Pipe-Enabled Text Editors

Home 
Contact Us 
Downloads 
Purchase/Register 
Who Uses TEXTools? 
Testimonials  
Awards 
Features 
Examples
Screenshots 
Piping Explained 
Recommendations  

Does your text editor do pipes?  Need more power in your text editor than macros and regular expressions alone can provide?  Below is a list of pipe-enabled text editors that allow you to install filters as "user tools" which can then be invoked from within the editor (usually via a menu) to perform the same kinds of editing operations that can be done using TEXTools.  

TEXTools Command Line, (TCL) is, by definition, a filter and therefore, it can be utilized by any software product that can install a filter as a "plug-in".  What makes TCL better suited for the job than typical filters (aside from the fact that it integrates many filters) is that TCL doesn't just operate like a single filter--it's a whole freakin' pipe!  Therefore, using TCL, you can easily configure a pipe as a user tool in the editors listed below.  For example, following is how you'd configure a TEXTools pipe as a user tool in EditPlus to insert line numbers ahead of each line:

	Menu Text:	Add Line Numbers
	Command:	C:\Program Files\Firefly Software\TEXTools\TCL.exe
	Argument:	"InsStr 1 ' ' | InsLineNo /w3"
	Initial Directory:	<leave blank>

Now, when the user selects a block of text and then chooses the user tool, "Add Line Numbers" from the menu, line numbers are inserted at the beginning of each line of the selected text.  Again, notice that an entire pipe is specified here, not just a single filter.  In just minutes you can add user tools to your editor that can do everything from formatting source code to converting CSV data!  

Following are some text editors that can take full advantage of the power of TEXTools.  Check them out!

Product	Description
TED NotePad	An expanding NotePad replacement -- TED Notepad for Windows is a freeware text editor, looking and behaving mostly like the original Windows Notepad with a lot of extra features and functions for text editing.
EditPlus	EditPlus is an Internet-ready 32-bit text editor, HTML editor and programmers editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.
Lite Edit	Lite Edit is a text editor with all the features useful for programming and no features or options you don't need. It has customizable syntax highlighting and comes with syntax highlighting already configured for many programming languages. Other features include a configurable tools menu, bookmarks, multilevel undo/redo, customizable hotkeys, and auto indenting.

TCL.exe is part of the TEXTools download package and can be found here.  

If you're a vendor of text editor software and you would like to add a filter interface to your editor, you can download a demo written in Delphi called PipEd.

Copyright © 2005 Firefly Software