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Hi. I have been using Textpad for quite some time. Now, all of a sudden, when I do a tools-compile, it doesn't work anymore. It says "The system cannot find the file specified". It is referring to the c:\WINNT\System32\javac.exe file.
As far as I know, I haven't changed anything having to do with this file.
Any suggestions on what to do or what to check??
Thanks!

That's weird, because I have the exact same problem, first seen yesterday, and that's why I came to this forum today. I reinstalled it, and went to Tools-->configure, and set a new compile file location (jdk\bin. where javac.exe my compiler rests). However, I have to use Command-4 to access it, because Command-1 can't be reconfigured (by me). I am interested to hear how to reset Command-1 to mean "Compile java file"

I had the same problem. After you add several (12=a lot ?) tools Textpad gives them an already used keyboard shortcut. If you select the tool with the second instance of a shortcut it is the first one who is executed.

(follow an extract from support help...)
You have to change the keyboard shortcut assignments.
In Configure menu choose:
1. Preferences
2. Keyboard
3. From the Categories list, select "Tools"
4. From the Commands list, select "The specific tool"
5. Enter the desired shortcut in the box provided
6. Click "Assign"
7. Click Apply

At stage number 5, you will be informed if your shortcut choice is already
allocated to something else. You can then change this, if required.

I also had problems with compiling Java programs (the default location of the compiler in the system32 directory doesn't usually contain a Java compiler (only a JVM) and I couldn't change the command, it is grayed out). The whole trick is to ADD a tool. Go to preferences -> tools and click the ADD button and choose "program". Browse to the javac.exe program in your JDK directory and voila! Also make sure if you import non-standard packages in your classes (I do with Java Servlets) that the CLASSPATH variable points to the packages (in WinNT the correct way isn't through autoexec.bat but with control panel -> system -> environment -> variables).

TextPad is absolutely perfect for programming with Java Servlets! It's super fast (only about 2MB) and you can use it to give different syntactic elements different colors (you can even edit the standard java.syn ASCII file to add non-standard classes etc.) and you can also change the colors of just about everything. I made my own fancy editor look with beautiful 24-bit color combinations and a dark background and programming is now far more enjoyable! (those standard boring white backgrounds in editors kill your eyes if you're programming 8 hours or more a day with it).

I like to have full control over my source code and don't need all those automatic features in IDEs and TextPad is really perfect for it. Who needs all those useless functionality in bloated Java IDEs. Give those guys from TextPad a break and buy TextPad. It costs nothing and your boss will pay for it anyway

Emile,
Sounds like you know what you're doing. I've setup textpad several times, but I still haven't found out exactly what it is that it takes to get it set up correctly. I'm using windows XP which I've had it working on before, but I just can't seem to get it to see the class files. I'm editing the System variable classpath to point directly to the folder the classes are in. I think that last time I configured textpad to pass in the class path as an argument, but that doesn't seem to be working either. Are you using the feature that allow you to pass an argument to the compiler etc. Anyhow, any tips you might have would be great.

-Kjel Anderson