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NotepadNext: A cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++
- progre 5y agoLove Notepad++ and I sometimes miss it on Linux. Are plugins from Notepad++ compatible with this?
- jeroenhd 5y agoI haven't tried myself, but is there any reason why Notepad++ wouldn't run on Wine? I don't think it accesses APIs obscure enough to run into usability bugs, does it?
- themodelplumber 5y agoIMO if Roblox runs in Wine, Notepad++ should be no problem at all. But with just the right/wrong development decisions I suppose it's possible. (And then someone could probably look at building Notepad++ in Roblox to ensure that it can be used in Linux :-))
- jeroenhd 5y agoIt'll have some small issues, of course. From what I can read online some plugins don't work because they rely on the Windows Script Host (the thing that runs JS and VBS scripts) and there's a performance issue here and there, but that's about it. The thing about games is that there's only a limited OS surface area that they'll usually touch. There's I/O, GPU, a single render Windows, audio, and input state, but when those core APIs work, games should run just fine. Boring Win32 software can get real dependent on some obscure system APIs, COM+ objects with certain properties, library loading behaviour, etc., all things that can be a challenge to emulate successfully without tripping up programs that assume certain APIs just never fail or return certain results. Games don't call APIs like DsRoleGetPrimaryDomainInformation or SHEnumerateUnreadMailAccountsW so projects like Proton don't usually add a lot of fixes in that space.
- chromaton 5y agoYes, it does run well on Wine.
- ww520 5y agoI’ve used Notepad++ with Wine on Linux. It works fine. The only problem is it doesn’t handle high DPI monitor very well so the UI font is really small. It might be a problem with Wine. Also the directory navigation in the file dialog is clunky. The directory places are windows based rather than Linux based.
- major505 5y agoif the macros work well this is well worth to have in linux.
- altcognito 5y agoMacros are probably the best feature IMHO. Unless I'm mistaken, I've not seen a macro recorder as featureful yet so easy/quick to use. I know vim has to have it, but I find it hard to believe I would ever get quick enough to be able to do it. So simple to put a complex macro together -- I had one today that removed empty lines, did a regex replace, then a straight text replace and some random line manipulation within 2 minutes. You can do it so often and quickly it's basically zero cost.
- billforsternz 5y agoI can never understand why Visual Code has become so popular when it can't do keyboard macros. Keyboard macros have been a fundamental feature of every (other) programmer's editor since at least the 1980s.
- major505 4y agoIT hurts my head that there's isn`t a good macro add-on for vscode. I even control my Spotify playback from it, but can't do a simple macro.
- Tempest1981 5y ago> A cross-platform, reimplementation of Notepad++ For Windows, how does this differ from Don Ho's original version? https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ What is the vision/goal of this fork? The README is minimal.
- riedel 5y agowell, that is cross platform I guess?
- rubyist5eva 5y agoThis reminds of the guy I used to work with that used Notepad++ with Wine on Ubuntu as his primary editor and he seemed to get along just fine with it.
- hattmall 5y agoI use it with Ubuntu by running from a Virtual Machine for years, I never could get a good enough Wine Implementation with Plugins.
- jeroenhd 5y agoThe original Notepad++ source code is written for the Windows API, built for Windows releases only. This project seems to be Qt-based, allowing cross platform development. It seems like someone thought "building a Notepad++ of my own seems like a nice idea" and went with it long enough for it to become quite a competent editor.
- ffhhj 5y agoNice to see this project, will try it out. When I moved from Windows 11 to Ubuntu I was really happy to find most of my daily use utilities in Linux or equivalents, but I was shocked there isn't a native version of Notepad++, its the kind of app you would expected to have multiple ports in several OSes. The version from Snap doesn't integrate well with Linux. The record and play macro feature is probably the most useful tool, I keep grabbing code from VStudio/JetBrains-based editors to refactor/format it in NP++. For me the future of text editors should go in the automated direction: "see these identifiers and strings, tabulate them in columns to make my code more readable, now convert this column of strings into identifiers with given prefix and camel case, and define them in that module."
- tfigment 5y agoNotepad++ is a wrapper around scite using native windows apis or at least was years ago. Find a native editor using that library in same way such as SciTE itself.
