Here’s the Deal

pico vs Textadept

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When comparing pico vs Textadept, the Slant community recommends Textadept for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal text editors?” Textadept is ranked 9th while pico is ranked 18th. 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

No specs yet!

PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux, BSD

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Common Questions

What are the best terminal text editors?

Pros

Pro
Built-in cheat sheet for shortcuts

All command characters are shown at the bottom of the editor.

Pro
Easy to use

Pico includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.

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
Easily written plugins

You can write plugins pretty easily.

Here is the API doc, quite compact.

Here is a module which adds a support for ctags.

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.

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Cons

Con
No way to override command characters

Characters such as ^D, ^T, ^L, etc will always be interpreted as commands and there's no way to write them in text.

Con
Lacks some commonly expected functionality even for a basic editor

Pico lacks search and replace functionality as well as the ability to work work with multiple files at the same time.

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.