SciTE vs Notepad++

It's property files allow for fine tweaks of its behavior, at a global or per language / project level. These textual settings might be confusing for those used to preference dialogs, but prove to be powerful, flexible, and fine grained.

With less than 2 MB of binary on Windows, SciTE starts instantly. Plus, if you don't need all the config, syntax files, blah, there's a 678k standalone .exe version. Nothing is going to beat that for lightweight and start-up times. Stick it in a folder that is already on your PATH.

Based on the Scintilla source code editor, SciTE has some advanced features like rectangular editing, simple regular expression search and replace, code folding, etc. It allows the user to launch a compiler or interpreter, and it can also interpret the error messages, jumping at the location they point to.

Lua scripting is key to SciTE's power and flexibility. The Lua scripting language can be used to perform complex text transformations. It's relatively simple syntax and its large user-base makes it a great choice for a scripting feature.

The console window can show the result of ran commands (like build current file, reporting warnings, and errors), but also accept interactive shell commands.

SciTE works on Windows and Linux, and it also has a commercial port on MacOS.

Lexers providing folding and syntax highlighting are based on code, not on regular expressions. They support context, nesting, special rules, etc.

SciTE is written in C++, with lot of contributors, both to the core and to the numerous lexers.

Has a simple graphical user interface

Notepad++ has built-in support for syntax highlighting for a wide selection of programming languages.

Notepad++ is a very light program that starts almost instantly. This makes it a great text editor for users that want something that will start the second they open it.

A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained.

You can get a portable version of N++ and put it on a flash drive or your dropbox account and have your editor, configured the way you like, at any computer that you are on.

Notepad++ is licensed under GPL, which means it is free/open source software that you can use freely.

In Notepad++, the user can utilise regular expressions to quickly modify text across multiple files.

If you close Notepad++ (npp), your documents remain even if you haven't saved.

You can define your own custom syntax highlighting rules (or add support for others) .

Very easy to use and personalize.

While it is disabled by default, when enabled, it is possible to edit more than one line at a time. This is helpful in many situations.

The user can open and edit files in multiple screens within the editor window.

If you have the Plugin Manager installed you can search for MarkdownViewer++ and install it via that plugin.