
Ask HN: Why is Notepad++ not ported to mac yet? - mathiasrw
I love Notepad++. It&#x27;s fast, slick and consistent.<p>But it does not run on Mac. People suggest Sublime, and it&#x27;s ok too, but I keep wondering why the free source code from Notepad++ has not been ported. I can&#x27;t be the first one thinking this, so I imagine that some technical reason.<p>Any inputs on why Notepad++ is not yet converted to Mac?
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nikitoz
Notepad++ heavily relies on Win32 API, porting it to another platform is like
writing new editor. There are a lot of good cross platform text editors,
devote some time learning one of them.

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matheweis
No need to. In particular Mac has TextWrangler and BBEdit, the former of which
is free and similar to Notepad++ for basic functionality. (Edit: I should add
that I first found Notepad++ while looking for TextWrangler for Windows).

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konart
Well, Mac has many other text editors of the similar or better quality. I
think nobody feels any need to spend time porting Np++ to a new platform and
then supporting it.

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izolate
We have Vim installed by default.

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throwaway2016a
While I don't think most people (or even many) would agree with you. As
someone who uses Vim pretty much exclusively (and has a Mac), I kind of had to
smile at this.

For most people though, Notepad++ and Vim are not the same type of animal.

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kedean
Are they really, though? If you've put in the effort to learn Vim's command
system (big if there), then they provide mostly the same things:

\- heavily centered around document editing \- encourage plugins over embedded
features \- very good regex find/replace \- very good at editing massive files
(the main failing of most other editors)

They both have syntax highlighting for most languages. I admit that some
features of N++ need plugins in vim, of course, like spellcheck. I generally
do use them for pretty interchangable situations.

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hluska
I once thought of porting it over to run on Ubuntu, but I read over the
source, realized that Notepad++ uses the Win32 API quite extensively and
quickly abandoned my plans. Ultimately, I would have ended up
writing/supporting a totally new editor...then dealing with legions of people
who are angry that my first 0.1 didn't provide an exact 1:1 feature match of
Notepad++.

~~~
ksherlock
This is second hand info from 16 years ago, but my understanding is you can
compile and link win32 source code against the wine headers/libraries to
generate a "native" win32 application. I believe CorelDraw Office or
WordPerfect Office or something like that did it for their linux "port".

You might still need to deal with gcc/msvc compatibility issues and the end
product would only be slightly more native than running it via wine.

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trm42
Text Wrangler is lot nicer than Notepad++ for random ascii/script stuff. For
bigger projects, use Sublime or some other IDE(ish) editor.

In addition to big IDE I have TW running all the time for notes etc.

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cweagans
Because better options exist: Text Wrangler, bbedit, vim, sublime text, atom,
vscode, textmate, coda, brackets, komodo edit, jedit, and chocolat, not to
mention all of the Jetbrains IDEs.

~~~
inlineint
And Gedit with Kate are ported from GNU/Linux to Mac nowadays.

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tyingq
There is a clone that works on Linux. I assume it would be an easier path to
get that working on OSX versus the actual Notepad++, which is rife with Win32
dependencies.

See:
[https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq](https://github.com/notepadqq/notepadqq)

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theonemind
I don't know, but it works flawlessly in Wine, in my experience. If you use
WineBottler, you get an app bundle with the actual app icon and it displays
"natively", without X11. I like notepad++, but I use BBEdit on Mac. I don't
like switching to an app with win32 keybinds on OS X

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undersuit
Are you aware of Scite? "Notepad++ is SciTE on steroids."[1] It's available on
OS X, not that I've ever used it on the platform.

[1]
[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sketchupruby/vt7DpvQNcDY/Vsp...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sketchupruby/vt7DpvQNcDY/Vsp99fNzwZAJ)

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jedisct1
Visual Studio Code and Atom are way better.

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roryrjb
Feature-wise yes but Notepad++ is much much faster in my experience, closer to
Sublime Text.

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jmcdiesel
If speed (editor performance) is key, then VIM ... jump the first learning
curve... and feel free to use neovim or the mac gui for neovim
([https://github.com/rogual/neovim-dot-app](https://github.com/rogual/neovim-
dot-app))

When it comes to actual editor performance, you dont get much better than VIM
or Emacs... either of which perform well enough to load GB size files and not
die on their face...

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heyoni
Have you ever tried hex fiend? That thing can load 20Gb files and allow you to
scroll through it easily...How does it do it and why doesn't everyone copy
them?

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pfranz
I've never used hex fiend (and have only needed that type of tool a handful of
times), but from my understanding the reason this can be so much faster than a
text editor is seeking for new lines. If you need to jump 50% through the
file, with a hex editor you look at the size of the file and jump to the
middle. For a text file you have to count all of the newlines (seek the entire
file). Even if the text editor does clever things, many times plugins (like
syntax highlighting) do things in naive ways.

Vim is /fairly/ fast even with very large files.

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sebnukem2
What is the point when you have Vim, Atom, and Sublime Text?

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pcunite
Notepad++ search feature is great and what I miss in Sublime. I think there
are simply not enough developers to devote their time without some financial
incentive.

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douche
Seriously, I end up using Notepad++'s find-in-files search as a grep, it works
so much better than any other Windows grep tool I've found.

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bbcbasic
In my experience, it's a lot slower than Visual Studio's find-in-files and I
prefer the VS Regex too.

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douche
I will grant you that, if I was searching files that are already under a
solution that I have open.

But opening VS takes considerably longer than opening Notepad++, even with all
the plugins I have added to Notepad++. One of the most common cases for me is
searching for some particular message in a directory full of unzipped log
files that some customer has sent to us.

~~~
bbcbasic
> I will grant you that, if I was searching files that are already under a
> solution that I have open.

Also for general searching on the file system

> But opening VS takes considerably longer than opening Notepad++

I will grant you that. If you have VS open all the time in your workflow its
OK.

> One of the most common cases for me is searching for some particular message
> in a directory full of unzipped log files that some customer has sent to us.

`Grep` shines if you need to repeat the search query (perhaps you get more
logs the next day). You can save to a .sh file and run it again and again. You
can also pipe stuff around to do more advanced searches.

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alexmorse
Yep, no need. Lots of better alternatives out there.

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kisna72
I am saying this only half jokishly but because Sublime Text meets all the
needs?

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dbg31415
[https://github.com/sdeering/Sublime3-Theme-
NotepadPlusPlus](https://github.com/sdeering/Sublime3-Theme-NotepadPlusPlus)

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notadoc
Notepad++ is pretty great for Windows.

On the Mac, BBEdit (paid) and TextWrangler (free, more or less a light version
of BBEdit) are both fantastic. Some people like TextMate too.

~~~
josh64
This: TextMate is basically the Notepad++ equivalent for macOS. CotEditor[0]
isn't bad either, it all depends on what your needs are

[0] [https://coteditor.com/](https://coteditor.com/)

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SamUK96
Why N++ when there's VSCode? Both free, but VSCode is better in most ways
apart from maybe boot time?

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mcintyre1994
VSCode chokes on much smaller files than Notepad++. N++ is more comparable to
Sublime Text.

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stuaxo
Not ideal - but does it work in Wine ?

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dodo
I think it is just because there are too less developers maintaining the
editor on mac os.

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kaushalmodi
Emacs would be the first thing I would install if I were to get a Mac.

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Pica_soO
CodeElite?