- NGRhodes 5y agoThat would be Geany.
- themodelplumber 5y agoI remember thinking this exact thing back in 2007! Shortly before discovering Kate and fish://. At the time I think I used regex and scripting instead of macros though.
- frenchie4111 5y agoLooks like a cool project, not throwing shade, but these two lines in this order made me giggle: Though the application overall is stable and usable, it should not be considered safe for critically important work. There are numerous bugs and half working implementations. Pull requests are greatly appreciated.
- Havoc 5y agoTo be fair that level of self-awareness is usually a good sign
- digisign 5y agoGeany fills this niche, and is close to being feature complete. It could use help and attention as well, it unfortunately doesn't get enough imho. Also on github: https://github.com/geany/geany https://github.com/geany/geany
- themodelplumber 5y agoGeany is great. I have 200+ files open in it most of the time and it's been really nice to use all along.
- WD-42 5y agoGeany was the first editor I used to write code. It has just the right balance of features to make editing code productive while keeping it simple enough for beginners.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoI have a container I setup with XFCE and this awesome Windows 95 theme: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 Geany works perfectly inside it for a little retro dev environment. It looks and feels just like old Visual Studio versions, but I can code any modern thing I want.
- xmonkee 5y agoWhat kind of container?
- qbasic_forever 5y agodistrobox to manage the container: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox Then just install XFCE and tiger VNC server inside it. Using VNC makes it easy to connect into a little isolated session that has its own theming, etc. vs. trying to send geany to my native X11/wayland server (which wouldn't theme it like windows 95). You could also just run it in a browser window with a VNC HTML bridge, this would be a good base for that: https://github.com/accetto/ubuntu-vnc-xfce-g3 https://github.com/accetto/ubuntu-vnc-xfce-g3 The easiest way to get Chicago95 setup is to run its GUI installer python script. I don't try to script it in a dockerfile or container setup.
- novocantico 5y agoA few months ago I went to install Notepad++ and the installer says "Software is like sex: It's better when it's free" so I closed and deleted the installer. (It still says that today.) Glad to see an alternative I can install!
- lfkdev 5y agoWheres the problem with this sentence?
- novocantico 5y agoIt's nice when I come across a readme that's playful and doesn't take itself very seriously. It shows the real humans behind the software. This is something else.
- artogahr 5y agoWhat is it?
- novocantico 5y agoWhy is catcalling offensive but flirting welcome?
- CivBase 5y agoCan you elaborate on how you feel this sentence relates to catcalling or flirting?
- novocantico 5y agoNo.
- GartzenDeHaes 5y agoTi and Do and their students (crew) have come from a genderless, crew-minded, service-oriented world that finds greed, lust, and self- serving pursuits abhorrent. Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr.
- legrande 5y agoAnother (esoteric) editor I use for quick and dirty hacks on Windows is Notepad2[0]. It's a bare-bones drop-in replacement for the default notepad.exe on Windows, and has syntax highlighting. As for Linux, Pluma[1] is great too. [0] https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html [1] https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/pluma https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/pluma
- Tijdreiziger 5y agoYour first link is flagged as 'badware risk' by uBlock Origin. > Title: uBlock filters – Badware risks > Description: For sites documented to put users at risk of installing adware/crapware etc. The purpose is to at least ensure a user is warned of the risks ahead.
- legrande 5y agoThanks for pointing this out. Seems like the page just redirects to here: https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html (I amended the URL)
- dspillett 5y agoNotepad2 hasn't seen any updates since 2012. Unlikely to be a massive issue for a text editor if it is considered feature complete, though it might at least mean unfixed annoyances creep in and go unfixed with newer OS versions.
- ploxiln 5y agoThere have been a series of forks, for example: https://github.com/zufuliu/notepad2 https://github.com/zufuliu/notepad2 They seem to add a lot of features, though ... I'd be interested to find a more minimal one, which mostly just updates language syntaxes and OS support, and the thankless minor bug squashing ...
