.org

apps.kde.org

"Releases 24.12.3 2025-03-06". 6 March 2025. Retrieved 22 March 2025.
"Release 24.12.1 2025-01-09". 9 January 2025. Retrieved 5 February 2025.

docs.kde.org

"The Kate Handbook".
Lines longer than ~700 characters frequently cause crashes. KatePart documentation Archived 2018-01-07 at the Wayback Machine (which is also the KWrite documentation, see here Archived 2018-01-07 at the Wayback Machine)

l10n.kde.org

"KDE Localization - Apps » stable » kate.po". l10n.kde.org.

lists.kde.org

kwrite-devel, Large Files open slowly due to futile Syntax-Highlighting

knudvaneeden.com

Comparison of Windows Text Editors for Large Files: Text editors for large files

liquidninja.com

"Announcing Metapad 3.6". Archived from the original on 12 June 2011.
"Metapad language plugins". liquidninja.com.
metapad FAQ, Loading Large Files

lugaru.com

"Epsilon 14 Update Information". Lugaru Software, Ltd. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
"New Features in Epsilon 13". www.lugaru.com.

marc.info

"'Re: [ jEdit-users ] Big file take AGES' - MARC". marc.info.

mbnet.fi

koti.mbnet.fi

VEDIT 6.2 comes with Scribe spelling checker which has been written entirely in Vedit macro language. In addition, macro package for integrating Aspell can be downloaded here.

megalextoria.com

"Usenet". www.megalextoria.com.

midnight-commander.org

lists.midnight-commander.org

Yury V. Zaytsev (23 January 2025). "[mc] Midnight Commander 4.8.33 released". Retrieved 10 February 2025.

mit.edu

web.mit.edu

GNU Emacs can have Wordstar emulation, with the command M-x wordstar-mode, as found from ws-mode.el retrieved 2017‑03‑14. See also the "Emulation" section of the previous GNU Emacs manual. The WordStar mode, however, has been obsolete since GNU Emacs 24.5.

morishima.net

GNU Emacs can support a tabbed document interface modelled after GNU Screen using the elscreen Archived 2008-01-17 at the Wayback Machine package.

mozillazine.org

kb.mozillazine.org

"Edit large mbox files - MozillaZine Knowledge Base". kb.mozillazine.org.

nabble.com

vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com

"Vim - General - unable to map ctrl-1". vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
"Vim - General - How to map (say) Ctrl-Shift-B". vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-11-30.

notepad-plus-plus.org

"Notepad++ v8.8.1 release - We are with Ukraine". 5 May 2025. Retrieved 5 May 2025.
Notepad++ 6.3.3 Archived 2013-11-26 at the Wayback Machine and above support spell checking via the DSpellCheck plug‑in, which is included with the default package.

community.notepad-plus-plus.org

"Text limit". Community. January 16, 2019.

docs.notepad-plus-plus.org

"Configurable through settings".

oliver.github.io

"Gedit File Search Plugin". oliver.github.io.

openoffice.nl

bluefish.openoffice.nl

https://bluefish.openoffice.nl/download.html. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

or.cz

repo.or.cz

"nvi 1.81.6". 18 November 2007.

paneura.com

JEDs Windows version comes with a pair of scripts that can convert UTF-16 text files (actually anything iconv can convert) to and from JED's internal UTF-8. The Red Project releases include an enhanced version of these scripts.

pimtel.com

Pimtel. Pimnote.

poradna.net

pspad.poradna.net

. 5 February 2025 https://pspad.poradna.net/release/pspad551_setup.exe. Retrieved 10 April 2025. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

pspad.com

forum.pspad.com

"PSPad forum / Bug report / Hlášení chyb / cannot open large file". forum.pspad.com.

reddit.com

"Indent with virtual spaces in Vim?". reddit.com. 28 January 2021.

rj-texted.se

https://www.rj-texted.se/download.html. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

santafe.edu

"Alphatk news". Archived from the original on 5 February 2009.

