Wednesday Where

in the World Wide Web . . .

can you find a text-editor that works well with Python and a lot of other languages?

If you caught yesterday's post, you heard about my struggle with Python and whitespace woes. But the woes disappeared when I found Notepad++.

Notepad++ is simple to use and reminiscent of it's unplussed namesake. Unlike some Python-aware editors, it doesn't require that you install Python to use it. It has a lot of wonderful features too. One of my favorites is the zoom feature, great for my less-than-perfect eyesight. The zoom also comes in handy when I want to capture screen shots. You can choose color-coded syntax for over forty languages and change colors to meet your own preferences. And if needed, you can even define your own languages.

You can use the View menu to display indentation guides and white space. I always turn this on when writing scripts, since it makes it easy to spot places where there might be mixed leading spaces and tabs. And the TextFx menu has an option to convert spaces to tabs.



If you'd like to check it out, you can download Notepad++ here.



Once you've installed Notepad++, you'll need to change the Python Source Editor in your File Locations and have it point to Notepad++.exe. If you used installation defaults, it should be located in your Program Files.

Hope you'll check out this easy, functional and free text editor. And that you'll stop by tomorrow for Thursday thoughts.