The alternative in Notepad++ is to allow it to run multiple instances in separate windows, but then you cannot "clone" the same open document in two views, one below each other: each window will open a separate document copy, edited independently, and you loose vertical space on screen because of title mars, menus, button bars, tabs at top, and status bar at the bottom (plus docked consoles like the Lua console in each window). This alternative is only for working on separate files.
The UI of Notepad++ is also aging, with its old fashioned look and feel, and the light color-model only. the newer look and feel of "Howl" is much better (even if it does not still have all the features of Notepad++ and its many plugins).
Notepad++ still does not allow "undocking" a view into a separate window (with its own menu/toolbars/status bar that could be placed more freely), while keeping the same edited documents "cloned".
May be Notepad++ is working on a freshened UI, that would allow docking/undocking editor view more freely, in the same window or separate windows (so instead of just "editor1" and "editor2" views, you could have any number of editors (named "editor3", "editor4"... for compatiblity, or in an indexed array "editors[n]" or "views[n]", as seen in the Lua API for "npp"), would avoid duplicating the list of tab buttons above each view, and would completely remove the need to run several instances in separate windows, and a new model of its look and feel (notably a dark theme, a refined design for its buttons, menus, toolbars, scrollbars, and slidable view separators, including for accessiblity purpose on tactile screens...) I'm not criticising Scintilla which is very good, and plugins. But even the design of menus is not very good: menus are overpopulated, thay have no smart intelligence to adapt to the current context of use, and its preferences panels are quite complex to navigate, nad have poor/inacessible UI designs for its lists...
But for now Notepad++ is still the best on Windows for editing large files (forget Notepad) and its still relatively frienfly for user and offers exceelent performance (including fast startup) Its software updates or the way you can install/remove plugins is still old-aged (you need to restart the editor, Notepad++ has autosaved files in temporary files, but the state of existing plugins is lost; that's probably something that Howl could avoid by dynamically opening and closuing plugins on demand, thanks to its Lua implementation).
