Snow Flower Text is a text editor designed for easy use by anyone. It can be used in many scenes such as document writing and programming. In particular, it has high affinity with the Web platform and strongly supports users to send information on the Web. Also, you can quickly open and edit huge text data files stably.
1. Advanced editing
Snow Flower Text supports the following advanced editing operations as a text editor.
- Multi cursor
Since Snow Flower Text supports multi cursor, advanced editing is possible. You can add a cursor with Command+mouse click. You can release multi cursor with ESC key. You can also add a cursor by Alt+Control+↑, Alt Control↓.
- Highly flexible text selection
In addition to normal text selection, it supports “rectangle selection” which allows you to select text vertically. For rectangle selection, hold down Alt key and select rectangle range with mouse.
- Rich keyboard shortcuts
Snow Flower Text has many keyboard shortcuts so that you can keep putting your hands on the keyboard even while you are writing code for high productivity. You can check this at Shortcut list.
- Edit huge file
Snow Flower Text is designed to allow editing of huge text format data files. If it is about 50 MB, editing can be done without problems.
2. Writing
Snow Flower Text supports document writing with lightweight markup. It also includes the function of a general word processor. Efficient editing that is not found in conventional word processors has become possible. Lightweight markup notation can be chosen from Markdown and AsciiDoc. Markdown is easy to read, and AsciiDoc is characterized by high expressiveness. Although there is a difference in the notation of AsciiDoc and Markdown, Snow Flower Text allows editing with a unified user interface.
| Lightweight markup language is a concise markup language designed to compensate for poor readability and high learning cost of HTML. There are many lightweight markup languages. Markdown, AsciiDoc, Wikitext (Wiki) are widely used. |
By writing a document with lightweight markup, you can do the following.
Compared to binary file format, text compatibility with version control system is overwhelmingly high.
It makes it easy to understand where difference was made at a glance and you can easily judge what changed. Because lightweight markup is plain text, it is easier to compare changes and improves trackability of changes.
Furthermore, by describing many charts in text form by AsciiDoc extension of Snow Flower Text, it becomes possible to do the following.
By embedding the figure directly in the document, the number of configuration files of the document is reduced and file management becomes easy.
The figure will also be searched by text search. The finderability of information is improved.
When used in conjunction with the version control tool, you can check the change difference of the figure with text.
Data size is overwhelmingly smaller than version control of the binary file figure. You can avoid giving up version control of figures due to size problems. The file size subject to version management is reduced.
2.1. Real time preview
Generally in document creation, as the next activity diagram shows, objective quality is raised by repeating preview and validation many times before finishing the final completed document. Snow Flower Text has real time preview function. You can check the activity you repeat many times over the text editor without switching the application.
With real-time preview, users can proceed editing by checking the rendering result of lightweight markup editing. Preview and validation are done fast behind the editing. The editor supports the user to continually improve the quality while maintaining focus on document creation. Users can focus on document writing without context switches.
A preview is displayed when the following syntax mode is selected.
AsciiDoc
Markdown
GraphViz Dot
PlantUML
The real-time preview function is not dependent on other applications. It is available only by installing Snow Flower Text.
2.2. Design support
In Snow Flower Text, document structure and design are clearly separated. The design work is automated by the editor and the user can concentrate on thinking about the structure of the document.
Snow Flower Text has the following design support functions.
- Auto layout
The optimum layout is automatically done just by instructing the layout rule. Layout is necessary to make text and diagram information easier to understand in document creation, but it is also time-consuming work to adjust by hand. Automatic leowing frees editors from layout work.
- High quality style
The style uses high-quality styles prepared in advance. This makes it easy to create publication quality documents.
2.3. Publishing
Snow Flower Text supports single source publishing with lightweight markup language as a single source. By exporting documents in AsciiDoc and MarkDown you can export to multiple document file formats. Documents can be converted to multiple different file formats with minimal effort.
