Community

Well I've not seen ANY updates in the last year or so and theres appears to be no development going on at all. Any comments ?

Can someone comment on the progress of the next version if there is one as there are a few outstanding GDI issues with windows xp... ?

Short Answer = Yes.

Long Answer: Scanning through old posts, some Helios employees (or people who've emailed Helios employees) have stated that Textpad is NOT dead and is currently being developed. But, let's face the facts...

- The "What's New" section hasn't been updated since April, and that was only because people were losing their License Keys.

- There hasn't been a new version since Windows XP came out. Yet, there were 3 new versions in 2001 alone, and 4 english versions in 2000.

- There's not much going on in the support forums.

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Personally, I love TextPad, and will probably use it forever. The interface is a lot cleaner than it's competitors, it runs fast, and does ALMOST everything I need it to. As it is, I can only think of a small number of things to add (syntax: bold, italic; list-box output capture instead of plane text and dock it at the bottom). Some people want it to do a million-and-one things, but then it would lose it's style and appeal.

Sure, I think a new version would be nice. But I'm pretty fine with the way it is.

The long answer = NO

but it is indeed getting a lit long...

Well looking through the forums, I think it's about time i dug out my copy of sharpdevelop and started writing something that fills my own requirements :/

thanks for the feedback.

I have faith that exciting things are brewing. But we have all been waiting a verrrrrrrrrrrry long time.

We sure are a patient bunch :' )

:' ( ?



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

I still have a little hope for TextPad, but not so mouch that I will continue to wait. The only thing we've gotten from Helios is the anwsers other people have gotten - we haven't seen anything directly from them.

The only reason I still keep TextPad is because of it's speed, witch is pretty important on a 300 MHz mashine. When 3GHz, ½ GB RAM mashines become avalible and at about 10.000 danish kroner (about 1350 euro), I'll buy one and change editor, if TextPad haven't come up with anything really good.

Currently the two serious editors I've come up with are free: jEdit (jedit.org) and Emacs, but I think my choice is jEdit. Emacs is like learning to walk again

But if Helios only from time to time would say "we'r working at this and that, and we think we can ship TextPad 5 at xyz time, I would wait longer.

Sorry, TextPad is great, but an editor that's not in development is a dead editor.

>Sorry, TextPad is great, but an editor that's
>not in development is a dead editor.

Sorry to be blunt, but that's ridiculous.

Why should any development plans alter the way you use TextPad right now?

The long time without an update only means it hasn't had a chance to become bloatware.

First, there is nothing wrong in using a dead, or not in development, editor. But if you choose an editor that just need a bit more functions before it suits your needs, you often can wait maby a year for the functions to come. How ever if the is only a little chance that the things you need will come, there is no reason to wait anymore.

TextPad is beeing overtaken by a couple of editors now, EditPad, is one mentioned in another thread. Why stick with TextPad if other editors now suite your needs better, at the same price and speed? Or if your get a faster computer, the speed parameter may change, so more editors is avalible to suit your needs (I think of jedit.org).

I still think TextPad is a great editor, but compared to it's compeditors is sliding into the "good" category, imho. It's still the best editor for me untill I get a faster computer, but it dosn't suit all my needs, and I don't think it will be dooing it. If it did I would be happy to reregister at twice the current price, but let's face it: Helios haven't done anything for more than a year. We got the auto key generator, but to me it's like "We'r outphasing this, let's automate the most frequently support question".

TextPad is in the lead, but if your not improving all the time, you can't stay there.

I wrote to one of Helios Software's staff members directly (rather than to the info@ and support@textpad.com addresses), and got a *real* reply. This was in July/August of this year.

At the time, I posted the reply on this thread:
http://www.textpad.com/forum/read.php?f=1&i=3402&t=3402

but to sum it up, Helios are making TextPad a .NET application. I don't know whether they mean they're making it into a .NET development tool, or if they're making it a tool that's developed on .NET. The guy who relpied to me expected we'd see a maintenance release by the end of August.

Well, it's November now. Hmmm.

I've heard the same rumors. It would indeed be nice to hear from Helios about the future; for now, I'm finding so many minor things that don't allow easy growth from TextPad that it is indeed frustrating.

My major adaptation has been to write a bunch of VBScript extensions to use with TextPad; but now I have a mile-long tools menu...

ok some feedback from me again

1/ ive done exactly what Alex Angelopoulos has done and wired in a fairly large amount of vb scripts into it (slowly being replaced with console C# apps).

2/ .net is possibly not an option for textpad. Even when precompiled, the editor is going to be very slow on older machines. My dev box is a p3-500 w/ 384mb where i develop .net applications and php based websites. Sharpdevelop ( www.icsharpcode.net ) is very slow on that machine. The UI lags. What is the advantage in doing it in .Net from a C++/MFC background apart from it's new and is a little more robust regarding exception handling?

3/ if it is indeed a .net development application they are not going to succeed as sharpdevelop (free) and visual studio (80 quid for basic edition) is going to wipe it out.

personally i'd like to see existing textpad with:-

1/ more customisable external scripting capabilities

2/ the same level of support as we've always had

3/ a bug tracking system on the web site

4/ better syntax, nice auto tabs and "core plugins" (ie so someone can write language/profile based plugins) such as function reference.

that would make me very happy

Well I am a long term TextPad user (four years) and write all my Java code using it. However, I think it's time for all of us to accept that TextPad's life is coming to an end.

If TextPad was in development, there would have been some sign of that by now. I know that this is unpalatable to us all, but TextPad's dead.

Matthew

Hmmmm. I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this, yet, but if you look up to that little bar that has the URL in it, you'll see that you're at http://www.textpad.com/.

Last I checked, web hosting wasn't [absolutely and completely] free. I would imagine, that as long as this discussion is being held at this site, rather than some newsgroup somewhere, there's a strong probability that we'll see more from Helios.

Someone has to be paying the bills ...

Jacob.

Well, I'm moving on now. I've found another Unicode-capable programmer's editor for Windows that does everything I need, and better than TextPad: EmEditor by Emurasoft (http://www.emurasoft.com).

The only thing EmEditor doesn't have is multi-file support but that's not critical to me since I'm using Visual Studio .NET for big projects anyway. EmEditor does have the ability to search multiple files, and jump to found locations via hyperlinks.

If Helios ever manages to produce another TextPad update I'm willing to give it a try but I'm not holding my breath...

Jacob,

I had wondered why Helios were still paying for hosting if their principal product was dead. I don't have an answer as to why that might be. However, they're allowing users to desert TextPad in their droves without doing anything about it. The reason they're still paying for hosting is unlikely to be any more strange than that.

Believe me, I'd like nothing more than TextPad to rise again and lead the way once more amongst editors. There's only so long you can wait though, isn't there?

Matthew