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I sometimes work with very long files ( > 19,000 lines ) and have to view/edit different parts of the file that are far apart. I know I can split the window, but that reduces the visible area in each pane. Also, the panes cannot be scrolled independently, i.e. with a vertical split, you can't scroll the panes vertically independently of each other. I would like to be able to open a second window on the same document so that I get full window views of two distant parts of the file. Anyone know whether this is in the works for future versions?

Menu:
Configure/Synchronize Scrolling

deselect it

One solution would be to open a second instance of textpad and open the same file in both instances (and set it to read-only in one of them so you don't get confused with changes!)

That's not exactly what I meant. Try this. Split a window vertically. You can only scroll the panes horizontally independent of each other, allowing to you see different left and right portions in the panes. You can't see lines in one pane that are more than one window length away from lines in the other pane. If you split horizontally, you can only see 1/2 as many lines. I would like to be able to see a whole window full of lines from one part of the file in one window and another whole window full of lines from a distant part of the file in another window.

Thanks for response anyway.

You're right!
I assumed it would be like Word with fully independent scroll bars in eaxh view.
These statements found in Help seem to say the same:
Vertical scroll bar Display a vertical scroll bar in each view.
Horizontal scroll bar Display a horizontal scroll bar in each view.

Maybe they will improve on that

Andreas' response is the answer

except

I turned on 'Allow multiple instances to run.' in Preferences/General
but it does not work. I do not get two instances of the same file!!

You can open a second instance on the same file as Andreas suggests. Open the second instance of TextPad. The file won't automatically be opened in the second instance. You have to open the file in the second instance manually. However, this causes another problem: whenever you save the file in one instance you get the "Another application has updated the file ..." message in the other instance. I know you can turn off this message, but I feel nervous about doing so. Maybe that is an acceptable compromise.

That's exactly why I proposed setting the file to read-only in one of the textpads (e.g. by double-clicking "Read" in the status bar)

would be SO nice to be able to split files vertically and scroll independently. The present configuation is useless.

Yes, I agree. What I would find very useful would be to duplicate a window multiple times - so that I could open up the same file multiple times, each in different tabs, and work on different parts of the same file via switching tabs. Each of those tabs would be kept in sync, so that an edit in one of the tabs would automatically propagate to all tabs.

I found a fiddly workaround:

https://forums.textpad.com/viewtopic.php?t=10994