The name of Notepad2 speaks for itself. This application is an improved version of the standard Windows Notepad. It was written by Florian Ballmer in 2004, using the Scintilla component, which is also used en masse to develop other similar programs.
Notepad2 had significantly more advanced functionality than Notepad. But at the same time, the developers wanted the application to remain small and fast, just like its predecessor, and not suffer from an overabundance of unnecessary functionality.
The program supports multiple text encodings, line numbering, auto indent, regular expressions, syntax highlighting for various programming and markup languages, including HTML, Java, Assembler, C++, XML, PHP and many others.
At the same time, the list of supported languages is still somewhat inferior to Notepad++. Besides, unlike its more functionally advanced competitor, Notepad2 cannot work in several tabs and save files created with it in a format different from TXT. The program does not support working with plug-ins.