Indisposable Tools - Notepad++, a Notepad Replacement for Windows
Microsoft Notepad is probably (and unintentionally) one of my most used utilities, for example, when when stripping text formatting from content cut/copied from Word or Internet Explorer, or editing batch, vb, or <insert language here> scripts.
It's very quick to bring up Notepad (Windows + R, notepad <return>) as quick dumping ground for the clipboard, and uses very little resources, however it does have it's limitations - Unix carriage returns, no regular expression support to name but a few.
A highly recommended tool open-source replacement, which has now become one of my indisposable tools, is Notepad++.
"Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License."
"Based on a powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment."
Some of the key benefits, for me anyway, include:
- Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding for various languages (including XML, HTML, Perl, Python, VB/VBS, Batch etc)
- Multi-Document and Multi-View allowing you to view multiple documents and have multiple views between them, or in the same document
- Regular expression Search/Replace is fully supported
- File status Auto-detection, which is particularly useful when working on live files, such as logs etc
There are also a large number of plugins, which extend Notepad++ even further.
Installation is straight forward - just download the latest installer (or the .zip file), and accept all the defaults. I can also highly recommend installing the Notepad++ launcher, which will allow you to replace Notepad completely:
- Backup your original Notepad.exe
- Copy notepad.exe which comes with this package into 4 directories (in given order) :
- c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386
- c:\windows\system32\dllcache
- c:\windows\system32
- 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.
- Modify you registry (if you use installer to install your Notepad++, you don't need to do this step): Create key \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Notepad++, then add your Notepad++ full path as the default value of this key. In my case, it's C:\Program Files\Notepad++.
If you need any further information, check out the NpWiki++.
