When comparing AkelPad vs Textadept, the Slant community recommends Textadept for most people. In the question“What are the best simple text editors for Windows?” Textadept is ranked 17th while AkelPad is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Textadept is:
Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to. Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Update module
Embedded module to check for updates of main program and all plugins.
Pro Sorting text according to selected block
Select block of text and sort all text according to this block
Pro Configurable keyboard shortcuts
You can configure own shortcuts for many actions
Pro Highlight each occurrence of selected sequence
Simply select any sequence of characters (even part of word of single character) and you will see highlighted all occurrences of this sequence in a file.
Pro Configurable syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting defined in separate files, ability to create or edit any syntax.
Pro Has both GUI and TUI
Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to.
Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file.
Pro Cross-platform
It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Pro Small and portable
Has very few dependencies, and very small footprint. Can be copied to a new system in a moment, unpacked and be at your service.
Pro Scriptable
Has a built-in lua engine.
Cons
Con Windows only
It's not cross platform (but fully functional under Wine in Linux)
Con Community
Does not have an IRC channel or some kind of forum where a community of developers/plugin writers could evolve around. Has a mailing list which is said to be active but that does not feel that attractive.