A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.
Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code.
There are important differences between plain text files created by a text editor, and document files created by word processors such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or OpenOffice.org. Briefly:
Before text e...
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A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.
Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code.
There are important differences between plain text files created by a text editor, and document files created by word processors such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or OpenOffice.org. Briefly:
Before text editors existed, computer text was punched into punched cards with keypunch machines. The text was carried as a physical box of these thin cardboard cards, and read into a card-reader.
The first text editors were line editors oriented on typewriter style terminals and they did not provide a window or screen-oriented display. They usually had very short commands (to minimize typing) that reproduced the current line. Among them were a command to print a selected section(s) of the file on the typewriter (or printer) in case of necessity. An "edit...
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