scintilla.org

Komodo Edit is based on Scintilla and may support virtual space similar to Geany and Notepad++ ([5])
Komodo IDE is based on Scintilla and may support virtual space similar to Geany and Notepad++ ([6])
"History of SciTE, Scintilla, and Lexilla".
"Localised SciTE". scintilla.org.

semware.com

"SemWare homepage". Retrieved 24 October 2023.
"TSE-Pro Files". www.semware.com.

sourceforge.io

joe-editor.sourceforge.io

"4.6 - Joe's Own Editor".

sourceforge.net

Notepadpp: Scintilla (Notepad++'s Engine) does not really support bidirectional editing ... Some bidirectional text support added in 4.1.0. https://sourceforge.net/p/scintilla/bugs/757/#01c9
. 16 October 2024 https://sourceforge.net/projects/akelpad/files/AkelPad%204/4.9.9/. Retrieved 19 January 2025. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
"Emerald Editor - Browse /crimsoneditor/crimson-editor-3.72-r286m at SourceForge.net".
"NEdit - Browse /nedit-source at SourceForge.net".
"JOE - Joe's own editor". JOE - Joe's own editor / Mercurial / [2e4f45] /po. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
"JOE - Joe's Own Editor". JOE - Joe's own editor / Mercurial / [2e4f45] /docs/man.md. Retrieved 23 October 2015. The search covers all loaded buffers.
"JOE - Joe's Own Editor". JOE - Joe's own editor / Mercurial / [2e4f45] /docs/man.md. Retrieved 23 October 2015. JOE also emulates several other editors. JSTAR is a close imitation of WordStar [...]. JPICO is a close imitation of the Pine mailing system's PICO editor [...]. JMACS is a GNU-EMACS imitation. [...] Key binding tables are defined. You can define as many as you like [...].
"JOE - Joe's Own Editor". JOE - Joe's own editor / Mercurial / [2e4f45] /docs/man.md. Retrieved 23 October 2015. character sets must use LF (0x0A) or CR-LF (0x0D - 0x0A) as line terminators [...]. [...] character sets which use CR terminated lines (MACs) will not yet work.

openctags.sourceforge.net

With external tool OpenCTags

jedmodes.sourceforge.net

The JED base release comes with a basic CUA emulation, but it doesn't bother to bind lots of useful editor features. Also, like some other editors, 1 side of a region must be at the cursor. The main extension collections jedmodes/jed-extra and the "Red Project" have improved versions, tackling the former problem in particular.

vim-taglist.sourceforge.net

Vim has a popular TagList plug‑in that provides a function list.

stackexchange.com

emacs.stackexchange.com

"Virtual space for rectangular selections (at least)". Stack Exchange. Retrieved 13 March 2023.

sublimetext.com

https://www.sublimetext.com/download. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

forum.sublimetext.com

"Virtual space". 28 March 2012.

superuser.com

"Did Mac OS Lion switch to using line feeds (LF '\n') for line breaks instead of carriage returns (CR '\r')?". Super User.

textpad.com

Textpad uses an add-on ([7])
https://www.textpad.com/relnotes-textpad#v9030. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

forums.textpad.com

"Community :: View topic - Unicode Conformance". forums.textpad.com.

uic.edu

homepages.math.uic.edu

pico uses most of Emacs's motion and deletion commands: ^F ^B ^P ^N ^D etc. See Pico: A Unix text editor Archived 2012-09-05 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2012‑01‑09.
pico (and nano) uses most of Emacs's motion and deletion commands: ^F ^B ^P ^N ^D etc. See Pico: A Unix text editor Archived 2012-09-05 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2012‑01‑09.

ultraedit.com

UltraEdit has no real limit on file size - and can easily open, edit, and save large text files in excess of 4 GB! [8].

underjord.io

"The best parts of Visual Studio Code are proprietary".

vim.org

"Vim 9.1 is available". 2 January 2024. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
"TabBar - Plugin to add tab bar ( derived from miniBufExplorer). : vim online". www.vim.org.
"Engspchk - Spelling checker: On-the-fly spell checking, multi-language, alternate spellings : vim online". www.vim.org.
"Vimacs - Vim-Improved eMACS: Emacs emulation for Vim : vim online". www.vim.org.
"brief.vim - Brief editor key binding emulation in Vim : vim online". www.vim.org.
Vim Supported via netrw plug‑in distributed in the standard Vim installation.