- leeoniya 5y agoNotepad3 is actively maintained and has many improvements, btw. https://github.com/rizonesoft/Notepad3 https://github.com/rizonesoft/Notepad3
- praveenhm 5y agoExcellent work, I am looking for notepad++ equivalent on Mac..
- kzrdude 5y agoHow are sublime and textmate doing? Thought there was a lot of better choice than notepad++
- com2kid 5y agoSublime is way too heavy weight. Notepad++ is that thing I open up when I need to edit a 2GB log file really quick. Or use a regex to fix up a CSV file that somehow got messed up. Not having Notepad++ on MacOS is a major pain point for me. Notably Notepad++ is not project/folder based. It is for editing a file.
- have_faith 5y ago> Sublime is way too heavy weight Damn, sublime is what I use as my light weight editor ha. Never had trouble opening (relatively) large files.
- com2kid 5y agoMore in terms of UI. Notepad++ has what you need to edit a file and not much else, but it also has a decent plugin system.
- have_faith 5y agoST almost has no UI when opening a single file (no sidebar etc), would be curious how it could be more minimal.
- nicoburns 5y agoCheck out the view menu. Pretty much all the UI bar the actual text you’re editing can be easily hidden.
- simonklitj 5y agoHonest question: as a Vim user, what are the benefits/strong suits of Notepad++ (and NotepadNext)?
- droopyEyelids 5y agoBy asking 'what are the benefits' you're assuming someone is pitching this as a replacement/improvement on Vim. Where did you get that impression?
- simonklitj 5y agoAlright, sorry for that insinuation. I did also ask about strong suits which is probably all I should’ve only asked about.
- hereforphone 5y ago
- mike00632 5y agoFor me, Notepad++ was a replacement for Notepad. I don't do development in Notepad++ but rather just view text files.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoYeah the default "keep all tabs open between sessions" is great if you muck about with a lot of scratch/copy pasta files
- glenneroo 5y agoAdded bonus: it will reopen tabs even if the file has changes and/or has never been saved. Very practical in some use cases.
- wolpoli 5y agoNotepad++ works like a classical Windows application, with minimal learning curve for existing Windows users. It's mainly a preference thing.
- unixhero 5y agoNotepadqq already does this! https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq
- faisal_ksa 5y agoIt looks like an almost dead project with very little development since Aug 2021, and the last release was in 2019.
- unixhero 5y agoMaybe they're done
- ZoomZoomZoom 5y agoAnother one directly inspired by N++ is NotepadQQ. Tried it briefly and passed - mostly the functionality was lacking. Not sure if it's Scintilla based, as the original, Geany or TextMate. https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq
- alexvoda 5y agoNotepadQQ uses Scintilla just like Notepad++. I am curious how this new editor compares to NQQ since both are Qt based spiritual derivatives of N++.
- ZoomZoomZoom 5y agoYou know what? I cared enough to run a search for "scintilla" on their GH repo when I wrote the comment and got zero results. Still wrote "not sure". That says something about GitHub's search, I suppose. A comparison would be nice indeed.
- ZoomZoomZoom 4y agos/TextMate/Textadept
- Dork1234 5y agoI just loaded a 500MB file in NotepadNext. Windows shows Notepad Next using is 1397MB. Meanwhile if I use Notepad++ and load the same file windows shows it is using 586MB. Any ideas why such high memory usage if this is a direct port to QT?
- john_moscow 5y agoEfficiently handling large text files requires extra special care. ~2x memory looks like a naive implementation of just allocating an std::string from heap for each line. Due to heap fragmentation and various overhead it would quickly blow up. ~1x memory looks like just reading the entire file into RAM (that would still be slow). A truly efficient implementation would never need to load the entire original file in RAM. It would just need to remember the binary offset of each line in a way that combines random access and reasonably fast insertion/deletion (e.g. K-fold trees). You can even keep everything beyond the top-level directory in an temporary on-disk file, so your RAM usage could be less than 1MB with nearly instant performance. The efficient implementation is tricky, error-prone, and involves handling a solid amount of corner cases, which is beyond the amount of hassle a typical hobbyist developer is willing to go through.
- erwincoumans 5y agoSuch truly efficient implementation sounds really nice, with offsets and mmaps. Is there any open source text editor doing this?
