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Plain text editor
by Jukka Purma
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last modified 2008-06-19 11:52
group:
LeMill development
The word processor with the most features isn't usually the best choice for writing. The writing professionals often use specialized text editors that are stripped from all distracting features that otherwise would allow the attention to slip from the main focus: the text. The students too deserve a peaceful working environment.
Every computer comes with some simple text editor installed. Learn to use it always when you don't need to have the text formatted as a report or other defined format or if it's not going to be printed out and delivered to the whole class. The biggest problem with plain text editors that come with operating systems is that they often lack automated saving. If so, it is generally a good habit to learn the keyboard shortcut to save (Control-s in Windows, Apple-s in Macs) and push it whenever you pause to think. Most of the *free* plain text editors are designed for programmers, another group of people who see formatting as a distraction -- even worse distraction, as program code has to be plain text. Interface of these programmers editors is often focused on how to allow many texts to be open at once and how to easily switch between them. In personal or project-related writing, this often means that these programs help you to keep better track of where your texts are. One growing group of plain text editor users are bloggers and LeMill users, as most of the internet doesn't really care to handle word documents, the text inside is all that matters. Browser-based writing (like you do here in LeMill) has it's risks and it is a good practice to write longer posts (like this) in your local plain text editor, keep it saved there, and then copy-paste it to text field. Some free plain text editors for Windows:
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