A plug for the new v7 if this superb plain text editor for the iPad. A programmer’s ideal tool, but you could just use it for general plain text editing anyway as it is so capable and productive.
If you need text formatting / styles then you will need something else, but it can display text in auto-wrapping mode so it is suitable for long flowing paragraphs not just line after line type text as in program source code or typical markup.
It speaks unicode, has a choice of types of newline and can write and read LF, CR, or CRLF delimited text so is it is a good citizen for different systems’ default conventions for plain text.
It understands god knows how many types of syntax for programming languages, markup languages etc.
The new release allows multiple files to be open at the same time and they are shown in as tabbed windows, so you can switch between files quickly. The previous release could switch between files lightning fast as it had a recently-used list, but it saved one then opened another.
One thing that I would love to have, which is a general deficiency in iOS, is a read-only flag in the file system, or failing that for apps to add such a thing in a database held elsewhere, as you can not write to a flag in metadata in the files itself if there is no convenient field already there that can be used without breaking compatibility, although having something equivalent in the directory instead might be an alternative.
I have asked the Textastic developer but have not managed to persuade him. I need this badly, to protect my work from accidental changes to older versions. There is a global readonly switch in Textastic, which is excellent, but it is not enough. Also the switch could be placed in a slightly easier-to-access position in the UI.
I have submitted some feedback to Apple in an attempt to persuade them to sort the o/s.
