Notepad++ on Macs

Jared Grosser

So I have a program called PlayOnMac, but it won’t let me use Notepad++ still. I am wondering if anyone has had any luck with those two programs or getting Notepad++ to work on a Mac. We recently made the switch to Macs at work. I tried downloading the wine setup, but that failed as well.

Thanks!

Terry R

@Jared-Grosser said in Notepad++ on Macs:

So I have a program called PlayOnMac, but it won’t let me use Notepad++ still.

Well the website for this application states what it will support. I gather Notepad++ isn’t on the list.

As you may be aware there is no support for running Notepad++ on anything but Windows. Several users here have had varying success running it on other platform (using Wine etc) but it’s not officially supported on anything but Windows.

Good luck
Terry

YukiYasha

What prevents us from deploying it on Mac OS?
Many people love Notepad++, to the extent that they avoid using Mac just because they can’t use Notepad++.

Terry R

@YukiYasha said in Notepad++ on Macs:

What prevents us from deploying it on Mac OS?

Please Read this post.

Terry

mkupper

@YukiYasha said in Notepad++ on Macs:

What prevents us from deploying it on Mac OS?

Nothing prevents you or anyone from writing an application called Notepad++ for the Mac. Notepad++'s source code is available and is licensed so that you can look at and use it.

The developer of Notepad++ for Windows has chosen to focus their entire attention on Windows and has tuned Notepad++ to work well within Windows.

Internally, Macs and Windows are very different.

Someone who wants to use the Notepad++'s source code to create a Mac version will be faced with that 100% of the code and data structures is tuned for Windows. Let’s start with something that seems basic and simple, which is the keyboard. Macs and Windows machines do not have the same set of keys. They also use very different data structures and key codes. Windows was designed to work well with IBM PC style keyboards. 40 years later Windows and applications such as Notepad++ are still very much oriented around how IBM PC style keyboards work.

If you are writing a Notepad++ for the Mac do you spend time figuring out how to map what you get from a Mac’s keyboard into Windows style keyboard events, data structures, and scan codes or do you want your text editor for the Mac to be efficient and to use Mac style logic within your editor? These decisions will happen over and over for every single aspect of Notepad++'s Windows centric code.

Rather than attempting to rework Notepad++'s code to be native for the Macintosh it is much easier to Google for Notepad++ for the Mac. There are over eight million hits. It looks like TextWrangler used to be a popular text editor for the Mac. Apple broke TextWrangler with an update to MacOS. The developers of another text editor for the Mac, BBEdit, added some TextWrangler features.