Why TextPad?

[kengrubb]

Couple of us upstart newbies started asking for tools, and TextPad was among those I requested. NP++ is free, so the question was put to me, "Why TextPad? Why not use NP++, which is free?"

I would refer one to the wiki page list of text editors whenever there is a discussion of why TextPad. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I know this isn't every text editor ever produced, because I mean they didn't list @IPF, CANDE, or TEDIT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors

52 out of 74 listed text editors are either free or bundled with an OS. 21 out of 74 listed text editors cost. 1 of the listed text editors is free for the light version, but offers two pay versions with more features than the light version.

Range of the license fee is from $5 to $299, so at $30 TextPad is among the least expensive text editors out there with only 4 other products costing less. I would also draw conspicuous attention to the fact that I bought my license in 1999 for version 4.x, and I have not paid for an upgrade since. My two cents, Helios should start charging for upgrades starting with Version 8.x

IMHO, the pay editors beat out the free editors in terms of stability. NP++ is probably one of the best free ones out there, but it's buggy in that I still get false results on searches from time to time, and not just with RE. It's also got a very kludgey interface. Free editors are worth every penny you pay for them.

Last night, I downloaded Sublime at home and took it for a spin. While I like some things about it, I still see an interface and menu structure that reminds me too much of the scattered nature of NP++. At $70, and an upgrade cost at major upgrades, it's much more expensive than TP, so I'm not comfortable with there being any sort of benefit to moving from TextPad to Sublime, for me.

A text editor isn't an IDE and it really should not be an IDE. Some of the other text editors out there try to be something of a mini IDE. IOW, they "do stuff to help", and I really don't want a text editor to help. I want it to show me the text without any interpretation.

I twiddled with PFE for several years in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, even after I switched to TextPad. PFE could still handle huge files better than most, so I kept it around for those sorts of tasks. I sorta miss PFE, but there are other tools now (like WildEdit and others) to handle editing of huge files. PowerGrep isn't so much a text editor as it is the world's most powerful Swiss Army knife for text, and it's freaking' awesome. Still debating if I'm gonna drop $150 on it when the trial runs out.

I've been using TextPad for 15 years, and in that time I've worked on 4 different Mainframes (Unisys 2200, Unisys MCP, HP NonStop, and IBM z-Series), most flavors of Windows (95, 98, 2000, XP, and now 7), couple of different UNIX variants, coded or scripted in COBOL, VBScript, JavaScript, AutoIt, PowerShell, VBA, VB6, VB.NET, and ASP.NET

Unicode is one of the big bugaboos, but thus far I've not been drawn into the need for editing Unicode files. If that day ever comes, and TextPad version 8.3.1 hasn't perfected Unicode handling, that might be something which forces me to adopt another text editor.

Text editors are to developers as circular saws are to carpenters. We need them, and there are plenty of good ones out there.

Maybe it's the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra that keeps me going in TextPad.

Maybe it's old age, senility, and forgetfulness that keeps me going in TextPad.

Maybe it's laziness in that I will have to work to learn a new text editor that keeps me going in TextPad.

Maybe it's old age, senility, and forgetfulness that keeps me going in TextPad.

Whatever the reasons, I continue to use it.

Familiarity is certainly one big draw for me, and my familiarity was the reason my last gig bought a license for developers. They had in me an onsite resource who knew TextPad far better than they were ever likely to need to know how to use it, and I managed to grow some people up to where they were comfortable and confident in using it. This, in my view, is a reason for folks in my current gig to adopt it. Best of luck in figuring out NP++ from reading about it online. I've had some luck, but by and large I've had to give up searching for certain things in NP++.

[kevinHealy]

Well said!