Community

Read through the forum tonight and found one answer to this, the person replied with a link within the forum and the link's dead (doesn't help me).

I'm running WinME, 1.8Ghz, 1Gb memory, 80Gb HD and when I open a file that is 5Mb, TextPad takes almost a full minute to load it. I have other files up to 36Mb, but I don't dare open them. Instead I've been using UltraEdit for them, but would rather use TextPad. I've also gone to the help file and read the topic, "Why does it take a long time to open small files?" and that's not my problem.

Any help?

Just want to add that I have all the defaults set under Configuration. No proportional fonts for screen or printer, no wordwrap either.

Got the same problem myself, i'm running WindowsXP

Just tested.

Looked for the biggest file on my disks - an 817 MB (857.411.154 bytes) zip file.

Right Click - Textpad.

The file was opened and displayed almost instantly (in Hex mode)

Win2K on a 2.66GHz, 512MB RAM system with a pagefile of at least 768MB and maximum 1536MB

Wish I could do the same. But does anyone know a solution?

Did you disable syntax highlight?
Is this file on a (slow) server?

Yes. All the defaults are set.

In one town I have XP with exctremely tough configuration and in another town I have Win98 with everything very modest. On both computers the same TextPad. As configuration is more tough, TextPad is slower; even big problems with scrolling - very strange way. Usually dealing with files 1-2 mega with often reformating. On old, modest platforms and systems - TextPad is great. With new (I know only XP)... it is the question. Anyway, I don't want even to try other text editor. For dealing with unicode characters using UniEdit (a little bit strange but works).

TextPad memory maps files, which is the fastest method provided by the operating system, but requires a contiguous section of virtual memory as big as the file being opened. A 5MB file should be opened in less than a second on the system you have. If this process is happening slowly, it's likely that your hard drive needs to be defragmented. If it's happening very slowly, it's likely that the file (or virtual memory) is located on bad sectors, so many retries are occurring. Running ScanDisk, in surface scan mode should detect that problem, but not always. We had a system running ME which always passed a ScanDisk test, but obviously had a fault, which only showed up when the drive was reformatted.

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions

No, that can't be the problem, either. I run scandisk often and defragment every fourth day. It's just an odd problem that I can't seem to figure out, even with you guys' suggestions. I'll keep trying, because yes, a 5Mb file isn't very large for TextPad.

I experience this, too, when I use proportional fonts and word wrap. It IS a PROBLEM that Textpad should address. But with those options turned off, I can load any file really fast.

I can confirm that the calculations required to do word wrapping with proportionally spaced fonts do increase the time it takes to open a file. A 5MB Apache log file opens instantly, on a 1.4GHZ/1GB system, whereas it takes 11 seconds when word wrapping is on.

Part of the problem is the way Windows implements the multiple document interface (MDI). Only the topmost document is maximized, so when another document is made active, its window is maximized and the previous one's window is restored. This requires recalculation of word wrapping in both windows. For the first document to be opened, its window is created at its restored size, then maximized, so word wrapping has to be done twice.

We'll look into how to improve on this, but in the meantime, word-wrapped files can be opened about twice as quickly, if they are not maximized. It will be twice as quick again, with a fixed width font.

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions

That seems to make logical sense. Why not submit this solution to the known problems and workarounds and/or the tips forum?

Then how is, say, Ultraedit able to do it so well? I know they normally open a temp file and read it only partially, but even with that option turned off, it's still really fast.

Also, how does one open a file "minimized" and why would one want to?

If I try to word wrap a big file Textpad takes quite
a long time. I assumed this was a very intensive
operation to do.