2

Is there a good (modern) all-round Windows (plain) text editor apt for editing e-mail? It doesn’t necessarily have to be free, but should more or less out of the box (or via readily available plugin) be able to rewrap mail quotes like this is very comfortably possible with BBEdit and TextMate on the Mac.

Sublime Text seems to hint in the right direction but isn’t quite there yet. E Text Editor tries to emulate TextMate on Windows but I couldn’t get the mail bundle to work and there seems to be no support.

(Vim and/or Emacs are not what I’m looking for here ...! ;)

Example -- before …

> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labor et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

… and after …

> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do
> eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad
> minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut
> aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
4
  • i cant help but .. cream.sf.net which is just a 'nicer' config of vim :)
    – akira
    Oct 27, 2009 at 9:55
  • I've tried Cream but to me it seemed to have to many little kinks and inconsistencys - not really Vim and not really a "modern" text editor. And judging from mailing list traffic not a very active and/or large user base. Sublime Text is quite frustratingly close to what I'm looking for. Maybe I just need to be patient ... :) Oct 27, 2009 at 13:20
  • Are you sure you don't need an email client that understands "format=flowed"? (See "The format=flowed FAQ" at joeclark.org/ffaq.html)
    – Arjan
    Oct 28, 2009 at 9:53
  • Nah, not really. I’m still looking for a good plain text editor … ;) Oct 28, 2009 at 19:54

5 Answers 5

3

Notepad++ does have the text wrap feature (I'm using v5.5.1).

  1. The one you are looking for can be found under TextFX->TextFX Edit->ReWrap text to (Clipboard or 72) width. There is also "Unwrap" option, if you need one. I believe text has to be selected to perform this operation.

  2. There is one more alternative at Edit->Line operations->Split lines. When positioned at the start of a long single-line text, this function splits lines to the width of the editor window.

2
  • if you also want quotes rewrapped - then it might be a 2-step operation in Notepad++, unless there is a plugin to do just that. 1st step is wrapping text, 2nd step is prepending "> " to each line in the selected block of text.
    – chronos
    Nov 12, 2009 at 11:32
  • If you do that several times a that can quickly become tedious. That’s not saying Notepad++ doesn’t look quite good overall. If it only supported piping selections of text through external commands I could use par (from cygwin). TextMate does little else put pipe the stuff through par with PARINIT="rTbgqR B=.,?!_A_a Q=_s>|+" … Nov 15, 2009 at 17:12
0

Notepad++ comes highly recommended on this site...may want to give that a shot and see if it does what you need it to. And, it's free.

3
  • While Notepad++ overall seems to be an able text editor, I could get it to reformat/rewrap e-mail quotes. Oct 27, 2009 at 13:16
  • I meant to write "couldn't", of course! :P Oct 27, 2009 at 13:41
  • ah - ok, wasn't sure if it did rtf or not...thanks for the ping-back with more info for me to know, appreciate it!
    – anon man
    Oct 27, 2009 at 13:45
0

Notepad2 - a one or two file editor, powerful in its features, beautiful in its simplicity !

1
  • 1
    Thanks for the suggestion! Sadly Notepad2 doesn’t seem to provide a rewrap function which is sufficiently capable. Oct 27, 2009 at 19:35
0

For now a jEdit TextFilter calling a Cygwin bash script calling par seems to be the answer. Basically that’s that TextMate does. (And also E, as I now do understand—but while TM is a great editor, I’m a bit skeptical about E trying to copy it.)

jEdit is very extensible.

I will keep a close look at Sublime Text, though. :)

(Thanks for all suggestions!)

-1

Have you tried a HTML WYSIWYG editor?

I have one here that might do what you want it to do. It's called TinyMCE.

1
  • 1
    Well, no, I’m explicitly looking for a plain text editor along the lines of TextMate, UltraEdit (which I sadly could bring to rewrap e-mail quotes) etc. … %-) Oct 27, 2009 at 19:32

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