Text Editor
Prepared by: Er. Inderjeet Bal,
Assistant Professor, Dept. of CS & IT,
Hindu Kanya College
Text Editor
A text editor is a piece of software that allows you to
open, view, and edit plain text files.
Unlike word processors, text editors do not add
formatting to text, instead focusing on editing functions
for plain text.
Text editors are used by a wide variety of people, for a
wide variety of purposes.
Used as software development packages.
Text Editor…
Some text editors are small and simple.
Provided with operating system or
software development packages.
For example, UNIX and UNIX like
operating systems have Vi editor.
Microsoft windows system comes with
the very simple Notepad.
Design of a Text Editor
diagram
Components of Text Editor
Main Window
• Contains title of the file being edited, menu and status
bar.
• Its only purpose is to provide an interface to the user.
Components of Text
Editor…
Text View
• Important component of text editor.
• It is a child of main window.
• Its primary purpose to display and edit text.
• It is the visual component of a text editor.
• Its needs to do a number of other things, such as displaying
scrollbars, process mouse and keyboard inputs and support drag
and drop.
Components of Text
Editor…
Text Document
• Not visible but used to store and manipulate a text file,
once it has been loaded into the memory.
• It knows how to manipulate text and supply text to the
edit control when it wants to draw something.
Components of Text
Editor…
Text File
• Not a part of text editor but plays important role in the
editing process.
• It’s the disk file that stores the text that we want to edit.
• The TextDocument will interface directly with this text file,
reading from and writing to it when it is time to load or
save a new document.
Editing Process
The editing process includes the following processes
Travelling: means movement of editing context to a new position within the
document.
Filtering : it extracts the relevant portion of the target document at the point
of interest, such as the next statement of text or the next statement.
Formatting: determines how the result will ne seen as a visible representation
i.e what will be the view on the screen, also known as viewing.
Editing: here actual editing is done.
Types of Editors
Line Editors
• A line editor is a text editor.
• Old-fashioned when there was no screen and no way to move a
cursor around a document.
• Typing, editing and document display do not occurs
simultaneously.
• Line editors maintain multiple representations of text.
• A line editor for DOS is Edlin.
Types of Editors
Stream Editors
• It views the entire text as a stream of characters.
• It supports character, line and context oriented command based
on the current editing context indicated by the position of a text
pointer.
• Stream editors also maintain multiple representations of text.
• Again like line editors, stream editors do not display the text in
the manner it would appear if printed.
Types of Editors
Window Editors
• Window editor is similar to text editor that editor that is
oriented around lines.
• It facilitates the user to display documents through the
use of social features for editing, saving and formatting
etc.
• MS-Office is an example of windows editor and MS-
Word is an example of multi window editor.
Types of Editors
Screen Editors
• A screen editor is based on the principle of WYSIWYG.
• It displays a screenful of text at a line.
• Its possible to see the effect of an edit operation on the screen.
• The document is printed in exactly the same form as is
displayed on the screen.
• Examples: Vi editor, Xedit, GNU Emacs etc. are screen
editors.
Types of Editors
Word Processors
• A structure editor incorporates an awareness of the structure
of a document.
• Useful in browsing through a document.
• A special class of structure editors called syntax directed
editors are used in programming environment.
• Example of structure editor is NLS.
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