Programmer's Notepad - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Programmer's Notepad is an open-source

Open-source software

Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...

text editor

Text editor

A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....

targeted at users who work with source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

. It was released in 1998 by Echo Software (a trading name for Simon Steele). PN1's successor, Programmer's Notepad 2 (PN2), was released in 2002 and is now based on Scintilla

Scintilla (editing component)

Scintilla is a free library that provides text-editing functions, with an emphasis on advanced features for source code editing. SciTE , Notepad++ and Notepad2 are standalone editors based on Scintilla.-Features:...

. Possibly the most distinctive feature common to both versions is the combination tabbed document interface and multiple document interface

Multiple document interface

Graphical computer applications with a multiple document interface are those whose windows reside under a single parent window , as opposed to all windows being separate from each other . Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested...

called "Tabbed MDI" by the developer. The TDI is parent to the MDI

Multiple document interface

.

Both PN1 and PN2 feature syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting is a feature of some text editors that display text—especially source code—in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature eases writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and...

for many programming languages through plugins called "schemes." Scheme files can be added to support more languages. PN1 scheme files are not compatible with PN2 scheme files.

PN1 included syntax highlighting for: C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

, HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

, INI, Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

, JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

, AutoLISP

AutoLISP

AutoLISP is a dialect of Lisp programming language built specifically for use with the full version of AutoCAD and its derivatives, which include AutoCAD Map 3D, AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD Mechanical...

, Pascal

Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...

, Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

, SQL

SQL

SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....

, Visual Basic

Visual Basic

Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...

and XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

.

Other significant features common to both editor versions are "Scheme Tools" and "Text Clips." Scheme Tools allow the user to make highly customizable calls to other programs (such as a compiler) based on the scheme of the current file. Text Clips are code templates or values that can be inserted into the current document to speed up development time.

A significant feature added to PN2 is code folding

Code folding

Code folding is a feature of some text editors, source code editors and IDEs that allows the user to selectively hide and display sections of a currently-edited file as a part of routine edit operations...

. A significant feature that has been often requested, but is not currently included, is a spell checker.

PN1 has a built-in hex editor

Hex editor

A hex editor is a type of computer program that allows a user to manipulate the fundamental binary data that makes up computer files. Note that computer files can be very small to very large...

that has yet to appear in PN2.

See also