Wikipedia / List of text editors
Wikipedia / List of text editors
The following is a list of notable text editors.
Graphical and text user interface
The editors below can be used with either a graphical user interface or a text-based user interface.
Name | Description | License |
A vi/ex clone with additional commands and features. | ||
Default under OpenVMS. | ||
Two long-existing forks of the popular Emacs programmer's editor. Emacs and vi are the dominant text editors on Unix-like operating systems, and have inspired the editor wars. | ||
A modular, cross-platform editor written in C and Lua, using Scintilla. | ||
A vi work-alike which retains the vi command-set while adding new features: multiple windows and buffers, infinite undo, colorization, scriptable expansion capabilities, etc. | ||
A clone based on the ideas of the vi editor and designed for use both from a command line interface and in a graphical user interface. |
Graphical user interface
Name | Description | License |
A User Interface for Programmers by Rob Pike. | ||
Word processor and text editor of the Apache OpenOffice Suite, based on StarOffice's suite. | ||
Arachnophilia | A source code editor which is successor to another HTML editor, WebThing. | |
A modular, general-purpose editor built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript on top of Chromium and Node.js. The project was retired in late 2022 with the repo archived on December 15, 2022. | ||
A proprietary text editor originally developed for Macintosh System Software 6 | ||
A source code editor with web development features. | ||
A modular, web-oriented editor built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript on top of the Chromium Embedded Framework. | ||
An editing system or source code editor which can be configured to work with other integrated development environment (IDE) systems. | ||
A text editor which is typically used as a source code editor and HTML editor. | ||
CygnusEd (CED) | ||
An editor originally made for BeOS and later ported to Linux and macOS. | ||
extensible commercial text editor which supports Unicode, syntax highlighting and vertical selection editing, editing of large files (up to 248 GB or 2.1 billion lines) | ||
A programmer's text editor modelled after Emacs. | ||
A lightweight editor based on Qt. | ||
Former default under GNOME until GNOME 42. | ||
Default under GNOME from GNOME 42 onwards | ||
An editor for huge files, working with both binary data and texts. | ||
A multi-platform Markdown text editor with writing focused feature set | ||
A free cross-platform programmer's editor written in Java, GPL licensed. | ||
Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs | ||
A basic text editor for the KDE desktop. | ||
An editor with commands and Rexx macros similar to IBM XEDIT. | ||
A default editor on KDE. | ||
An experimental text editor allowing multiple simultaneous edits of text in a multiple selection from a few examples provided by the user. | ||
Default under LXDE. | ||
A text editor that features outlines with clones as its central tool of organization and navigation. | ||
Word processor and text editor of the LibreOffice Suite, based on StarOffice's suite. | ||
A text editor and IDE with real-time, inline expression evaluation. Intended mainly for dynamic languages such as Clojure, Python and JavaScript, and for web development. | ||
A text editor provided with Midnight Commander. | ||
Windows Notepad replacement, GPL licensed. | ||
JASSPA MicroEMACS | ||
The default under Xfce. | ||
NEdit – "Nirvana Editor" | ||
Default under Microsoft Windows. | ||
A tabbed text editor. | ||
A text editor for BeOS. | ||
The default text editor of the MATE desktop environment for Linux. | ||
Proprietary word processor and text editor. | ||
Programmer's File Editor (PFE) | ||
An editor for Microsoft Windows with various programming environments. | ||
Cross-platform, multi-user, multi-codepage, multi-language syntax highlighting, area selector, RE find/replace, and very customisable, allowing different font configurations for each syntactic group, user-defined menus and abbreviation expansion. | ||
Default under Classic Mac OS from version 7.5. | ||
A macOS text editor. | ||
SubEthaEdit(formerly named Hydra) | ||
Default under Classic Mac OS versions prior to 7.5. | ||
Mac-only editor by Bare Bones Software, sunsetted. Final version released 09/20/2016, replaced by free tier of BBEdit. | ||
The SemWare Editor (TSE)(formerly named QEdit). | ||
Text and source code editor with syntax highlighting, code folding, FTP, etc., handles multi-gigabyte files. | ||
An extensible code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running and version control. | ||
Default under VM/CMS. | ||
Default under Linux Mint, forked from Pluma. | ||
Started by former Atom developer Nathan Sobo. Positioned as the "spiritual successor" to Atom. |
Text user interface
System default
Name | Description | License |
