Why is EmEditor Professional the best text editor?

This article explains why EmEditor Professional is best recommended!

1. EmEditor can launch very quickly, almost instantaneously!

You are going to view or edit a large quantity of files every day, but you don’t want to wait for many seconds just to view a file! Unfortunately, many programs, including word processors and text editors, require you to wait several seconds before you can start using! This doesn’t make sense! You want to increase productivity by using a text editor,but waiting so long every time doesn’t justify your using a text editor. You should not wait more than one second!

That’s why EmEditor has been so popular for such a long time. I have tried to optimize the startup time for each subsequently released upgrade. The startup time should be less than 1 second in most environments. In Version 6.00 or later, there is a new option called EmEditor Quick Start, and you can find it under the Tools menu, Customize, and then Shortcut tab. By checking this option, the EmEditor window will start even faster, and will usually launch in less than 0.5 seconds. This is possible because a hidden EmEditor window launches as soon as the EmEditor tray icon launches. When you start EmEditor, the hidden EmEditor window will be switched to the visible state, and it appears that EmEditor launches quickly. This option is not turned on by default, so you should turn this option on if the startup speed is important to you. Additionally, EmEditor does not use commercial libraries such as Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC), making it well-optimized, particularly for startup times. The size of the core program “emeditor.exe” is only 527KB at this writing, exemplifying how light-weight it is.

2. Extendable with plug-ins!

So why do many text editors fail to launch as quickly as EmEditor? It is because many editors include too many features! You might wonder, “Who needs A, B, and C in the text editor?” No one person needs all of the available features, and the features required by one person may be different from those required by another. If you added all of the desired, available features to the list, the result would be similar to how many text editors look today. EmEditor takes a different approach. We try to minimize the core feature set while maintaining the flexibility so you can add many features as plug-ins. This approach has been successful as it allows the core program to remain minimal while you enjoy the features you want. EmEditor exposes many APIs, so programmers can easily write plug-ins that fit their needs. Features such as Spelling, Word Count, Explorer, Web Preview, and Compare Files, etc. are designed as plug-ins. For your convenience, many of these plug-ins are now installed by default with EmEditor Professional 6.00.1 or later, but you can decide not to install these plug-ins or add new plug-ins down the road. There is another easy solution to extend features – a macro – which I will explain below.

3. Powerful macros with your favorite script language!

You can write a macro to do almost whatever you want within EmEditor! Not only can you define a macro which records keystrokes that you use and reference repeatedly, but you can also write your own macros that can manipulate other applications, Windows-based files, or network functionalities. The macros are based on the Windows Scripting Host (WSH) engine, so you can use all of the powerful, robust objects available under the Windows Scripting Host. You can program macros with popular script languages including JavaScript and VBScript. You can even program with PerlScript, Python, PHPScript, Ruby, and other ActiveScript languages as long as the script engines you want to use are installed on your system. Nevertheless, EmEditor barely forefeits its light-weightedness when using macros. EmEditor macros are modules designed independently of EmEditor executable and are implemented as a Dynamic Link Library(DLL) file. To conserve system resources, the DLL is only loaded during the macro execution.

4. Unicode support!

The Unicode support is a must for anyone who uses international languages. Many text editors claim they support Unicode (UTF-7, UTF-8 and UTF-16), however, they only convert Unicode to the system encoding (or ANSI) internally when they open files, so they cannot actually edit characters that are not supported by the system encoding. For instance, many text editors cannot actually edit Shift-JIS(Japanese) encoding on English Windows. Most text editors cannot even open Unicode file names.EmEditor supports Unicode natively, and in fact, the whole program is built as a Unicode application.EmEditor allows you to open a file with any encoding supported in the Windows system, and you can easily convert from one encoding to another within EmEditor. EmEditor allows you to open Unicode file names, and allows you to search for Unicode characters. Since EmEditor supports Unicode characters even outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), it can display the CJK Extension B characters as long as a supporting font is available on the system. With EmEditor plug-ins, EmEditor allows you to convert a selected text to HTML/XML Character Reference or Universal Character Names, and vice versa.

5. Easy and intuitive design with tabbed windows!

EmEditor is designed for Windows XP, thus frequently used shortcut keys are similar to other Windows applications, such as Copy, Cut, Paste, Undo, and Redo. In addition, EmEditor uses tabbed windows similar to SlimBrowser, Internet Explorer, FireFox and other tabbed browser applications. This allows you to open multiple documents in one window and jump between them quickly and easily. For instance, you can drag and drop the tab icon to switch the document position, or you can use the mouse middle button to close a tab. Moreover, you can conveniently switch between the tabbed window interface and the single window interface by selecting the Enable Tabs command on the Window menu. Thus EmEditor can greatly increase your productivity!

6. Other features!

There are many other useful features that are worth mentioning.

• Keyword highlighting
• Regular expression search and highlighting
• External tools
• Plug-ins using Custom Bars
• Keyboard, toolbar, menu, font and color customization
• Drag and Drop
• Auto save/Backup
• Box-select mode (Mouse select with ALT key)
• Clickable URLs and e-mail addresses
• The window can be split into a maximum of 4 panes
• Can define multiple configurations and associate file extensions
• Can save backups to the Recycle Bin
• Can open recently used files from the tray icon on the task bar
• Shortcut keys to insert accent marks and special characters
• Application error handler support
• 64-bit edition available
• Windows Vista ready
• Fast e-mail support
• While not guaranteed, historically free upgrades for many years!

7. Final words

If you have not tried EmEditor Professional, try it now. Please do not walk away without trying EmEditor! If you try it, I know you will like it. However, if you have any questions, please contact me so that I may assist you with how to use it, or try to improve it so that you will find it more useful. I am sure EmEditor will increase your productivity.

Best Wishes for whatever your project or business is!