Looking for a good text editor

[Allen]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.
Twenty years ago I used SPF/PC, an almost perfect clone of the editor in
IBM's almost universal (back then) System Productivity Facility. It had
the great feature of being able to work with columns, so that if you
wanted to change the data, or insert new data, into the same location in
a group of records it would do it in a snap. The version I used was DOS
only, but there was a later Windows version which unfortunately sold for
almost $300 as I recall--not a problem if you have an employer who
realizes that time is money but out of reach for home use. That column
feature was a tremendous time (and money) saver. Anyone have a favorite
editor?

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files; I've tried several of the more common editors but
inexplicably they won't display all of the fields--including, of course,
the ones I'm most interested in.

Allen

 

[Art Todesco]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.
Twenty years ago I used SPF/PC, an almost perfect clone of the editor in
IBM's almost universal (back then) System Productivity Facility. It had
the great feature of being able to work with columns, so that if you
wanted to change the data, or insert new data, into the same location in
a group of records it would do it in a snap. The version I used was DOS
only, but there was a later Windows version which unfortunately sold for
almost $300 as I recall--not a problem if you have an employer who
realizes that time is money but out of reach for home use. That column
feature was a tremendous time (and money) saver. Anyone have a favorite
editor?

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files; I've tried several of the more common editors but
inexplicably they won't display all of the fields--including, of course,
the ones I'm most interested in.

Allen

Vim, it's free. It works well, IMO. It is an improved clone of the
Unix Vi. It also has context identification, where, for instance, if
editing a C file, it will color various constructs to make reading
easier. Get it at www.vim.org. But, it sounds like you may need
something more than a text editor. Are you editing a file that is
purely text?

 

[Nil]

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the
headers of music files; I've tried several of the more common
editors but inexplicably they won't display all of the
fields--including, of course, the ones I'm most interested in.

Using a conventional text editor to edit the header of any common
format music file will corrupt it. Use a tag editor for that.

 

[dweebken]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.
Twenty years ago I used SPF/PC, an almost perfect clone of the editor in
IBM's almost universal (back then) System Productivity Facility. It had
the great feature of being able to work with columns, so that if you
wanted to change the data, or insert new data, into the same location in
a group of records it would do it in a snap. The version I used was DOS
only, but there was a later Windows version which unfortunately sold for
almost $300 as I recall--not a problem if you have an employer who
realizes that time is money but out of reach for home use. That column
feature was a tremendous time (and money) saver. Anyone have a favorite
editor?

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files; I've tried several of the more common editors but
inexplicably they won't display all of the fields--including, of course,
the ones I'm most interested in.

Allen

Have you tried Notepad++? It does column editing and works okay on my
Win7 X64 bit laptop. You can get it from here
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ and it is free '(as in "free speech" and
also as in "free beer")'. Here's a link to the column editing help if
you wanna peek:
http://npp-community.tuxfamily.org/documentation/notepad-user-manual/editing/column-mode-editing
HTH

 

[Andy Burns]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.

I still miss Wordpefect's PEdit for DOS.

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files;

For the simple fields, you can just type in new values in the bar at the
bottom of Windows 7 explorer, for other fields as others have said, get
an mp3tag editor

 

[blues2use]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.
Twenty years ago I used SPF/PC, an almost perfect clone of the editor in
IBM's almost universal (back then) System Productivity Facility. It had
the great feature of being able to work with columns, so that if you
wanted to change the data, or insert new data, into the same location in
a group of records it would do it in a snap. The version I used was DOS
only, but there was a later Windows version which unfortunately sold for
almost $300 as I recall--not a problem if you have an employer who
realizes that time is money but out of reach for home use. That column
feature was a tremendous time (and money) saver. Anyone have a favorite
editor?

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files; I've tried several of the more common editors but
inexplicably they won't display all of the fields--including, of course,
the ones I'm most interested in.

Allen

Notepad++ and jedit are excellent text editors and mp3tag and Tagscanner
will edit mp3 metadata.

jedit - http://www.jedit.org/

mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Tagscanner - http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm

HTH

 

[Ed Cryer]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.
Twenty years ago I used SPF/PC, an almost perfect clone of the editor in
IBM's almost universal (back then) System Productivity Facility. It had
the great feature of being able to work with columns, so that if you
wanted to change the data, or insert new data, into the same location in
a group of records it would do it in a snap. The version I used was DOS
only, but there was a later Windows version which unfortunately sold for
almost $300 as I recall--not a problem if you have an employer who
realizes that time is money but out of reach for home use. That column
feature was a tremendous time (and money) saver. Anyone have a favorite
editor?

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files; I've tried several of the more common editors but
inexplicably they won't display all of the fields--including, of course,
the ones I'm most interested in.

Allen

I've found Editpadlite so quick to load large text files that I've
stayed with it.
http://www.editpadlite.com/

There's also a very small but extremely useful text-editing program
called "Delete lines". Yes, that's about all it does, but it can do
either "delete all" or "delete all but ..." lines that contain a certain
string, as a run option.
http://www.ab-tools.com/en/software/deletelines/

Ed

 

[Jake]

I would like to find a really good text editor that will run under Win7.

http://www.editpadpro.com/

There is a free Lite version.

It was designed to be a programmer's editor, recognizes syntax of many
languages. I find it useful for day to day text stuff: the ability to
open a bunch of files and do search/replace across them all, many more
features.

 

[Paul]

Notepad++ and jedit are excellent text editors and mp3tag and Tagscanner
will edit mp3 metadata.

jedit - http://www.jedit.org/

mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Tagscanner - http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm

HTH

I found the tag format here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Notepad++ and jedit are excellent text editors and mp3tag and Tagscanner
will edit mp3 metadata.

jedit - http://www.jedit.org/

mp3tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Tagscanner - http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm

HTH

Or even good old WinAmp (I use 5.61) -
http://www.oldversion.com/Winamp.html, and VLC, can do mp3 tags. (In
WinAmp you right-click the scrolling filename, or alt-3.)

 

[Allen]

Thanks, Ed, Jake and Paul. I suspect that at least one of the programs
you mentioned will fit my needs. All are DLed and installed, and I'll
start trying them when I'm wider awake.
Allen

 

[Don Wiss]

Incidentally, one thing I want to use it for is to edit the headers of
music files; I've tried several of the more common editors but
inexplicably they won't display all of the fields--including, of course,
the ones I'm most interested in.

Tag&Rename is the best tag editor, at least for FLAC files. If you right
click on the column headings you can choose which to show. There are about
three dozen that can be selected from. It is not free. See:

http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

Don. www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).