Of 03 Some Criteria for Choosing a Text Editorįor programming Python, there are literally scores of editors from which to choose. The defining characteristic is that it saves the text as simple, plain text. So, it is possible to find a text editor with thousands of features, just like a word processor. The main point of difference between a text editor and other applications that allow you to edit text is that a text editor does not save formatting. Therefore, when the computer reads the text and tries to execute it, it gives up, crashing, as if to say, 'How do you expect me to read that?' If you do not understand why it might do this, you may want to revisit how a computer reads a program. These tags are meant for visualization, not for computation. Similarly, graphic HTML editors do not save emboldened text as bold text but as text with a bold attribute tag. Word processors such as MS-Word or Writer include formatting information when they save a file - that is how the program knows to bold certain text and italicize others. A text editor is a program that saves your files without formatting. To program Python, most any text editor will do.