A little earlier, in 2003, at about the same time as Notepad++, a text editor by Russian developers called AkelPad appeared.
The given program, though also saves the documents created by it exclusively in TXT format, but unlike Notepad2 supports not in an example considerable quantity of encodings. Besides, the application can work in a multiple window mode.
It is true that there is no syntax highlighting and line numbering in AkelPad, but the main advantage of this program over Notepad2 is the support of plugins. Installed plug-ins can significantly extend the functionality of AkelPad.
Thus, the Coder plugin alone adds syntax highlighting, block collapsibility, autocompletion and some other functions to the program.