Word Processor Software and Text Editors

One of the most common types of programs available are the kinds that allow the user to handle text. In fact, dealing with text is such a basic, commonly used function of interacting with computers, many programs, whether they deal strictly with text or not, will have some features that are common to text programs.

The most common type of text programs are:

• Word Processors
• Text Editors
• Code editors

Word Processors

The most commonly used text program is the word processor. A word processor is a program that is used to create a text document. They allow you to format the page, font, and a variety of other things to allow a user to create documents for printing or displaying on the screen. Word processors have tools that make it easy to find and replace text within a document. This feature makes it easy to change text and to rearrange it with ease. They have tools to allow you to check document statistics, such as word counts, and most of the current ones even do spell checking to help make sure that you have spelled everything correctly. Another great feature is the ability to merge one document with another or a database to be able to create multiple pages from a single framework with only a few clicks. Still, despite all this power, word processors still mainly deal strictly with text.

Text Editors

Another common text program is the text editor. A text editor is a word processor stripped of the ability to set formatting and to merge with other documents. You may think that such a program would be worthless, but actually a text editor can be useful for small text files and make a great place to put quick notes that you might want to save for future reference.

Code Editors

A code editor lies somewhere between a text editor and a word processor, but the main function of a code editor is to make it easier for a programmer to write code. Most do this through color coding that allows a programmer to quickly see what the different types of pieces are in a program. For some languages, a code editor might be attached to a compiler, a tool that turns the code into an executable program that can be run on the machine. What features a code editor might have depend greatly on what language, or languages, the program might support.

These are the main types of text programs that one may find. You can find features of text programs in many other programs, so understanding text programs can get you a long way towards understanding and functioning in many other programs.