Community

So I've been crawling around the board looking at the multiple threads requesting a port of TextPad to *nix systems. When I first started using TP years ago I emailed Helios asking if they were planning a port (I didn't notice they had forums). They said they were considering it back then.

Years later it seems this is still the company's answer to the question. Really, how long does it take to make this kind of decision? Honestly, the editors available in Linux have nothing on TP. Sure, emacs has a ton of configurability and extensibility by using Lisp.. but who the hell wants to script their text editor to make it efficient and useful??

Helios - please - either open source TP and allow the community to port your wonderful application over to Linux, or make the decision to do it yourselves. You are depriving many of your loyal users of the flexibility they so greatly desire.

What reasons do you have for not open-sourcing? Any money that you make by people registering surely isn't due to your nag screen. The people that register their versions are the same people that would click the Donate button on your sourceforge project site. I would be one of those people if this were to happen.

(yes, I know TP can be run in WINE - this is not practical or very pretty)

I recall being in exactly the same position using Linux; I could never find a text editor to match TextPad, using apps like KATE and Gedit. I do run TextPad on OS X using the equivalent to WINE, agree it's not pretty but seems fairly practical.

Have you checked out the table of Linux equivalents to Windows software. I can't see it from here but it may be worth a look. There are other another list of equivalents available too.

You may have looked at these already but some like SciTE might be worth a look.

To be honest, I'm tired of accepting substitutes.

I've tried using SciTE, gEdit, Emacs, and Vi for well over a month with each, and it just never felt good to use them. I even have coworkers that swear by emacs and their bindings - but for me to be efficient in what I do (coding..lots and lots of coding), I need to not have to think about my text editor, and I want my text editor to be the same, regardless of where I'm working. I want my font coloring to be spot-on, with the font that I want, and with intuitive indentation assistance that doesn't make me want to put my foot through my monitor (ahem, emacs).

That is why I submit this thread to Helios to make a decision. Open source TP or port.

I second that!! I also do a LOT of coding.

I am sick to death of Windoze. After the anti-virus, anti-adware, anti-spyware, spam-protection, profile protection, sandbox, firewall, MS defender (crappy coding protection), bla bla bla... I've spent 10 mintues booting and have to wait 30 seconds to open every program and file. Screw that! I've fallen in love with SUSE Linux, and have no plans on switching back to M$ crapware. The only reason I still have Windows installed is for using Windows only applets. Which is why I am HERE.

TextPad is far and above superior to all other text editors. There is no substitute. I couldn't tell you how many add-ons I have installed in TextPad. Between dynamic web coding, databases, and hacking old 3rd party applets for clients, dozens I'm sure. I've been coding since Machine Language on the first Commodores', and have no compunctions about editing a raw file if it annoys me. I simply can not get all the functionality from other text editors that I get from TextPad. Those that have similar functionality suck pond-water. Is emacs the one written in java or javascript? Whichever one that is, the partial functionality it provided was ok, but it's speed factor reminded me of working on an overloaded win 3.11 install. I was lucky not to punch out my monitor. I haven't bothered looking for a substitute in over a year, no one else is even in the same class as TextPad

At any rate, the entire programming community is moving to open source. Even Microsoft is waiving licensing for some file formats and stuff to work with SUSE Linux. That's saying a LOT. If open source can sway the mighty M$ empire, perhaps you fine folks should take a look (another look?) at its merits. I am sure if you released the source code, people would jump on the band wagon to get it set up for Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if Novell or Linspire financed TextPad themselves. Novell is seriously motivated to get the best in class solutions under the SUSE Linux belt, TextPad would certainly merit a notch in their belt AND a gold star. Anyway, all I need is a source that will compile in Linux, I'll try to figure out how to get it to work in SUSE 10.2 myself if I have to.

TextPad is already a world class text editor, the best there is as far as I'm concerned. There simply is no substitute, to suggest using one is idiotic (no offense). Please, please, please consider releasing it so us Linux folks who have fallen in love with its charms can continue warping code with it. I am sure there are 2 or 3 mac users left in the world who would like to use it as well (just kidding. wait no I'm not, if you're reading this, SOUND OFF!).

I don't know how persuasive I've been, but I do hope you folks will at least think about it and get back to us. Thanks for your time at any rate.

...and thanks for one BITCHIN text editor. (pardon the expression.)

Just to say I recently switched to Ubuntu Linux; had quite a lot of registered software on my Windows XP install including Textpad but thought I would wipe it all since XP had started going wrong.

Linux has been far better than I expected, but the thing that has amazed me the most, is how poor all the text editors are. Either they are over the top powerhouses that run from the terminal or they are immature GUI based editors designed to suit the author's way of thinking.

Textpad to me is like Firefox. A very simple and straightforward GUI based interface, loads of configuration options to suit the most extreme tastes and a matured, solid feel. Please port it to Linux!

Guys... they haven't released a new version of TextPad for Windows in over two years. What makes you think that they'll ever have time to port it anywhere?

Mal,
Did you try nedit? It hasn't been updated since 13 oct 2004, so most TP users should feel comfortable using it
It looks pretty outdated, so be sure to read this: http://www.nedit.org/technotes/looks-1.php

Yes. It should be possible to port TextPad to Linux now that Microsoft has provided the extensions needed to do so. I would love to have TextPad on my Ubuntu desktop at home and still use the Windows version at work.

now that Microsoft has provided the extensions needed

I'm highly interested how one can make a few calls to Win10 or Win11 in a Windows binary that also runs on WinXP to make it run as an ELF on Linux. Because I highly doubt it's THAT simple. Do you have an example? At best one Windows program with a past who "just" did this and succeeded?

It's more simple to just use WINE on Linux to execute Windows programs.