I realize I am biased, but I don't get it. Notepad++ and other tools are not designed around viewing log files. They are text editors. People use tools like

I realize I am biased, but I don't get it. Notepad++ and other tools are not designed around viewing log files. They are text editors. People use tools like Notepad++ to view log files because, traditionally, there hasn't been anything better. Remote access is a good example. I am actually working right now on getting tail for remote servers working in [redacted]. FTP tailing a file is a special feature because you do not want to redownload a 1GB file every 3 seconds. The idea of a forward read-only file is a special concept. If I am using Notepad++ as a text editor, I want it to download the whole file because there may be important changes to the beginning of the document. If I am using it as a log viewer, then I need to provide a special configuration to the FTP agent. Not impossible, but the overlap in behaviour for the tool can be confusing. The additional configuration makes it harder when using it as a text editor and harder when using it as a log viewer. It starts to make the tool less useful for both tasks. Now add additional features like grep, merging files, very large files (4 GB+), etc and it becomes clear that Notepad++ is a text editor. It is a fantastic tool, but not fit for every task. Disclosure: I am the author of [redacted].