For most of us, that little text editor that included their computer is simply not fancy enough to satisfy all of there needs. A good advanced text editor shouldn't put any type of embedded characters within the document unless specifically expected to do so. ASCII text is free of extraneous character sets and it is the ideal for pure text files, which may be CVS files for a database that should be repaired.
Those who are programmers need features which help them quickly identify specific types of code. In this instance, a syntax highlighting feature if very handy. Other programmers may prefer a feature to utilize a different color text for each type of language delimiter. This provides a quick way of knowing a flexible from an argument and increases their productivity.
Auto Indent could be another useful feature because it 'senses' when an "if... Then... Else" statement has been written and automatically indents to the proper distance for keeping the module looking and also simple to follow in the event there might be grounds to debug the program.
Character encoding is usually required for certain applications, as well as in this example the UTFS and Enicode needs to be handled correctly. By having a feature to cope with this kind of programming issue, it'll make the job much faster and simpler for the programmer.
WordWrap is a feature carried over in the old CPM operating system days, although certain programming languages crash if your line of code is broken in the wrong place, there are more applications where word wrap is advantageous. A person can highlight all the text in a document, select "WordWrap" from the menu, and a minimum of momentarily bring long lines of text into easy view. Once finished simply undo the term wrap feature and continue with the programming.