TextPad vs. UltraEdit: arguments for TextPad

[scottbass]

Hi,

First of all:

1) I hope this doesn't degrade into "religious" editor wars, which I've sometimes seen in other web forums. Hopefully not, since we're all pro-TextPad here. However, please keep comments on topic per the below.

2) I hope the moderators will let this thread remain. I could really use the information.

At my company, we've got Boxer as part of our global Standard Operating Environment (SOE). Since Boxer doesn't meet my needs as a programmer, I've gotten permission to use TextPad for myself and my department at my insistence. About 15 licenses...woo hoo Helios, don't spend the money all at once

However, I'm also pushing that my company (15,000+ employees) adopt TextPad globally, replacing Boxer. However, there are others in the company pushing for UltraEdit.

I've used TextPad for years, I've only seen demos of UltraEdit on other's computers.

I know we have a number of forum members who have used both editors. If so, can you please list, in your opinion, the pros and cons of TextPad vs. UltraEdit? IOW, if you were in my shoes, and needed to make an argument to senior IT staff for the use of TextPad over UltraEdit, what would those arguments be? And if UltraEdit has a feature that is better than TextPads (eg. editable macros, code folding, FTP editing), can you think of a good counter argument?

Thanks,
Scott

[scottbass]

P.S: After searching all forums further, I did see additional discussions on this very topic. However, since those discussions were all quite dated, I still feel this thread has relevance in comparing the current versions of both products.

[Britt]

I use both UltraEdit (v16.20) and TextPad (v4.73) at work. UltraEdit is the corporate standard but I got the company to buy me a TextPad license. UltraEdit has far more "bells & whistles", but TextPad has all the essential features. I stick with TextPad because it has a much better organized set of menus. I also appreciate the way TextPad handles cursor movement when inserting text in sequential lines (there is an old discussion of this in one of the UltraEdit forums). UltraEdit's syntax highlighting files are still a mess compared to TextPad's simpler approach. The only things I miss in TextPad are editable macros and a print margin indicator (vertical line).

[scottbass]

Thanks Britt, much appreciated.

Any more input out there? I'm not sure I have enough to convince IT to choose TextPad over UltraEdit...

[gregweb]

Hi
I have found Textpad to be excellent. I've been searching for a decent Windows text editor for years. I still use QEDIT which is a DOS command prompt editor limited to 640K of text and still find it great for rapid program editing. Textpad is finally my replacement. The BLOCK MODE SELECT is an absolutely key feature.

[derekwallace]

long time Textpad user (12+ yrs)
starting to be tempted to other editors.
currently trying Notepad++ and UltraEdit.

Both have one feature that im growing to love: a dockable window that lists all the functions / procedures in my TCL / PHP files.

Besides that i havnt found any particular killer feature to move away from Textpad

[Lee Juses11]

Hi guys,
I have found Textpad to be excellent.
I've been searching for a decent Windows text editor for years.
I still use QEDIT which is a DOS command prompt editor limited to 640K of text and still find it great for rapid program editing.
Textpad is finally my replacement.
The BLOCK MODE SELECT is an absolutely key feature.
Thanks...how to deal with depression

[Jens Hollmann]

I use TextPad mostly as a source code editor for various languages.

What I like in TextPad is that the search results and tool outputs (e.g. from the compiler) behave like documents. Which means I have full access with the keyboard (Ctrl-Tab or Shift/Ctrl-F11 etc.) to switch back and forth. Return on a line jumps to the corresponding line in a source document (when the tool is set up correctly), F4 and Shift-F4 to move to the next search result etc.

It has been a while since I used UltraEdit (version 14 or something) but back then the search results where in an extra pane and I had to use the mouse.

Being able to control the editor solely with the keyboard is an important feature for me.

[yyn]

I've been using ultraedit for a long time but switched to textpad this year mainly for the reasons Britt said.

Aside to that, what I favor in textpad is that editing/opening large files is much quicker in textpad than ultraedit. I occasionally have to examine large application log files, so I really appreciate this.

The ability to switch between plaintext and hexview in ultraedit is very useful to me: using ctrl-h switches back and forth. In textpad I need to re-open the file specifically in binary mode. Also the number of search occurrences is a real convenience in ultraedit.

In both cases I find the macro support a bit too poor.

[NefariousWheel]

Macros!

The ability to do complex macros simply is utterly brilliant. One TextPad macro saves me 40 minutes per day in munging XML files (and no, I don't need UltraEdit's XML parser).

[lrichardlewis]

I have both Textpad and UltraEdit and almost never use the latter. The main reason is that TP allows first-class usage of bookmarks while UE allows just limited usage. For example, TP allows me to copy bookmarked lines to the clipboard while UE does not. I make heavy use of bookmarked lines and find UE too limited. I buy each new UE release hoping that IDM will bring bookmarks up to a fully usable level and am always disappointed.

[Spot]

I started using TextPad in 1997 and in 2010 I reluctantly changed to UltraStudio.

I had several custom tools and syntax files I had added to Textpad. The most notable was a PERL program to open/save to FTP. Alas when servers moved to 64 bit architecture several problems cropped up, (BOM corrupting files in particular) and I didn't have time to solve the issues.

After a year I'm pretty happy with UltraStudio, (it's a feature rich full IDE) but some things about TextPad just felt better, (menus, keyboard shortcuts, block editing etc.). Now mind you UltraStudio has all these they just don't feel as intuative.

Over the years I had tried Boxer several times and quickly retreated because it didn't have some of the features I couldn't live without, (Block editing if I remember correctly).

Honestly, I ended up here today because I was feeling sentimental and wanted to check out if TextPad had started including Open/Save via (S)FTP, (the big deal breaker for me).

TextPad's a great editor and maybe someday I'll be back on it, (you really can't beat the price/features).