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago> Due to heap fragmentation and various overhead it would quickly blow up I think this is mostly likely the culprit. There almost definitely isn't that much contiguous memory available for a large file like this, so there are a lot of wasted pages (maybe 2-3x) which is causing that footprint to balloon.
- johncolanduoni 5y agoFor 500MB there should easily be enough contiguous virtual address space, and if there isn’t the allocation would fail. I don’t see how it could take up 2-3x extra pages unless it’s being stored in a really poorly designed segmented memory structure.
- mark-r 5y agoThere are two aspects of the original Notepad that will never be duplicated. First, all the heavy lifting was done by built-in Windows components, it was just a simple wrapper. You could probably write your own replacement in an afternoon. Second, it was preinstalled on every single Windows machine, you could always count on it being there.
- merlinscholz 5y agoI believe you're thinking about the wrong notepad, the linked project is inspired by Notepad++, not the Windows default Notepad
- mark-r 5y agoThat is correct, I'm going back to the inspiration behind the inspiration. Notepad++ lacks the same properties compared to the original
- billforsternz 5y ago... and suffered by comparison in those aspects, but was infinitely superior in every other way that matters (and there are a lot of other ways that matter).
- mark-r 5y agoTo be clear, I'm not arguing that Notepad++ or NotepadNext isn't superior to Notepad. I'm simply pointing out that the original Notepad had useful properties that have been lost. I didn't think that would be controversial.
- billforsternz 5y agoYes, I understood your point and I agree it's not controversial. (My response was not so much pushback as feeling a need to point out Notepad was something of a wasted opportunity, it had those fundamental advantages but wasted them by being so miserably awful IMHO).
- yumraj 5y agoQs: what's a good simple general purpose text editor for Mac, similar to Notepad++ I've been using VSCode for this, especially since it saves buffers without me having to save to a file and would love one with this feature.
- nacs 5y agoSublime Text is really good. I use VS Code for development but Sublime handles large files much better (large JSONs, log files, etc) and loads much faster than VSC does.
- odux 5y agoSublime is slow though. Both loading and editing. For a native editor I would expect it to be fast and snappy (like Notepad++ on Windows or Textmate on Mac). But the speed and responsiveness is similar to VSCode. The Windows version of sublime is faster and snappier though.
- sergiomattei 5y agoIt’s the first time I have seen Sublime described as slow. It’s one of the fastest editors on the market.
- MBCook 5y agoLook at BBEdit. It’s been a standard on Mac for over 20 years. It’s free by default with lots of great extra features that can be unlocked with a purchase.
- fisher_S 5y agoI used Notepad++ on Windows; now on MacOS I use TextMate. It's as simple and lightweight as Notepad++, and if I understand correctly, it has the save feature you're looking for. If you Command+Q without saving to a file, the contents will still be there the next time you start it.
- nicoco 5y agoKate?
- pdenton 5y agoRelated project: https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pers0n 5y agoIf you want this to take off, please provide compiled binaries for MacOS and Linux
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoCompiled binaries for Linux x64 are available in the releases. Linux version is apparently packaged as an AppImage. https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext/releases/ https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext/releases/
- userbinator 5y ago...which apparently results in a thirty-two megabyte text editor.
- dingdingdang 5y ago...and that in turn swapped me solidly back into reality where I drive Geany on a daily basis without any issue whatsoever.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoWell, what's the alternative? Waiting for package maintainers for various repos to materialize out of thin air?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoAs someone who relies on Notepad++ daily, to the point of being seriously worried about finding a replacement when I am inevitably forced to switch to Linux[0], I am encouraged by my short time playing around with NotepadNext. It looks right, it feels mostly right, and the AppImage started quickly. Unfortunately it is still missing most of the features I actually use in Npp, but it is a promising start! [0] Being real: I'll probably just run Npp in WINE
- petepete 5y agoWhich features of Npp are you struggling to find in other editors? I used Npp a bit a decade ago when I had to work with Windows but it didn't really have any stand out features (not a complaint, it worked perfectly for what I needed).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoThe one that I've not yet seen in an alternative is a simple way to implement simple custom syntax highlighting. Npp has the UDL GUI, but I don't even need the GUI if specifying what to highlight and how to highlight it is as straightforward as the UDL XMLs are. Sadly most things have either hardcoded syntax highlighting or poorly documented convoluted specification files. Most of the other features I use most are fairly common though: line sorting and dedupe, column editing, regex search and replace, EoL conversion, compare/diff, etc.
