Basic Table structure for comma seperated files

[TestEngineer]

.. or tab delimited, fixed space, etc. Just to be able to view a CSV in a tabular format with limited control would be a great help for me. I write out test record data to a csv and the auto-update feature of the program is a real help in watching this real-time.

[A bit iffy]

I have voted against this because TextPad is a text editor, not a formatting tool. I suggest that configuring a spreadsheet would be more appropriate in this case.

[ben_josephs]

TextPad is capable of formatting text by interpreting tabs instead of displaying them. There is no reason in principle why it shouldn't be able to do this for other characters, such as commas, as well.

[TestEngineer]

My key concerns with using a spreadsheet application:
1. Excel locks the file out, so the test system cannot write to the file when openned
2. Excel is limited to somewhere in the range of 64K cells. The test records are flat files that often exceed this
3. The automatic update feature of Textpad offers the ability to "monitor" the test data output without having to repeatedly copy, open, close, copy, open, close, etc.
4. When digging for information within the test data, TextPad is superior to Windows XP search within text and has a good interface for collection information from multiple files into one file to work with.

Note that I'm not really looking for a spreadsheet application here, but more of an application that can display CSV files in a tabular manor. No need for formulas for this task

[raferb]

I do text editing to tab delimited data that contains numbers with preceding zeros, like zip codes, which make Excel unacceptable (it eliminates preceding zeros when opening txt files).

TextPad's Preference setting "Default tab spacing", under Tabulation, can put way too much white space on the page, if column widths are not uniform, because you have to set it to a value that accommodates the widest column of data.

The "Tab stops" option is too limited in the number of stops allowed if you have more than 32 columns, and only one set of stops can be applied to a given file type, instead of to specific files.

What would be nice is the ability to save an unlimited amount of defined tab stops to a file and then be able to apply the tab stop file within any given file TextPad has open. Or, even better, enhance TextPad with a feature that would make it smart enough to dynamically set tab stops to the longest value in a given column, plus a space or two.

This isn't really a request to see grid/table lines (is that what the original enhancement suggestion is?), rather a feature to better handle the display of data in columns. Maybe this is a different enhancement sugestion? (see: http://www.textpad.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8087)