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Looking for a notepad replacement

Discussion in 'Techno-Magic' started by SlickRCBD, Mar 1, 2013.

  1. SlickRCBD Gems: 29/31
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    I'm looking for a stripped down, simple replacement for notepad that only does one more thing than regular Windows notepad: Recognize and correctly open text files made on other systems with different line endings.
    Normal Windows uses LF & CR, some only use LF, some only use CR. When I try to open one of the latter in Notepad, it displays a wall of text.

    Is there anything out there that can handle those foreign text files such as commonly found in greasemonkey scripts or userstyle styles that has the same low-memory footprint, and speed of loading as Notepad?

    If I wanted a full-featured text editor, I could open the file in Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer, but those take time to load and lots of memory. I want something simple like Notepad.

    Any suggestions? Notepad++ seems more like something designed for programmers, and greatly reminds me of an old Mac program called BBEdit Lite.
    It doesn't display the simplicity of Notepad.
     
  2. Blackthorne TA

    Blackthorne TA Master in his Own Mind Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    What about WordPad? Comes with Windows just like Notepad...
     
  3. henkie

    henkie Hammertime Resourceful Adored Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!)

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    I don't think it's gets much more stripped down than Notepad, nothing would be left. Personally, I use Notepad++ instead of Notepad. It gets you tabs for switching between more files more easily, it has syntax highlighting for various programming languages and it has a splitscreen functionality, which is useful for displaying more than one file at the same time. Search and replace is generally faster, too, and the search is much more advanced.
     
  4. SlickRCBD Gems: 29/31
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    I thought wordpad had the same problem as Notepad, that it didn't recognize foreign line endings. Then again, I rarely use Wordpad since the Windows XP version of Notepad can now (heh, showing my age) open the larger files, unlike the Windows 95-98SE versions (I have no idea about the Windows ME version and can't recall how the 2000 version was. I never tried large files in the NT4 version at school).

    As for stripped down, what I need is something that can display and make small edits to text files that use the Mac or Linux style line endings (CR only, LF only, instead of LF & CR) and save it back to the same format. Other than that, notepad does everything I needed for that purpose.

    So, what I'm looking for is a version of Notepad that will interpret those strange line endings correctly instead of giving me a wall of text.

    ---------- Added 0 hours, 5 minutes and 16 seconds later... ----------

    ***
    Looks like the Windows 7 version of Wordpad will interpret the files correctly while Notepad does not. I'll have to try it on the XP machine, but I was using the wrong computer.

    I haven't tried Wordpad much since Windows 98SE when Notepad would report "This file is too large for Notepad. Would you like to open it in Wordpad instead?"
     
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