I'm thinking of doing a little notepad replacement app, but I'm wondering what you'd all like to see in Notepad that isn't already there.
I wanna keep the simplicity (so for all you who want a Rich text version, just use Wordpad), but expand functionality for plaintext users (primarily coders).
I'm also considering removing the ability to change the font face (font size will still be variable). Most of the features I want to add rely heavily on fixed-width fonts like Courier New.
Some of the features I'm thinking of adding are as follows:
- The option to do auto-indenting (so newlines start off with the same amount of whitespace as the previous line), very handy for writing scripts. This option can be toggled on or off.
- A shift-and-enter command for doing one-off toggles of the above without the need to click any options. If you're using auto-indent, this creates a newline without indenting. If you're not using auto-indent, then this automatically indents your new line.
- A ctrl-and-enter command that does yet another kind of indenting. This is a non-carriage linefeed. It moves the cursor down (as a return normally would) without returning it to the left. It does this by counting the number of characters up to your present cursor position and indenting the next line by this number of characters. This is one of the reasons why fixed-width fonts are crucial. It screws up without it, lol.
- I'm not certain about this, but I was considering also using a programmable colour-coding system. You could hopefully save these settings into Stylesheets, and apply them when you start work (so you can choose 'plain text', 'html', 'css', 'php', 'ini' and so on).
It would of course come with all the usual refinements - the 'Goto' functions would be there, but expanded. This would let you go to a certain line, as normal, but also go to a specific character relative to that line. Or you could go to a certain character relative to the whole document rather than the line (eg: character 2,897 rather than line 5, character 4).
It would also add more details in the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen. Details such as character number (relative to the whole document), column (character num' relative to the current line), line number, byte value (with a right-click menu to show other forms of this byte, such as 16-int, 32-int, and the signed/unsigned equivalents). Each of these would have settings you could tweak, like '0- or 1-based', 'decimal/hex/binary' and so on.
The same old find and replace features would exist, maybe updated to be better.
As long as you remove the bug where you type a file, save, and find that the line breaks are entirely messed up (like Notepad on XP does), then it'll be an improvement.
I'm making this primarily to meet my own needs (hence all the indenting stuff, which is the bane of my life in other notepad equivalents).
Line numbering would be done by the status bar at the bottom (Notepad XP already has this), which shows you what line and character you're on. 'Goto line' can help you find the line in the first place.
EDIT: Oh yea, the whole Unix/Windows linebreak problem will be automatically fixed when a file's loaded.
I want a toolbar for notepad, yet the same loading time. And a Ctrl-S shortcut.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
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