Editors

Editors or text editors are software programs that enable

the user to create and edit text files. In the field of
programming, the term editor usually refers to source
code editors that include many special features for writing
and editing code. Notepad, Wordpad are some of the
common editors used on Windows OS. vi, emacs, Jed,
pico, nano (sudo apt install nano) are the common
editors on LINUX/UNIX OS/MAC.
Features normally associated with basic text editors are:
• Moving the cursor
• Copy, deleting, replacing, pasting
• Search/Find, Search and replacing
• Saving.
 LUCG - DIT 221: UNIT 6
Editors:
- Line editor (vi)
- Full screen editor (nano, pico, notepad)
- Multi window editor (vscode, eclipse)
- Advanced editors aka IDEs (integrated development Environments
e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans, Visual Studio,Visual Studio code., etc)
- Case study
– Windows
• MS-Word, MS DOS Editor 32bit (windows 7), notepad, notepad++, sublime,
Atom,
• Visual Studio code.
– Linux
• vi editor,
• pico,
• nano,
• gedit ,
• Visual Studio code.
– MaC OS:
 Editors
Text editors are often provided with operating
systems software development packages, and can
be used to change configuration files and source
codes.
 Advanced Editors
TYPICAL FEATURES of advanced editors also include:
❏ Cut, copy, and paste:
Most text editors provide methods to duplicate and move text
within the file, or between files.
❏ Text formatting formatting
Text editors often provide basic formatting features like comment
formatting line wrap, and so on.
❏ Undo and redo
As with word processors, text editors will provide a way to undo or
redo the last edit.
❏ Syntax highlighting
Highlights software code and other text that appears in an
organized or predictable format
 Types of Editors
There are generally five types of editors as described below:

• Line editor: In this, you can only edit one line at a time or an integral number of
lines. You cannot have a free-flowing sequence of characters. It will take care of
only one line. Ex : Teleprinter, edlin, teco

• Stream editors: In this type of editors, the file is treated as continuous flow or
sequence of characters instead of line numbers, which means here you can type
paragraphs. Ex : Sed editor in UNIX/LINUX

• Screen editors: In this type of editors, the user is able to see the cursor on the
screen and can make a copy, cut, paste operation easily. It is very easy to use
mouse pointer. Ex : emacs, Notepad

• Word Processor: Overcoming the limitations of screen editors, it allows one to use
some format to insert images, files, videos, use font, size, style features. It majorly
focuses on Natural language. E.g. ms- word, Open office

• Structure Editor (IDE): Structure editor focuses on programming languages. It

provides features to write and edit source code. E.g : Visual Studio code, Netbeans
IDE, gEdit, Eclipse, Visual Studio.
 Some other editors
Full Screen Editors

In computers, a full-screen editor or distraction-free editor is a text

editor that occupies full display with the purpose of sidelining the
user from the OS and the other applications. It helps the user to
focus on writing only and do not get distracted by the other
applications and the cluttered interface. Often fullscreen editors has
a dark background and a text field with a light colored text. They
include customizable interfaces and feature like word count.
Ex : Acme, Coderoom, FocusWriter
 Some other editors
Multiple Window Editor
Multiple window editor allows you to work on more than one file
one file at a time and cut and paste text from file into another via
yanking and putting. The two fundamental concepts that lie
behind multi-window editors are buffer and windows.
Buffer: Buffer holds the text to be edited. The text may come from
a file or a brand new text that you want to write on a file. A file
only has one buffer associated with it.

