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Metapad
Metapad
Metapad 3.6
May 2011
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Contents
--------
- What?
- Why?
- How?
- Installation
- Changes
- Contact
- Disclaimer
What?
=====
If you are like me, one of the most useful programs for everyday use is
Microsoft Notepad. I realized that Notepad was quite powerful and did
almost everything I wanted in a simple text editor. Yet I found the UI
to be unlike most 32-bit Windows applications and actually quite poor...
Metapad is a small, fast (and completely free) text editor for Windows
9x and Windows NT (2000) with similar features to Microsoft Notepad but
with many extra (and rather useful) features. It was designed to
completely replace Notepad since it includes (just about) all of
Notepad's features and much, much more.
Why?
====
I created this program as a personal project. I was simply annoyed with
the poor usability of Notepad and it was clear that Microsoft wasn't
ever going to improve it (although their latest versions now have some
minor improvements). I was pleased with the outcome of Metapad (I
actually renamed notepad.exe to notepadx.exe and use Metapad instead of
Notepad) so I decided to release it as freeware.
How?
====
Metapad was created (as was Notepad) in pure ANSI C with the Win32 API.
It contained around 1200 lines of code as of version 1 and now has about
7000 lines as of version 3.0. Thus, it is almost as small and just about
as fast as Notepad is. Unlike some other so-called Notepad replacements,
Metapad actually loads in an instant. (Those other programs tend to
approach 1 or 2MB instead of being under 100KB and are written using C++
with MFC or even, gasp!, Visual Basic.)
Installation
============
Metapad was designed to completely replace Notepad. To see how you can
install Metapad to replace Notepad see the metaFAQ page on the Metapad
web site (see contact information at the end of this document).
Changes
=======
3.0 - basic Unicode text file support (ANSI code page only)
- new favourites menu
- freaky new transparent mode (requires Win2K)
- new selection margin (see the settings view tab)
- new block quote function (add "> " to each line)
- new strip trailing whitespace function
- new secondary external viewer
- find & replace now support newlines (\n) and tab characters (\t)
- sentence case, title case & inverted case functions
- new launch default (associated) viewer function
- five new toolbar buttons (word wrap, font, two viewers & refresh)
- find & replace dialogs use current font option
- Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down scrolls window
- recent files menu does not dynamically resize
- now reads Macintosh text files (converts to Unix)
- separate secondary font colours
- option to always print with secondary font
- option to hide the scrollbars when possible (not in LE)
- option to not select text at cursor for find (uses last find)
- option to automatically close find dialog
- can clear find/replace & recent file histories
- separate option to save find/replace history
- can specify default file format
- can suppress "undo buffer" prompt
- can suppress solitary carriage returns warning
- replace all in selection will preserve the selection
- status bar now uses default GUI font (removed status font width)
- arrow cursor instead of hand for double-click links
- delete (clear text) on context menu
- new /e cmdline option to go to end of file
+ Shift+Enter will not lead to invalid files
+ select all menu item updates cut/copy toolbar buttons
+ insert date updates properly over multi-line selections
+ fixed bottom scrollbar disappearing on load
+ paste is now deactivated when no text is on the clipboard
+ initial messageboxes caused no cursor in main window
+ fixed display bug for block indent more than one screen of text
+ recent files list is now case insensitive
+ minor recent files menu display bug fixed
+ fixed .LOG scrolling bug (in LE only)
+ fixed /g command line bug (in LE only)
+ the '&' now appears on printed output (in LE only)
Contact
=======
When submitting bugs or asking questions please make sure to check this
document and the online FAQ beforehand.
http://liquidninja.com/metapad/
Disclaimer
==========
Metapad is freeware and is freely distributable in its unmodified zip
file. Use it at your own risk. The author, Alexander Davidson, cannot
be held responsible for any problems encountered while using this
software.