visualstudio.com

marketplace.visualstudio.com

"Live Share - Visual Studio Marketplace". marketplace.visualstudio.com.
"Vim - Visual Studio Marketplace". marketplace.visualstudio.com.
"Emacs - Visual Studio Marketplace". marketplace.visualstudio.com.
"Brief Editor Keymap Emulation - Visual Studio Marketplace". marketplace.visualstudio.com.
"Remote Workspace - Visual Studio Marketplace". marketplace.visualstudio.com. Archived from the original on 2019-05-10. Retrieved 2019-05-09.

code.visualstudio.com

"Microsoft Software License Terms". code.visualstudio.com. Microsoft. Retrieved 16 August 2016.

web.archive.org

gedit supports single document window splitting via plug‑ins. [1] Archived 2011-12-14 at the Wayback Machine.
gedit supports multiple document window splitting via plug‑ins. [2] Archived 2011-12-14 at the Wayback Machine.
GNU Emacs can support a tabbed document interface modelled after GNU Screen using the elscreen Archived 2008-01-17 at the Wayback Machine package.
gedit supports Regex-based find & replace via plug‑ins ([4] Archived 2011-12-14 at the Wayback Machine).
"Alphatk news". Archived from the original on 5 February 2009.
"Announcing Metapad 3.6". Archived from the original on 12 June 2011.
"Gedit/Plugins/ColumnMode - GNOME Wiki!". Archived from the original on 2012-01-11.
Notepad++ 6.3.3 Archived 2013-11-26 at the Wayback Machine and above support spell checking via the DSpellCheck plug‑in, which is included with the default package.
"Handling large files presents no intrinsic problems for BBEdit, though some specific operations may be limited when dealing with files over 2GB in size." BBEdit FAQs Archived 2019-07-29 at the Wayback Machine.
"The JED Editor" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-05. Retrieved 2009-12-08.
Lines longer than ~700 characters frequently cause crashes. KatePart documentation Archived 2018-01-07 at the Wayback Machine (which is also the KWrite documentation, see here Archived 2018-01-07 at the Wayback Machine)
"TextWrangler is a RAM-based editor, and it uses system memory to hold open files. TextWrangler also represents open documents as Unicode, which uses two bytes for each character. Combined with an internal Mac OS X limitation, this means that you can open files up to 384 megabytes in size." TextWrangler FAQs Archived 2019-10-10 at the Wayback Machine.
pico uses most of Emacs's motion and deletion commands: ^F ^B ^P ^N ^D etc. See Pico: A Unix text editor Archived 2012-09-05 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2012‑01‑09.
Kate supports an optional VI Input Mode Archived 2009-02-28 at the Wayback Machine.
pico (and nano) uses most of Emacs's motion and deletion commands: ^F ^B ^P ^N ^D etc. See Pico: A Unix text editor Archived 2012-09-05 at the Wayback Machine retrieved 2012‑01‑09.
"Bare Bones Software | TextWrangler Features". www.barebones.com. Archived from the original on 2017-08-11. Retrieved 2009-06-05.
"Vim - General - unable to map ctrl-1". vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
"Vim - General - How to map (say) Ctrl-Shift-B". vim.1045645.n5.nabble.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
"Bare Bones Software | TextWrangler Tour". www.barebones.com. Archived from the original on 2019-11-29. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
"Remote Workspace - Visual Studio Marketplace". marketplace.visualstudio.com. Archived from the original on 2019-05-10. Retrieved 2019-05-09.

xemacs.org

"XEmacs: XEmacs 21.4.22 "Instant Classic" is released". 30 January 2009. Retrieved 19 July 2023.

youtube.com

"Notepad++ - How to Remotely work on the Same File in Real Time". 11 January 2016. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12 – via www.youtube.com.