TextPad

Updated on Jan 16, 2024

Edit

Comment

Operating system Microsoft Windows Type Text editor		Size ~6.0 MB License Proprietary
Developer(s) Helios Software Solutions Stable release 7.6.3 8.1.1 / December 7, 2016 (2016-12-07)

TextPad is a text editor for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. It is produced by Helios Software Solutions.

First released in 1992, TextPad is currently in its eighth major version. Of the commonly used text editors for Microsoft Windows, it was one of the earliest and in particular one of the first to use a shareware-type business model.

Features

Key features include:

The ability to maintain block indents

Automatic code indentation (see indent style)

Regular expression based search and replace, including multiline regex

Macro recording feature to facilitate complex text transformations and data processing.

Macro feature supports multiple regex searches (and replacements) within a macro

Syntax highlighting (extendable to many different languages)

Ability to call external programs (such as compilers)

Regex matching can be used to jump to a line number in a file given in the output from external programs (e.g. to locate the cause of a compiler error)

Automatic integration with Java JDK, if JDK is already on the machine

Large file support

Support for editing multiple files, with tabbed document selection

Block select mode

Synchronized scrolling of multiple files

Clip libraries – snippet management for reusable portions of text to insert into documents

Clipboard history – Allowing TextPad to function as a multiple clipboard tool

Bookmarking of lines, therefore allowing users to copy specific lines (e.g. log file error messages), and then paste them to another document.

Multi-lingual support: User interface is available in seven languages with spelling dictionaries available in ten languages.

Clip Library

The Clip Library is a TextPad sidebar that allows users to store small items persistently, and then use them easily. This is done by double clicking clip names in the Clip Library sidebar. In other editors such as Komodo, a clip library is known as "snippets".

TextPad comes with a number of pre-defined clip libraries, including ANSI characters, HTML characters and HTML tags. A very useful clip library is the Clipboard History. This is a list of previous Clipboard contents. So even though the standard Windows Clipboard can only hold one piece of information, the TextPad Clipboard History Clip Library can access a whole history of entries. See also clipboard managers.

You can create your own new clip libraries, and there are many clip libraries available.

WildEdit

Helios's program WildEdit is an interactive tool for power users to make the same changes to a set of text files in a folder hierarchy.

Business model

TextPad and WildEdit are similar to shareware software in that full-featured versions can be downloaded for free and used for an indefinite trial period. Users who pay for the product receive a license code that registers the software. However neither program is advertised as shareware and users are not encouraged to share copies with one another.

Reception

TextPad has received generally favorable professional reviews. Mike Williams of PC Advisor calls it "an excellent Notepad replacement with a stack of essential features." Download.com described it as an affordable editor suited for coding, "neither the most powerful nor most expensive shareware text tool, though many users will find it more than meets their needs at a fraction of the cost of similar tools."

References

TextPad Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA