Texteditor

A text editor ( from the Latin textus for " content " and editor of "Publisher " or "producer" ) is a computer program for text editing. The editor loads to edit a text file and displays its contents on the screen. Through various actions, the data can then be edited. These actions can copy, paste, and delete are. A special form for editing HTML files are HTML editors.

History

Text editors emerged from the need to enter the source code of computer programs and data into the calculator. The precursors of text editors were therefore punch cards punch that perceived this task by means of the preparation of punched cards.

The first text editors were line-oriented text editors in typewriter -like terminals where no representations in the form of windows or screens were possible. These programs have allowed only to change individual lines of a text file. Despite the limited possibilities in today's operating systems line-oriented editors go as edlin on Windows or Unix ed in the standard scope; they allow for the installation or after system crash editing configuration files, if no convenient graphical environments are available.

With the advent of computer terminals, the first screen-oriented text editors formed. One of the first programs of this group include the written 1967 O26 editor on CDC 6000 mainframes and the vi editor from the year 1976. The Vi editor is still the standard text editor unix -like operating systems.

Functions

Good text editors facilitate the user through extensions work:

Demarcation for word processing

The files generated by a text editor available in DOS and Windows due to a convention usually the file name extension ". Txt ", where also any other file name extension is possible. The format is now mostly a country-and system-specific 8- bit extension of the 7- bit ASCII or UTF -8, rarely EBCDIC ( IBM mainframe). In the exchange of text files between different systems is important to note that different conventions for encoding the end of line exist; apart from that, should an encoded in 7-bit ASCII text file probably be the most portable information format that can be read and produced on the vast majority of system platforms - even on those that are several decades old.

Application

Unix

The standard UNIX text editor ed is one of the oldest editors still be used. This is line oriented, and despite its powerful editing language the interactive editing is quite cumbersome.

Later came on as an extension of ed and its extension ex the visual editor vi, which made the editing of texts more comfortable. This is - as ed - POSIX standardized and normally installed on all UNIX / Linux systems. As ed vi has no menus, instead working with various shortcuts and editing commands. At vi different Nachprogrammierungen exist ( " clones " ), eg Vi Improved ( vim ), vile, nvi, elvis, and more. Vim has been ported to many platforms, supports graphical interfaces and is one of the most powerful editors.

Another frequently used and very powerful editor is GNU Emacs, a free programmable text editor with a complete (albeit simple ) Lisp system inside, on which to build many extensions and a good part of the editor itself. Smaller Emacs -like editors are eg μemacs ( MicroEmacs ), jed, jove. XEmacs is a substantially comparable alternative to GNU Emacs, which split from this years ago. Emacs, XEmacs and μemacs been ported to many platforms and are now out on Unix on Windows, Mac OS and some other systems such as VMS available.

If you prefer WordStar - compatible commands, can use the text editor joe or mined under Unix. Also, Emacs can be fully operated in the word star -mode.

In addition to the presented here, there are plenty of other text editors for Unix.

Windows

Each version of the Microsoft Windows operating system contains a simple text editor called Notepad. However, this editor provides a very limited capacity and is therefore not suitable for larger edits; Longer texts can interfere with a slow speed. Newer versions can also handle text files in Unicode format.

In addition, many others, including very powerful text editors available. In addition to the ported from other systems programs, there is a abundance of mostly commercial software. Under Windows NT and its successors exist again edlin the old DOS Editor, which is a line-oriented editing by means of a command language provides similar ed, but does not have the performance of its Unix - relatives (eg, it does not provide regular expressions to formulate patterns ).