Text Editor Recommendations

The languages of the Internet, at least as far as websites are concerned, are primarily Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  These languages, and even more complex languages like Javascript, are written as plain ASCII files.  There is no special formatting in these files, no bolding, no underlining, no italics, no font sizes.

Word processing applications like Microsoft's Word or OpenOffice.org's Write really aren't designed to work with such simple files on a regular basis.  In fact, it's often more difficult to handle plain text files in these word processors than it is to handle more complex documents.

Unfortunately, copying from a word processing, or other application, file and pasting into the HTML necessary for the Internet generally copies voluminous and superflous markup that works against one of the basic objectives of a well maintained website, that is, consistently formatted and good looking text and layout.  While the copy/paste process is simple, and even works well occasionally we have simple advice for our clients: DON'T DO IT!  Cleaning up the resultant messy HTML takes much more time, and is much more distasteful than doing it right the first way.

Since we work almost exclusively on Windows platform systems, our recommendations are for programs that work with Windows.  The programs below are, unfortunately, available only for Windows.  Other, similar programs, are available for all other platforms.

Windows Notepad

This venerable program, available on all Windows operating systems for PCs, is useful for creating plain text.  However, it is most useful as an intermediate program to remove formatting from text copied from word processing applications.

The process is simple and reliable:

  1. Select and copy (CNTL-C) the text you want to copy from the word processor.
  2. Open Notepad.
  3. Paste (CNTL-V) the text in Notepad.
  4. With the cursor anywhere in the Notepad text area, Select All text (CNTL-A) to refresh the clipboard's contents.
  5. Copy (CNTL-C) the text from Notepad.  This is the important part of removing the preexisting formatting.
  6. Paste (CNTL-V) the text into your website editor.
  7. Add back any desired special formatting in the website's editor.

Notepad++

"Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence." (from their website)

Notepad++ is our choice for editing ASCII text files for all purposes.  It automatically recognizes syntax for many languages like PHP, HTML, and CSS.  It will identify, via color coding, content vs. comments.  It has aids that help identify matching opening and closing delimiters.

The Find function will identify all occurances of the sought text simultaneously.  It has Search functions that will search multiple files simultaneously.