Windows: Windows provides a view to the buffer to see what the

buffer holds and edit and modify it. A buffer may have multiple
windows. Any changes made in any of the windows will be
reflected in all other windows associated with the same buffer.
Once the last window associated with a buffer is closed, the file
gets hidden. But if you have made any changes to the buffer and
not have written them into the disk, it may not allow you to close
the window.
 Some other editors
MS DOS Editor (upto win7)
MS-DOS editor or sometimes also known as just edit
is a character based text editor that comes with
MS-DOS and a 32-bit version of windows. Previously,
it was QBASIC running in editor mode but after
DOS-7=> win95, it became a standalone program. It is
also used as a substitute for Notepad since notepad
can work only on small files, DOS editor can work on
around 66, 257 lines and up to 5 MB file size. It has
features like a customizable color theme, it can open
up to 9 files at a time, it can open files in binary
mode.
 Some other editors
Vi Editor
The vi editor (short name for the visual editor) is a
screen editor which is available in UNIX OS. Vi has no
menus instead it uses a combination of keystrokes to
accomplish tasks. An improved version of vi is vim(vi
improved). Vi editor is usually available in all versions
of UNIX OS, its implementation is very easy, it
requires only a few resources and it is more
user-friendly.
 Some other editors
Online Editors
Online text editors is an interface for editing the texts
within a web browser. It aims to reduce the efforts
made by the user by directly editing and updating
into a valid HTML markup language. Internet Explorer
added first the feature of “design mode”. The design
mode allows the user to edit their document and it
also allows the use of the cursor to do the editing.
Ex : CKEditor, SnapEditor, designmode by Internet
Explorer.
e.g. https://jsfiddle.net/
 Other editors
Windows:
notepad, notepad ++, editplus, wordpad,Brackets, sublime, Atom

Linux/Unix
ed, edlin,GNU Readline, QED, vi, emacs

Mac OS
1: Brackets
2: TextWrangler
3: Vim
4: Komodo Edit
5: Sublime Text
6: Atom
7: TextMate
8: GNU Emacs
9: Visual Studio Code
10: UltraEdit
 Some other editors
User Interface of editors: The user interface of editors typically means the input, output and the interaction language.
The input devices are used to enter text, data into a document or to process commands. The output devices are used to
display the edited form of the document and the results of the operation/commands executed. The interaction language
provides the interaction with the editor.

● Input Devices : Input devices are generally divided as text input, button devices and locator devices. Text
device is a keyboard. Button devices are special function keys. The locator devices include the mouse. There
are special voice devices as well which writes down whatever you speak.
● Output Devices : TFT monitors, Printers, Teletypewriters, Cathode ray tube technology, Advanced CRT
terminals.
● Interaction language : The interaction language could be, typing oriented or text command-oriented or could
be menu oriented user interface as well. Typing or text command-oriented interaction language is very old used
with the oldest editors, in the form of commands, use of functions and control keys etc. Menu oriented interface
has a menu with the set of multiple choice of text strings. The display area is limited and the menus can be
turned on/off by the user.
 Editing Process
We all by now understand that editors are the program which is used to create, edit and modify a document. A document
may include some images, files, text, equations, and diagrams as well. But we will be limited to text editors only whose
main elements are character strings.
The document editing process mainly comprises of the following four tasks :

● The part of the document to be edited or modifies is selected.

● determining how to format the lines on view and how to display it.
● Specify and execute the operations that modify the document.
● Update the view properly.

The above steps include filtering, formatting, and traveling.

● Formatting : Visibility on display screen.

● Filtering : Finding out the main/important subset.
● Traveling : Locating the area of interest.
Edit structure
 Some other editors
The command language processor accepts commands, performs
functions such as editing and viewing. It involves traveling, editing,
viewing and display. Editing operations are specified by the user and
display operations are specified by the editor. Traveling and viewing
components are invoked by the editor or the user itself during the
operations.
Editing component is a module dealing with editing tasks. The current
editing area is determined by the current editing pointer associated with
the editing component. When editing command is made, the editing
component calls the editing filter, generates a new editing buffer.
Editing buffer contains the document to be edited at the current editor
pointer location.
 Some other editors
In viewing a document, the start of the area to be viewed is determined
by the current viewing pointer. Viewing component is a collection of
modules used to see the next view. Current viewing can be made to set
or reset depending upon the last operation.
When display needs to be updated, the viewing component invokes the
viewing filter, generates a new buffer and it contains the document to
be viewed using the current view buffer. Then the viewing buffer is pass
to the display component which produces the display by buffer
mapping. The editing and viewing buffers may be identical or
completely disjoint. The editing and viewing buffers can also partially
overlap or can be contained one within the another. The component of
the editor interacts with the document from the user on two levels: main
memory and the disk files system.
 Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text_edito
rs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-code_edit
or