Ubuntu – simple text editor (like gedit) with options to make text bold

text-editor

I want a simple text editor (much like WordPad) for creating task lists. The problem with gedit is that there are no plugins for formatting options. On the other hand, Bluefish and Sublime are much too heavy.

Best Answer

There is a continuum with 2 ends:

  • Dedicated TODO management software (with autosave, devices sync, reminders, outlining, archiving of done/old tasks, etc.). Frequently stores your notes in some obscure database / format / cloud.
    ︙
  • Plain text files, manually managed by you, edited with any plain text editor.

If you're comfortable with "I'll manage my own file(s), just give me an editor", you're already close to the latter. I wouldn't go the WordPad-like (e.g. Abiword) route, with messy formats like .rtf or .doc. Take the remaining relatively small step to plain text, which gives a lot of power: you can use unix tools like version control or grep on the notes, and you have much wider choice of editors.

Note that this doesn't mean you give up text styling! As others here recommend, a lightweight markup convention like Markdown lets you type # Heading or *italic text* (instead of Ctrl+I italic text Ctrl+I), and many editors can highlight it appropriately.

But you can take a step further and pretend you're editing rich text with Zim:
Zim screenshot
while the underlying text is still plain text files + simple syntax e.g. //italic text//.
You can apply most styling both as you would in a rich text editor (select, menu or shortcut) or by just typing the syntax.

And Zim has several handy features and plugins for organizing tasks: interlinked pages, calendar with daily pages, checkboxes, tasks with due dates...

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