A Powerful/Useful Text Freeware Program.


Canis-Lupus

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Windows notepad is a very basic text utility that does not do much & comes with all builds of Windows. 'Doc-Pad' by Gammadyne © takes off-line composition & editing to new levels that amaze most who 1st use it and never go back to notepad. This small freeware utility includes a spell-checker, calendar, calculator, atypical character libraries (©£Çɽ..etc.) and a novice level GUI. It can indent & paragraph text for cut/paste into professional looking e-mails or save/print them for later use/addendum's. 30 plain to very colorful skins to choose from, and more color, size, text, icon or functions tweaks than I can list here. I've been using it since the 1st build came out (1998) for off-line composition, especially if I want a quick well formatted, correctly spelled document to cut & paste into a text box, e-mail, paste into a program like MS Word, or just for basic no-frills quick snail-mailed letters/faxes/cover-sheets. It will retain the original document in a *.txt format. Set up a repository folder in 'My Documents' is normally best or it defaults to storing all your documents in the parent folder: "C:\Program Files\DocPad". Make sub-categories in that folder and U just created a complete storage system for any text you feel like keeping. Cut and paste a complete text document off the net and save it if it may be of use to you later, merge it with your/others comments, piece of cake. :sarcastic: It clears all the HTML/pictures and just captures the text. The top of the window is full of icons to help U move faster thru cut, save, paste, spell-check, etc, U get used to them versus pulling down menus, one is called 'statistics'. That one icon tells me that this post contains 1292 words and 7044 characters, plus many other averages & stats! Other alternates for notepad exist I have tried most of the freeware ones but I haven't found one that beats what Gammadyne puts out for free. No ads, nags, and spyware/malware free. You don't even need to accept a cookie or grant it in/out thru your firewall permissions, (auto check for updates) is best left off and it won't leave a port open, left on it will update from current build 7.1 released October 2nd 2008, to 7.2 when that comes out and auto-installs it after asking for your permission of course. Does not run resident in the background applications so when you close it out, save your work 1st (BIGGY!) and close it, it drops off running applications, doesn't auto-start up and lists the last 1-10 documents you were last working on for quick access under 'File', no opening Flash/Splash screens, it remains freeware.
If you don't like it then just hit the uninstall link: Start menu > Programs > Gammadyne > uninstall > gonzo!
One of the things that I have noticed is folks commenting on a patron's spelling, and when I haven't used doc-pad to produce a post I have spelled words wrong. During spell-check it gives you options to choose from a long list of close hits for the word it thinks you misspelled, choose the one you want, tap your mouse and it is corrected, if it's a word you use a lot that is not in the resident dictionary (20K words I think) e.g. Glock or sheeple, and keeps popping-up as 'wrong' fix that by adding that word to your 'ignore list' of words it remembers and won't alert you next time you spell check any document. Word wrap, replace some/all mistakes. Covert case is useful if U leave your Cap-locks on and look up to see a screen FULL of CAPS or lower case, with one click it corrects it to all upper or lower, U put in the final touches. Mouse over balloon help on/off, your choice, and the 'System-G' options allow you to tweak the program into colors and functions you want or go with default pre-sets which is cool and covers everything any novice to expert would need even has hot-keys and a Macro manager for geeks like me. :eek: Searches for words in your document, replaces one or all with what you input, 10 undo levels for mistakes. Uses a lot less RAM and time consuming messing around with MS-Word/Adobe or similar slower RAM intensive pro-document producers, it does however lack a thesaurus so it won't 'smart-correct' words like: 'there' to 'their' or 'dear' to 'deer' as those words are correct. It doesn't do HTML, so you set the base script to what U want, Times New Roman, Ariel, or a simple text is best on your eyes + the reader's eyes/screens. But what you paste into anything you can then add HTML if that's what you want, like designing a web-page or sending an e-card. I hope you at least look it over and hopefully use it for all your off-line document needs, don't forget your kids may also benefit from it too, my M8's special-needs child sure did, not cheating it taught her words better than progs the school system were using, now she's a normal 16 y/o writer. I have found that without opening up Outlook Express or MS-Word to draft a document, this handy/fast lo-Ram user has been and remains the smart free alternative for windows notepad. You can find the latest build here:
DocPad - a superior alternative to Notepad. A 3.5 MB install file that requires 7MB's of HD space, compatible with Windows 98-Vista. Take a look at the 'Screen-shots' to give U an idea of what the GUI's look like plus this link lists all it's function that I (thankfully) didn't.
OK, I think time for me to quit reviewing this for you and let you figure out if windows notepad is even in the same league. If I had to choose 10 vital progs on any computer I owned this would be one of the 1st progs I would install, it's use on just drafting good well written text is paramount, it's use to say keep a record of what you fired with what weapon at the range is in itself a chronicle that you may refer to many times to track a lot of factors in the sport part of shooting, ammo, scores, price, time, etc. I have my own section set up just for that purpose and I can track my range usage very accurately back to 1999 when I input the first few bits of data. I have every e-mail I ever sent to anyone saved in a folder in ANSI plain text and it's under 5MB's! I'd be interested on any feed-back and I can answer most questions about it, if the 'help' index it contains can't. I know this is OT and on USA Carry, but we use text to post and good formatted/spelled text to make good reads, nes pas?

Canis-Lupus

P.S. One of the other useful freeware tools on that web-site is called 'Connection Keeper'. Back in the pre-DSL days of Windows 95/98 if U stayed online too long (idle) your ISP would pull the plug & drop you, this sends out legal random searches to legit popular URL's to maintain the connection and your computer stays online, it is not a breach of anything as your computer as far as any ISP is concerned is still surfing, and that was very useful on a 56K modem a decade ago. Obviously if your ISP says no auto connectors then do not use or install it, they may detect it and you may find yourself looking for a new ISP, never happened to me or anyone who I know who used it, that is as legal as I can make it folks.
 

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Do not think so tattedupboy.
Under 'requirements' for an operating system to run 'Doc-Pad' it lists the RAM, space required, etc, and the builds of Windows [98-Vista] it will load onto. I'd say no on this text editor which 'borrows' some fonts, colors and drivers from the Windows core operating system, plus links in with the time functions for Windows to run it's calendar, Mac's have a totally different architecture. It doesn't mention Mac and Gammadyne has never offered a Mac compatible product in the 10 years I've used their freeware.

Canis-Lupus
 
Do not think so tattedupboy.
Under 'requirements' for an operating system to run 'Doc-Pad' it lists the RAM, space required, etc, and the builds of Windows [98-Vista] it will load onto. I'd say no on this text editor which 'borrows' some fonts, colors and drivers from the Windows core operating system, plus links in with the time functions for Windows to run it's calendar, Mac's have a totally different architecture. It doesn't mention Mac and Gammadyne has never offered a Mac compatible product in the 10 years I've used their freeware.

Canis-Lupus

Thanks Canis. It's too bad that more software developers don't develop products for Macs.
 

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