Single source publishing Single source publishing is a documentation framework that meets the DRY principle of software engineering (“do not repeat yourself”). The DRY principle is aimed at reducing repeated patterns. All knowledge is supposed to have a single clear and reliable expression in the system. |
Normally, documentation tasks that create multiple formats require different specialized skills. In addition, consistency problems that some formats are not updated when revising are likely to occur. It solves these problems by single source conversion, that is, automatic generation processing from one document format to multiple formats.
With single source publishing you will be able to:
Expert knowledge for multiple document file formats becomes unnecessary.
Consistency problem of contents does not occur.
Snow Flower Text positions AsciiDoc and MarkDown Lightweight Markup Language as a single clear and reliable expression.
2.4. Various expressions
In AsciiDoc mode of Snow Flower Text, it is possible to embed texts of PlantUML and GraphViz syntax which can describe diagrams in documents in plain text directly.
With traditional approaches such as word processing software, you do not have to run another dedicated application, such as when embedding a figure in a document, to create a separate file. You can create documents and plot with the same editing application. You can concentrate on document creation because fewer context switches are undergoing editing.
- AsciiDoc
AsciiDoc is a highly scalable plain text based document creation format. AsciiDoc enables efficient document creation and management. Snow Flower Text supports AsciiDoc’s standard support function as well as embedding UML, graphs, formulas, etc.
- Markdown
Markdown is a document creation format that emphasizes readability as it is. Standardization is under way at Common Mark. In Snow Flower Text, in addition to the compatibility function of Common Mark, in addition, many extensions including those commonly used on sites such as Github can be used.
2.5. HiDPI support
Text, UML, graphs, and icons are handled in vector form. Even if you enlarge it to any display size, it will render clearly even if you shrink it. This feature is not only previewed, but also exported PDF and HTML.
However, when embedding images such as photos that are not vector data, a large resolution is required if you want to keep sharpness.
3. Programming
Snow Flower Text supports programming support functions.
3.1. Syntax highlight
Syntax highlighting improves the readability of the code and makes the context clearer by displaying part of the source code in different colors for each classification. This feature makes structured languages such as programming languages and markup languages easy to distinguish their structure and syntactic errors visually, making it easy to describe. It also helps programmers find errors in programs.
There is also a function to show correspondence of parentheses, and it is easy to confirm whether the correspondence is correctly by displaying a pair of parentheses at the cursor position with a special color.
By selecting a grammar other than Plain text with a text editor, syntax highlighting of the source code being edited is enabled.
3.2. Syntax validation
Snow Flower Text has a syntax validation function. Syntax validation is done editing and instantly, and the warning part of the syntax is reported in an easy-to-understand manner on the editor. By selecting the following grammar with a text editor, syntax validation is enabled.
Programing
JavaScript
Lua
Query
XQuery
Document
HTML
Style
CSS
Data
JSON
SVG
XML
3.3. Pretty format
Automatic formatting of source code becomes possible by format operation. By selecting the following grammar with a text editor, formatting operation becomes available.
Programming
JavaScript
Query
SQL
Document
HTML
Markdown
Stylesheet
CSS
Data
JSON
XML
When you open the source code, you can format the source code by clicking Menu> Edit> Formatting. It also works with Command+Shift+F shortcut.
3.4. Auto Complete
Autocomplete is a function to infer candidate by guessing the next token while inputting text. By selecting the following grammar in the text editor, autocomplete by syntax is effective.
Programming
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
CoffeeScript
Common Lisp
D
Dart
Drools
Erlang
Fortran
GLSL
Go
Groovy
Haml
Haskel
JSP
Java
JavaScript
LSL
Lua
Makefile
Ocaml
PHP
Perl
PowerShell
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Slim
Swift
Tcl
UNIX shell
VHDL
Velocity
Verilog
Query
SQL
XQuery
Stylesheet
CSS
Document
AsciiDoc
HTML
Markdown
reStructuredText
TeX
Textile
