Easy themingĪtom makes generating your own style as easy as styling a website, so if you’re competent with CSS, you can make your own Atom theme. Once again, thanks to a vibrant community, the variety of syntax highlighter options in Atom’s package repository is one of the best. Of course, I’ve already mentioned that Atom has great extensions in general, but syntax highlighting is an important feature regardless of what language you're typing. Atom's community provides great support for my favorite formats. While XML support is relatively common, integration with a specific schema can be a tall order, and Asciidoc is still relatively obscure. When I evaluate an editor, Docbook schema and Asciidoc support are two of my primary metrics. By extension, I’m a fan of its simplified front-end, Asciidoc. You can practically make Atom the control hub for your desktop, so you rarely have to leave it. There are extensions to add syntax highlighting for languages and formats, to add dynamic linting, and to integrate debuggers, runtime environments, video and music player controls, and much more. It shows how important extensions can be, though, and Atom has a nice set of plugins. That’s a hard act to top, and to be honest, I’ve yet to see the editor that can. My habitual editor is GNU Emacs, which has a mind-boggling array of extensions so versatile that they can provide everything from an email client to a video game.
When most requirements have been filled as soon as you launch the application, a major factor in "selling" an open source text editor is its extensions. That’s a hard line to walk, but Atom manages it, and I appreciate it for that. It’s just different enough to feel unique but "safe" enough to trick people into believing (and rightly so) they can use it.
#What is a text editor install#
If I take a few minutes to show them a few power features of the application, then they're quickly empowered to install new plugins and discover useful features they enjoy. No new keyboard shortcuts to learn, no serious deviations from user interface conventions.
One of my favorite things about Atom is that it feels pretty "normal." I can install Atom on anyone’s computer and they’re off and typing in no time. I often come back to Atom, though, because, as a user of open source, I have the luxury of using an application just because I can.
#What is a text editor free#
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