Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Darned Usable - Yet Another Reason that Notepad2 is the editor of choice and the magic of CR/LF vs. LF

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Darned Usable - Yet Another Reason that Notepad2 is the editor of choice and the magic of CR/LF vs. LF

Posted in Musings.

Notepad2cool

Those in the know already love Notepad2 and have much respect for Flo's flow. But, just when I thought I couldn't dig it more, today I had to edit some CVS files that were on SourceForge. They are Unix files (meaning Line Feeds terminating each line [LF] rather than CarriageReturn/LineFeed [CR/LF]) and the FAQ said in no uncertain terms - be careful when editing these files on Windows.

That's advice that's always good to follow. Note only should you know your CR/LF status, but also whether you have Tabs vs. Spaces, and if you are ANSI or UTF-8 or Unicode.

Anyway, Notepad2 not only shows the the LF status in the status bar and optionally at the end of each line, BUT it also lets you CHANGE THE FILES STATUS by simply double clicking on the status bar indicator.

Fabulous. I was able to edit the Unix files without fear and with the confidence that the files I saved were correct. Slick.

Posted at 2005-01-04 11:29 PM by Scott
Comments [5]
Permalink

Tracked by:
"Notepad 2" (Claudio Brotto) [Trackback]
"Death to Carriage Returns and Linefeeds" (Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen) [Trackback]

Wednesday, January 05, 2005 12:12:42 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

BIGFONTY STRIKES AGAIN

Jeff Atwood

Wednesday, January 05, 2005 2:14:28 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I'm also a big fan of Notepad2. I actually learned about it through your blog and tried it myself. I liked it so much that I localized it to Japanese.

vbNullString

Wednesday, January 05, 2005 5:01:45 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Though it's not freeware, I'm still a die hard TextPad user. On of the main reasons I like it is the "Document Selector" so I can have a whole web site's worth of documents open for editing, and switch between them with a sinle click on the file list. Is there anything like that in Notepad2?

Also - here's my n00b question o' the day: How can I get cool flat windows like the one's in your screen shots? Is it just a theme?

jeff

Thursday, January 06, 2005 10:44:41 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hi, just clicking through the Internet. I recommend Notepad++. It's free, open source. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

It'll do exactly what those screenshots of yours show and more. Give it a try.

Btw, no, I don't work on that project. Just think it's a good tool.

roy

Saturday, March 04, 2006 3:07:09 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Notepad++ is my favorite text (code source) editor :
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

It supports tons of languages, including HTML, PHP, JavaScript...
Some of the things that stand out to me: Macros, Multi-document sync’d scrolling, Vector-style zoom in/out, and Code highlighting that is on-par with Dreamweaver. It also has comparable site-wide find and replace. Another nice feature are tabs that behave like Firefox. They are draggable, and a middle-click closes them. Anything I could say won’t do it justice. In short, what Firefox is to the browsing, Notepad++ is to code.

To replace your notepad by notepad++, you have to :

1. Download and install Notepad++ :
http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/notepad-plus/npp.3.5.Installer.exe
2. Download Notepad++ launcher :
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/commun/misc/NppLauncher.bin.zip
3. Copy notepad.exe which comes with this package into 3 directories (in given order) :

i. c:\windows\system32\dllcache
ii. c:\windows\system32
iii. c:\windows

When you replace notepad.exe in c:\windows\system32 and c:\windows, a "Windows File Protection" message box appears, click Cancel. Then another message box appears, click OK.

Now Notepad++ is your default Notepad.