November Windows 98 Shareware

Some of the best available text editors and utilities.

By David Nourse

I'd be very happy to hear from readers about any topics that they would like to see covered in this column -- just drop me a line care of workshop@acp.com.au or APC Workshop, PO Box 37, Sydney NSW 102

Using a tabbed document interface, Boxer can handle multiple files, each up to 16M in size. It has extensive find/replace facilities and can do just about anything to selected text: as well as the usual cut, copy and delete capabilities, you can strip spaces, capitalise words or sentences, align or indent, manipulate text in column blocks (great for handling charts), and much more.

Useful tools include a spell-checker, multiple levels of undo/redo, templates for defining "boilerplate" text, bookmark setting and shortcuts for inserting time, date and special characters. Powerful search options include hunting system-wide for a text string or Unix-style regular expression. Cutting and pasting text is made much easier with Boxer's eight private clipboards, which save their contents between sessions.

Boxer really shines as a programmer's editor. It has built-in support for thirty languages, popular (Pascal, HTML and C) and exotic (Ada, PROGRESS and AutoLisp). You can extend or update language support by defining reserved words (up to 3,000 of them) and syntax. Syntax can be highlighted in colour or with print attributes like boldface, and even printed in colour, using a separate colour scheme if preferred.

Support for programmers also includes line-numbering and sorting, spell-checking source code while ignoring text, finding mating pairs such as parentheses, block markers and HTML tags, and defining language constructs as templates. You can also view files in hexadecimal form, integrate your browser, locate duplicate lines, jump to a specified byte offset, and open associated header files.

Boxer's power and flexibility may verge upon overkill for the casual user, but it's a must-try for programmers and other heavy-duty users.

Highlights of WordTabs include a tabbed document interface, bookmark capabilities, multiple undo/redo, a customisable AutoCorrect facility and a bunch of handy shortcuts for moving inside and among open text files. You can use proportional or fixed-width fonts, drag and drop chunks of text, count words, create a list of favourite files, save sets of files for later retrieval and find files rapidly by filename or text key.

Less common but extremely useful features include Spike, an effective aid to note-taking which collects file clips and retains its contents between sessions, and a file indexing tool that will save you time when you work with large files.

WordTabs' RTF editing capabilities are also extensive, including full formatting and font selection at paragraph level, line spacing, text bullets and a clever Collector feature for grabbing all sorts of items from the Windows clipboard to insert into documents.

The only reservation we have with the software is that its spell-checking options could be improved: while you can access a large vocabulary by using up to three dictionaries simultaneously, you can't filter out items like e-mail addresses, words containing numbers, acronyms and URLS, and that can waste considerable time.

WordTabs is a great piece of freeware that makes an excellent Notepad/Wordpad substitute and offers you much more.

SWS can search for single words or phrases, but really shines if you make the effort to familiarise yourself with Unix style regular expressions; it's well worth mastering their rather cryptic syntax for complex searches.

SWS displays search results in two panels: one is a file listing which includes the number of matches, and the other displays the lines where matches have been found in a selected file. You can use a right-click menu to check out the context of each match using an internal file viewer, open files with the default application or edit them with Notepad (or another editor specified in SWS's preferences).

If you're using a lot of text files, Super Word Search should prove a useful tool, especially if you're comfortable with searches based on regular expressions.

Editor Pro is a well-designed application. Its not as high-powered as some editors but still possesses a good complement of useful features including a tabbed multiple document interface, fully customisable Auto-Correct and multiple undo/redo capabilities. It also lets you set bookmarks, define keyboard shortcuts and get instant access to key system files.

It includes useful support for programmers and HTML authors: you can paste a document in HTML format, create code templates, and customise syntax highlighting for popular programming languages such as HTML, ANSI C, Visual Basic and Java. A Quick Projects option lets you manipulate whole sets of project files.

Editor Pro is fully integrated with Tray Suite for spell-checking, dictionary and thesaurus facilities via the Tools menu. The spell-checker includes an 'Active Spell' option for spell-checking as you type.

Tray Suite's key feature is its support for other applications. You can use it directly inside many popular programs by selecting text and hitting a hotkey combination. The default hotkeys aren't exactly intuitive but you can define your own, provided that you avoid conflicts with other applications.

You can also use the Suite with almost any text-based application by copying selected text, applying the hotkeys and pasting the results--a bit clumsy, but workable. If you don't like hotkeys, you can access any Suite tool from a system tray icon: this approach also allows you to use the tools independently of any other application.

The spell-checker has a useful set of options, and the dictionary is large and offers synonyms, antonyms, and other related words. It can be a convenient alternative to the thesaurus, which follows traditional Roget (concept-based) lines.

If you want useful writing tools without going for a high-end wordprocessor, EditPro Suite may fit the bill nicely.

It has the standard capabilities of the new breed of text editor: you can handle multiple files (each up to 16M in size) with a tabbed document interface; call up a spell-checker and thesaurus; exercise numerous text formatting options and manage your documents by assigning them in categories or tag them as favourites for easy access. More sophisticated features include multi-level undo/redo, bookmarking, template creation, text-to-HTML conversion and powerful search capabilities which allow you to locate text in any file on your system and execute global replacement tasks.

Two features make this program stand out from the crowd. NoteTab Pro's Outline tool lets you collect and readily access text files (up to about 5,400 of them) by creating a single, large outline file which displays headings for each component. You can manipulate this file easily and add hyperlinks between components -- great for note-taking. The other real ground-breaker, the Clipbook tool, lets you collect text clips and save them as libraries for easy recall. Stored clips can be called into other applications via the Windows clipboard.

Clipbook capabilities extend far beyond this, because you can add simple commands to clip libraries or even develop mini-applications with a scripting language that includes commands, variables, functions, conditionals and events. The package's sample libraries provide Auto-Correct, HTML tagging via keyboard shortcuts, coding examples and several other useful facilities -- there are more libraries available from the author's Web site and there's ample documentation to help you roll your own.

NoteTab Pro is a top-notch text editor at a bargain-basement price which belies its quality. It's also a capable HTML editor, and I recommend it highly for writers, programmers and Web authors.

The NoteTab stable also includes two versions of the program, Standard and Light (freeware). Neither are as speedy or sophisticated as the Pro version but share most of its capabilities; these are a must-try if you're looking for a cheap but capable editor.