Here’s one in the “say what?” category…
I am proud to say that I have been Windows-free (booting directly on hardware for use as desktop for something other than using “one app”) for a year now , and off Windows as my primary system for two… first to Mac and then to Linux (I still use Mac on the laptop). I’ve come around to the position that largest barrier to Linux on the desktop is not usability, but Killer Apps that are not available for Linux, and lately, I have been thinking about the Windows applications that force me to pull up my VM or run Wine.
Of course there is World of Warcraft, Microsoft Office (just checking to make sure the export worked), iTunes (remember I have a Mac laptop), and Internet Explorer to check my sites. But, the application I run in Wine the most is an Open Source text editor, Notepad++. I’m not the only one; there are even instructions for running Notepad++ in Linux on the project’s FAQ’s.
Linux if full of great text editors, but none really “fill the shoes” of Notepad++. It is in that niche of text editors that go beyond “basic”, but don’t have all the bloat and complexity of a full integrated development environment. On Linux, there is Kate, Gedit, Geany, and a whole bunch of others in that same category, but none of them quite match up.
Granted, much of this is the fact that I am “just used to” Notepad++ – I have been using it since… 2004 I think…, and I have loved it since then. But more than familiarity, there are some things it does that no one text editor for Linux does, and that is why I Wine it.
- Advanced Find & Replace that includes regular expressions, line endings, and can search entire directories for strings in files.
- Macros Macros Macros. It lets you record Macros for repetitive tasks.
- Good “Large-File” handling – some editors choke when you give it a 25meg xml file.
- Spell checker (it’s a plugin).
- Plugin support in general.
- Easy to set up custom syntax highlighting.
- Support for Windows line endings.
- Support for Windows Batch Files (yes, some of us have to write .bat files for Windows clients).
- Color code printing – the syntax highlighting prints.
- TextFX – think of all those annoying Search&Replaces you are always doing, like inserting back slashes in front of quote marks – that’s what TextFX does, on steroids. All the things that you do in Tidy, plus a little more, right on the menu bar.
- Block comment/uncomment in several languages.
- Tabs
- Auto-complete
Geany comes closest, and it does several things (like version control system interaction – I really love that) that Notepad++ doesn’t do. It’s not that one is better than the other, in fact, I think they are at about the same level, but they’re different. I find myself using Geany more and more, and Notepad++ in Wine less and less, as I get used to Geany, but for those few things it won’t do…
I don’t think a port to Linux is necessary – the stuff that Geany won’t do, Notepad++ will do in Wine. Notepad++’s strongest feature is it’s fast run speed in Windows, and that is something that won’t translate as well to a new OS. The rest of the items could be added as plug-ins to Geany.
I’m not advocating anything, and I really don’t have a point; I’m just saying the application I launch in Wine the most often is an Open Source Text Editor, and I thought it was a little odd.
