Notepad++

Notepad++

Notepad++
Developer(s)	Don Ho
Initial release	November 24, 2003 (2003-11-24)
Stable release	5.9.6.2[1]  (November 2011, 13; 7 days ago (13-11-2011)) [+/−]
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Available in	Multilingual (49)
Type	Source code editor
License	GNU General Public License
Website	www.notepad-plus-plus.org

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows. One advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in Windows text editor, Notepad, is tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files.

Notepad++ is distributed as free software. The project is hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over 27 million times^[2][3] and twice won the SourceForge Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool.^[4] To display and edit text and programming language source code files, Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.

Features

General features include:^[5]

• Tabbed document interface^[6]
• Drag-and-drop
• Multiple clipboards (plugin required)
• Split screen editing and synchronized scrolling
• Spell checker (requires Aspell) (Spell checker does not distinguish between text and code)
• Supports text encoding formats such as Unicode, for international writing systems
• Find and replace over multiple documents
• File comparison
• Zooming

Programming languages

Running under Mac OS X using the Wine compatibility layer.

Source code editing features include:^[5]

• Auto-completion
• Bookmarks
• Syntax highlighting and syntax folding
• Brace and indent highlighting
• Regular expression find and replace
• Speech synthesis
• FTP Browser (plug-in included in standard installation)
• Macro recording and execution.
• Various tools such as line sorting, text encoding conversion, text folding
• File status auto-detection
• Plugins for multiline regular expression search and replace

Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting and syntax folding for 52 programming, scripting, and markup languages.^[5][7] It attempts to automatically detect the language that a given file uses, using a modifiable list of file extension bindings. Users may also manually set the current language, overriding the extension's default language. The program also supports autocompletion for a subset of the API of some programming languages.

The following languages are natively supported by Notepad++ as of version 5.9.2:

Supported Languages
ActionScript	Ada	asp	Assembly	autoIt	bash	Batch	C	C++	C#	Caml	CMakeFile	COBOL	CSS	D	DIFF
Flash ActionScript	Fortran	Gui4CLI	Haskell	HTML	ini file	InnoSetup	Java	Javascript	JSP	KiXtart	LISP	Lua	Makefile	Matlab	NSIS
Objective-C	Pascal	Perl	PHP	PowerShell	Postscript	Properties file	Python	R	VHDL

Users can also define their own language (for syntax highlighting) and its respective API (for autocompletion) by using the built-in User Language Define System.^[5] Users may configure the syntax highlighting's font styles per element, per language, and the resulting formatted script may be printed in full-color (WYSIWYG). Additionally, Notepad++ displays indent guidelines when source code is indented with tab characters, and highlights closing braces, brackets and tags.

Plugins

Notepad++ has support for macros and plugins.^[8] Currently, there are 27 official plugins for Notepad++, 10 of which are included by default in the program.^[9] The first plugin to be included in the program was "TextFX", which includes features such as W3C validation for HTML and CSS, text sorting, character case alteration and quote handling.^[10]

Development

This project, based on the Scintilla editor component, is written in C++ with only Win32 API calls using only the STL in order to increase performance and reduce program size. The aim of Notepad++ is to reduce overall power consumption by using efficient binaries that require less CPU power.^[5]

Banned countries and controversy

In March 2008, the "Boycott Beijing 2008" banner was placed on Notepad++'s SourceForge.net homepage.^[11] A few months later, most users in China were unable to reach the SourceForge.net website for about a month (June 26, 2008 – July 24, 2008). This led to widespread belief that China had banned SourceForge.net in retaliation for the Boycott banner. ^[12][13][14]

In January 2010, the US government forced open source project hosts to comply with US law and deny access from 5 countries (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria). As a response to what the developer felt was a violation of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) philosophy, in June 2010, Notepad++ moved out of US territorial jurisdiction by releasing a version on TuxFamily, in France.^[15][16]

See also

• List of text editors
• Comparison of text editors

References

1. ^ "Notepad++ 5.9.6.2 Release". http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-5.9.6.2-release.html. 
2. ^ "SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for Notepad++". SourceForge.net. http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=95717&ugn=notepad-plus&type=prdownload&mode=alltime&package_id=0. Retrieved 2011-04-18. 
3. ^ "Top Downloads - For all time, updated daily". SourceForge. http://sourceforge.net/top/topalltime.php?type=downloads. Retrieved 2011-04-18. 
4. ^ "SourceForge's 4th Annual Community Choice Awards". SourceForge. http://sourceforge.net/community/cca09/winners/. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} Notepad++ Homepage - "Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding"
6. ^ Fox, Geoff (July 7, 2008). "Notepad++ Does It Again Again". AppScout (Ziff Davis Media). http://www.appscout.com/2008/07/notepad_does_it_again_again.php. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
7. ^ DeCarlo, Matthew (May 26, 2009). "Download of the Week: Notepad++". TechSpot. http://www.techspot.com/news/34846-Download-of-the-Week-Notepad.html. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
8. ^ Smith, Tim (September 21, 2009). "Notepad++ 5.5". Computeractive. http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/downloads/2196837/notepad. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 
9. ^ Notepad++ Download Page
10. ^ TextFX Official Homepage
11. ^ Notepad++ homepage at the Wayback Machine (archived March 26, 2008)
12. ^ SourceForge Blocked In China. Moonlight Blog. June 26, 2008.
13. ^ SourceForge Unblocked in China. Moonlight Blog. July 24, 2008.
14. ^ Gamedev.net
15. ^ notepad-plus-plus.org news - Notepad++ new site: notepad-plus-plus.org
16. ^ notepad-plus-plus.org news - Notepad++ 5.7 release (outside the USA)

External links

• Official website
• Notepad++ at SourceForge.net
• Official Notepad++ Wiki
• Official Directory for Notepad++ plugins
• Notepad++ Linux Installer