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Ask HN: Why is Notepad++ not ported to mac yet?
I love Notepad++. It's fast, slick and consistent.
But it does not run on Mac. People suggest Sublime, and it's ok too, but I keep wondering why the free source code from Notepad++ has not been ported. I can't be the first one thinking this, so I imagine that some technical reason.
Any inputs on why Notepad++ is not yet converted to Mac?
- konart 10y agoWell, Mac has many other text editors of the similar or better quality. I think nobody feels any need to spend time porting Np++ to a new platform and then supporting it.
- alexmorse 10y agoYep, no need. Lots of better alternatives out there.
- NoClassDefFound 10y agowhat are they, I'd love to try them out so far I only know about TextWrangler
- jedisct1 10y agoVisual Studio Code and Atom are way better.
- roryrjb 10y agoFeature-wise yes but Notepad++ is much much faster in my experience, closer to Sublime Text.
- jmcdiesel 10y agoIf speed (editor performance) is key, then VIM ... jump the first learning curve... and feel free to use neovim or the mac gui for neovim (https://github.com/rogual/neovim-dot-app https://github.com/rogual/neovim-dot-app) When it comes to actual editor performance, you dont get much better than VIM or Emacs... either of which perform well enough to load GB size files and not die on their face...
- heyoni 10y agoHave you ever tried hex fiend? That thing can load 20Gb files and allow you to scroll through it easily...How does it do it and why doesn't everyone copy them?
- pfranz 10y agoI've never used hex fiend (and have only needed that type of tool a handful of times), but from my understanding the reason this can be so much faster than a text editor is seeking for new lines. If you need to jump 50% through the file, with a hex editor you look at the size of the file and jump to the middle. For a text file you have to count all of the newlines (seek the entire file). Even if the text editor does clever things, many times plugins (like syntax highlighting) do things in naive ways. Vim is /fairly/ fast even with very large files.
- mf2hd 10y agoIt's even faster (a lot faster) than sublime if the text file is really big.
- dodo 10y agoI think it is just because there are too less developers maintaining the editor on mac os.
- pcunite 10y agoNotepad++ search feature is great and what I miss in Sublime. I think there are simply not enough developers to devote their time without some financial incentive.
- douche 10y agoSeriously, I end up using Notepad++'s find-in-files search as a grep, it works so much better than any other Windows grep tool I've found.
- bbcbasic 10y agoIn my experience, it's a lot slower than Visual Studio's find-in-files and I prefer the VS Regex too.
- douche 10y agoI will grant you that, if I was searching files that are already under a solution that I have open. But opening VS takes considerably longer than opening Notepad++, even with all the plugins I have added to Notepad++. One of the most common cases for me is searching for some particular message in a directory full of unzipped log files that some customer has sent to us.
- bbcbasic 10y ago> I will grant you that, if I was searching files that are already under a solution that I have open. Also for general searching on the file system > But opening VS takes considerably longer than opening Notepad++ I will grant you that. If you have VS open all the time in your workflow its OK. > One of the most common cases for me is searching for some particular message in a directory full of unzipped log files that some customer has sent to us. `Grep` shines if you need to repeat the search query (perhaps you get more logs the next day). You can save to a .sh file and run it again and again. You can also pipe stuff around to do more advanced searches.
- matheweis 10y agoNo need to. In particular Mac has TextWrangler and BBEdit, the former of which is free and similar to Notepad++ for basic functionality. (Edit: I should add that I first found Notepad++ while looking for TextWrangler for Windows).
- izolate 10y agoWe have Vim installed by default.
- throwaway2016a 10y agoWhile I don't think most people (or even many) would agree with you. As someone who uses Vim pretty much exclusively (and has a Mac), I kind of had to smile at this. For most people though, Notepad++ and Vim are not the same type of animal.
- kedean 10y agoAre they really, though? If you've put in the effort to learn Vim's command system (big if there), then they provide mostly the same things: - heavily centered around document editing - encourage plugins over embedded features - very good regex find/replace - very good at editing massive files (the main failing of most other editors) They both have syntax highlighting for most languages. I admit that some features of N++ need plugins in vim, of course, like spellcheck. I generally do use them for pretty interchangable situations.
- trm42 10y agoText Wrangler is lot nicer than Notepad++ for random ascii/script stuff. For bigger projects, use Sublime or some other IDE(ish) editor. In addition to big IDE I have TW running all the time for notes etc.
- vuanotinw 10y agoI bet everything is written using Win32, which would make starting over easier than porting.
- nikitoz 10y agoNotepad++ heavily relies on Win32 API, porting it to another platform is like writing new editor. There are a lot of good cross platform text editors, devote some time learning one of them.
- stuaxo 10y agoNot ideal - but does it work in Wine ?
- hluska 10y agoI once thought of porting it over to run on Ubuntu, but I read over the source, realized that Notepad++ uses the Win32 API quite extensively and quickly abandoned my plans. Ultimately, I would have ended up writing/supporting a totally new editor...then dealing with legions of people who are angry that my first 0.1 didn't provide an exact 1:1 feature match of Notepad++.
- ksherlock 10y agoThis is second hand info from 16 years ago, but my understanding is you can compile and link win32 source code against the wine headers/libraries to generate a "native" win32 application. I believe CorelDraw Office or WordPerfect Office or something like that did it for their linux "port". You might still need to deal with gcc/msvc compatibility issues and the end product would only be slightly more native than running it via wine.
- theonemind 10y agoI don't know, but it works flawlessly in Wine, in my experience. If you use WineBottler, you get an app bundle with the actual app icon and it displays "natively", without X11. I like notepad++, but I use BBEdit on Mac. I don't like switching to an app with win32 keybinds on OS X
- Pica_soO 10y agoCodeElite?
- tyingq 10y agoThere is a clone that works on Linux. I assume it would be an easier path to get that working on OSX versus the actual Notepad++, which is rife with Win32 dependencies. See: https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq
- sebnukem2 10y agoWhat is the point when you have Vim, Atom, and Sublime Text?
- kisna72 10y agoI am saying this only half jokishly but because Sublime Text meets all the needs?
- notadoc 10y agoNotepad++ is pretty great for Windows. On the Mac, BBEdit (paid) and TextWrangler (free, more or less a light version of BBEdit) are both fantastic. Some people like TextMate too.
- josh64 10y agoThis: TextMate is basically the Notepad++ equivalent for macOS. CotEditor[0] isn't bad either, it all depends on what your needs are [0] https://coteditor.com/ https://coteditor.com/
- cweagans 10y agoBecause better options exist: Text Wrangler, bbedit, vim, sublime text, atom, vscode, textmate, coda, brackets, komodo edit, jedit, and chocolat, not to mention all of the Jetbrains IDEs.
- inlineint 10y agoAnd Gedit with Kate are ported from GNU/Linux to Mac nowadays.
- undersuit 10y agoAre you aware of Scite? "Notepad++ is SciTE on steroids."[1] It's available on OS X, not that I've ever used it on the platform. [1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sketchupruby/vt7DpvQNcDY/Vsp99fNzwZAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sketchupruby/vt7DpvQNcDY/Vsp...
- SamUK96 10y agoWhy N++ when there's VSCode? Both free, but VSCode is better in most ways apart from maybe boot time?
- mcintyre1994 10y agoVSCode chokes on much smaller files than Notepad++. N++ is more comparable to Sublime Text.
- dbg31415 10y agohttps://github.com/sdeering/Sublime3-Theme-NotepadPlusPlus https://github.com/sdeering/Sublime3-Theme-NotepadPlusPlus
- kaushalmodi 10y agoEmacs would be the first thing I would install if I were to get a Mac.