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 (©£اة½..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.
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.
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.
10-04-2008, 12:36 AM
A Powerful/Useful Text Freeware Program. 
Linear Mode
