Limitations in trial version

[Vivitech]

Just found TextPad on the web, it finally looks like my search for a “BRIEF� replacement is finally over!

However, I just before I register, I thought I would try to enable a tool to activate my Borland compiler as shown in the help example, but the “Capture Output� tickbox and the “regular expression� textbox are both greyed out. Is this because the compiler tool support is disabled in the unregistered version?

I’d just like to be sure before I finally make the change.

[Andreas]

For "Capture Output" it is necessary to define the tool as "DOS Command", not as "Program".

"Regular Expression" is only useful if the output is caught
as the REs are applied to that output (to jump to errors or whatever)
so it is disabled as soon as capture output is disabled.

This has nothing to do with unregistered / registered version.
Just with the way you configure the tool.

[Vivitech]

Thanks for that - it suddenly dawned on me that BCC32 was a Win32 console program, so that's why you still get the "capture output" check box even if you set BCC32 up as a "program" as in the examples.

I was trying to set up Borland 3.1 (yes we do still have to support and modify applications that were built with it - some of them are running factory production lines!) and of course that is a DOS prog.

I do very much like the look of Textpad, but a couple of things are still bugging me:

Now that I've set up the BCC 3.1 compiler as a DOS program, it does indeed capture the output from the compiler correctly. However, while compiling, the capture process is SO SLOW ! Why is that? Is there another way of getting back those precious few seconds of my life each time I compile - I might need them one day!

While I was trying to modify the regular expression to suit BCC 3.1, TextPad locked up a couple of times when I double-clicked a line in the command results (presumably when trying to parse the line using my expression). No fun at all if you hadn't enabled "save all".

Also, when it does lock up like that, it hasn't saved the modified tool configuration either. It looks like even though you've clicked the "Apply" button in the tools config dialog, the save to disk doesn't take place until you exit TextPad. Also not good.

Or maybe I'm being picky?

I've registered already though - the nag box got to me during my experiments!

Superb forum too - always good to see fellow users supporting each other.

[Jeff Epstein]

Yes, preferences are not truly saved to the registry until you exit the program. I don't agree with this behavior ("Apply" should APPLY!), but there is an easy work around: Close and reopen TextPad, if losing what you've just done in the Preferences dialog would result in a crying fit.


:' )
Jeffy
http://www.jeffyjeffy.com/textpad