Community

Today we celebrate the second anniversary of the last official Helios announcement! Congratulations to this company policy of intensive dialogue with customers, not producing any vapour ware, and allowing everyone to plan his business thoroughly!

a dedicated customer

I just checked your previous posts and you seem to be a bit of a one trick pony. You do have a choice - if you don't feel TextPad is the appropriate editor for you or that there are too many bugs for it to be useable then you can move on to other applications. Helios have made a decision regarding how they will promote future versions of TextPad and that is theirchoice - it is their business to do with as they will.

Like a lot of users, I occasionally find myself frustrated at the (apparent) pace of TextPad development but I have tried many of the alternatives and so far none have worked as well or as elegantly for me.

Sorry, if I seem to be a bit sticky with the topic

Yes, I know this topic has been dealt with so often and it does not seem to wake someone at the provider of our loved editor. Today I could not hold myself when I saw the date of the last post in the announcement forum. I promise to not treat it again.

There is one feature I really need: unicode support. I find myself often using Eclipse to edit my files but I am not happy with it. I really love Textpad.
I would be happy, if Helios would at least state their (non)-information policy at some prominent place in the forum, but I searched and didn't find anything.

So, forgive me!

Martin

The forums are already too deep for this type of thing. It really needs to be on their main site somewhere. Let's look at the facts objectively:

1. The last software update was June 19, 2004.
2. Helios has stated (in a semi-public fashion) that they don't talk about products under development.
3. Customers regularly complain about the deafening silence.
4. "Is TextPad Dead?" threads abound.

While I respect Helios' decision to refrain from discussing future development, at some point one has to think, "This system isn't working." If it was, this wouldn't be such a hot discussion point. It doesn't matter which side of the argument you're on. The fact is, the discussions continue. That's gotta be some kind of red flag.

Would it be a bad company policy to state it on their main news page? "TextPad 5 is under development. We will not talk about the details. Check back later."

The lack of this has to be costing them new sales more than anything. Sure, all us old timers still love the product and use it daily. But think about someone just coming into this space? If you were doing an objective evaluation of several competing products, I would think one of your criteria would be, "How stable is the company?" It would therefore be natural to look at their web site for some sign of life. I doubt any manager would say, "Well, there's no news on the main site. Why don't you go digging around their user forums for any official statements from the company."

Like SteveH said, "it is their business to do with as they will." So I'll stand by and wait like everyone else. I just can't imagine standing so firmly by a policy which seems to annoy (rightly or not) so many people for so long.

There is one feature I really need: unicode support.

Seconded.

I tend to use EmEditor for Unicode stuff (and TextPad for everything else). It has just moved up to V6.0.

hillsc wrote:
Like SteveH said, "it is their business to do with as they will." So I'll stand by and wait like everyone else. I just can't imagine standing so firmly by a policy which seems to annoy (rightly or not) so many people for so long.

Well, I don't like that company policy. Sounds arrogant -- not the best attitude to have with your customer base.

Maybe someone should clone TextPad and make it better. Perhaps Helios won't care to notice that they have been cloned and eclipsed at the same time!

The trump card: Make TextPadSuperWonderfulUltraClone open source software! So even if Helios wakes up from their two or four year slumber they can't see who to sue when nobody visits their payment website anymore.

Ha Ha Ha!!!