is the text editor in PC DOS 6, PC DOS 7 and PC DOS 2000. | ||
The default line editor on Unix since its birth. Either ed or a compatible editor is available on all systems labeled as Unix (not by default on every one). | ||
The default editor on CP/M, MP/M, Concurrent CP/M, CP/M-86, MP/M-86, Concurrent CP/M-86. | ||
The default on MS-DOS 5.0 and higher and is included with all 32-bit versions of Windows that do not rely on a separate copy of DOS. Up to including MS-DOS 6.22, it only supported files up to 64 KB. | ||
The text editor in Novell DOS 7, OpenDOS 7.01, DR-DOS 7.02 and higher. Supports large files for as long as swap space is available. Version 7 and higher optionally supports a pseudo-graphics user interface named NewUI. | ||
The text editor in Concurrent DOS, Concurrent DOS XM, Concurrent PC DOS, Concurrent DOS 386, FlexOS 286, FlexOS 386, 4680 OS, 4690 OS, S5-DOS/MT. | ||
The text editor in DR DOS 3.31 through DR DOS 6.0, and the predecessor of EDIT. | ||
A command-line based line editor introduced with 86-DOS, and the default on MS-DOS prior to version 5 and is also available on MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows NT. | ||
(Installed as vi by default in BSD operating systems and some Linux distributions) – A free replacement for the original vi which maintains compatibility while adding some new features. | ||
The default for Unix systems and must be included in all POSIX compliant systems – One of the earliest screen-based editors, it is based on ex. |
Others
Name | Description | License |
ECCE (The Edinburgh Compatible Context Editor) is a text editor designed by Dr Hamish Dewar at Edinburgh University. | ||
A screen-based editor with an embedded computer language, Emacs Lisp. Early versions were implemented in TECO, see below. | ||
Multi-mode, multi-window editor with drop-down menus, folding, ctags support, undo, UTF-8, key-macros, autosave, etc. Multi-emulation; default is emacs. Programmable in S-Lang. | ||
A modern screen-based editor with a sort of enhanced-WordStar style to the interface, but can also emulate Pico. | ||
Full featured terminal text editor for Unix-like systems. | ||
mg | Small and light, uses GNU/Emacs keybindings. Installed by default on OpenBSD. | |
Text editor with user-friendly interface, mouse and menu control, and extensive Unicode and CJK support; for Unix/Linux and Windows/DOS. | ||
A clone of Pico GPL licensed. | ||
A minimal, modern replacement for vi. | ||
A clone of the editor of Borland's Turbo* IDEs. | ||
(TSE for DOS)(formerly called QEdit) |
vi-like
The following text editors provide functionality similar to vi. They are ordered to some extent by when initially developed and released.
Name | Description | License |
Originally developed as an extended version of ed, eventually, it was enhanced to support full-screen editing via a visual mode which is what today we call vi. In other words, vi is a mode of ex. | ||
For the Atari ST, ST editor for vi enthusiasts is the starting point for vim and xvi | ||
The first vi clone and the default vi in Minix. | ||
Derived from an early version of Microemacs in an attempt to bring the Emacs multi-window/multi-buffer editing paradigm to vi users. First published 1991 with infinite undo, UTF-8 compatibility, multi-window/multi-buffer operation, a macro expansion language, syntax highlighting, file read and write hooks, and more. | ||
An extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code. | ||
An editor inspired by vi that makes use of multi cursor workflows and modal editing. | ||
A fork of vim with added Lua scripting and native LSP integration. | ||
In addition to many other utilities, includes a vi clone except for reduced functionality to minimize size. | ||
A new implementation and currently the standard vi in BSD distributions. |
Command line interface
The following entries are utilities that provide no interactive user interface, only a command-line interface. They are arguably not text editors.
Name | Description | License |
A stream editor based on the scripting features in ed. A utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. |
Library
The following entires are packages that support editing text, not text editors per se.
Name | Description | License |
Supports text components of macOS. | ||
Used as the core of several text editors. | ||
Language and runtime package, developed by DEC, used to implement the Language-Sensitive Editor and Extensible Versatile Editor, Eve. |
ASCII and ANSI art
These editors are specifically designed for the creation of ASCII and ANSI text art.
ACiDDraw – designed for editing ASCII text art. Supports ANSI color (ANSI X3.64)
TheDraw – ANSI/ASCII text editor for DOS and PCBoard file format support
ASCII font editors
FIGlet – for creating ASCII art text
TheDraw – DOS ANSI/ASCII text editor with built-in editor and manager of ASCII fonts
Historical
Visual and full-screen editors
Line editors
See also
Outliner, a specialized type of word processor
Notes