- petepete 5y agoInteresting, the ease of editing syntax highlighting rules is something I hadn't considered. It feels like lots of editors are moving to Tree-sitter so things may improve in that regard.
- sigzero 5y agoNeat project. I always wished NP++ was x-platform.
- IChooseY0u 5y agoThis is very nice. Looks like you have a lot of experience with Qt.
- account-5 5y agoI've been looking for a Linux version of Notepad++ for what feels like years. I started learning vim but can't use it at work as I'm stuck on windows (which vim is rubbish on), and the way they (IT dept) installed it basically made it worse, so I never used it enough for it to be my go-to.
- Bigpet 5y agowxMEdit (formerly MadEdit) filled that niche for me for years. It does seem that recent versions do have some bugs that occasionally rear their head, but it's still very usable. At least it was for me, Using Notepad++ for editing config files, batch files, large sql stuff from time to time and the occasional binary. Including search and replace in a bunch of directories.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoYou could run Notepad++ with Wine.
- rubyist5eva 5y agoI used to work with a greybeard that did exactly this, and it seemed to work very well for him!
- rufus_foreman 5y agoI'm an old-school Linux user, and way back when I considered Wine to be sort of a joke. It's gotten better and better over the decades and it's been pretty impressive when I've used it recently.
- macintux 5y agoCompletely off-topic, but your comment reminded me of the "For Dummies" books; I spotted a copy of "Wine For Dummies" in the mid-90s and was briefly excited that the software was mainstream enough to warrant it.
- 5y ago
- pipeline_peak 5y agoWhy would you rewrite a Scintilla distribution? That’s your chance to make something new.
- shmoe 5y agomacOS please -- I would love a notepad++ clone!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pkrumins 5y agoI wonder how this story got to the top of Hacker News as it's not rewritten in Rust.
- n1vz3r 5y agoIs this project still based on Scintilla? (which is also cross-platform)
- nittanymount 5y agoseems it is
- mickotron 5y agoNice! Ok, now someone needs to do WinMerge
- billforsternz 5y agoWinmerge is so great. Mac and Linux users look at Windows devs with pity, and probably with good reason (only someone with approximately equal hours on different platforms can really judge) but we do have some nice things.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoWhat does winmerge have on kdiff3 and meld?
- billforsternz 5y agoSorry, never used either, don't know.
- DeathArrow 5y agoI wonder what needs this reimplementation fulfills. I am quite happy with Notepad++ and I think that for other operating systems there are already a few competent text editors. But if we think about IDEs, things aren't quite as rosy and I would love to see something as good as Visual Studio running on MacOS (the existing version is just a renamed Mono Develop).
- 988747 5y agoIt's been a hell of a paradox for me after switching from Windows to Linux that the two types of applications that I missed the most were good text editor (Notepad++) and good ssh connection manager (Moba Xterm).
- Sharparam 5y agoFor me, it's ShareX I miss the most. Flameshot is a good contender, when the Wayland support gets better.
- noisem4ker 5y agoNot even Kate can replace Notepad++ on Linux for you?
- dizhn 5y agoMobaxterm is great. However it's worth spending a little bit of time putting your hosts into ~/.ssh/config and using short hostname aliases to start your ssh sessions. I had switched to using mobaxterm as just a shell without saved sessions before I switched completely (back) to using Linux. With a properly set up ssh-agent and this config file you probably won't miss mobaxterm.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoMy first thought was, "Finally I can use something like N++ on my mac". Then I checked the project page and realized at this point cross-platform means "we ported it to Linux". Which is great (although frankly Linux users are spoiled for choice wrt editors), it's just the headline that is misleading (yet).
- teleforce 5y agoAnyone knows whether NotepadNext uses RRB-Tree or any usable text editor that's already using it? [1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20604981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20604981