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Text editorsA text editor is a program that creates and edits text without adding "secret codes". When you use a word processor, there are secret codes throughout the document, indicating that a word should be bold, a page break has been inserted, a footnote begins here, etc. These codes are very useful for your word processor, but make life difficult when files must be shared between many computers of varying types. Not every computer or program in the world knows how to deal with files in the complex Microsoft Word format. To make files compatible with a wide variety of computers, a standard (and very simple) format is used. This format can be called ASCII, text, plain text, or raw text. It is used for storing programs, email messages, web pages, etc. The most common text editors are Notepad (for Windows) and SimpleText (for MacOS). They provide very basic features, but are still powerful enough to create most text documents. For more intense programming or web-design work, there are more complex text editors. These editors provide some of the features of a word processor, and add features that are useful for programmers (such as a command to go to a particular line number, or color-coding different types of information). Emacs and VI are the most popular. See also: Don't use Word to create web pages! |