Meet My New Favorite Text Editor

Monday, October 9, 2006 4:26 PM Filed under:

General

Meet My New Favorite Text Editor

I've been a long time fan of TextPad. I live by my text editor. My text editor is probably one of the most highly used applications on my pc. Seriously. TextPad has been great and I've always loved it. I decided on TextPad years ago after I grew dissatisfied with UltraEdit, I've tried a few others along the way, such as Notepad2, but none would compare to my favorite TextPad. Funny thing is, I wasn't looking for a new text editor, but I came across a new one today that I had not heard of before and I decided to give it a try.

Enter Twistpad

View more Twistpad screenshots

Twistpad is an awesome text editor. It would have to be to get me to decide to move away from TextPad. Complete with syntax highlighting, plugin support, collapsable text blocks ala Visual Studio regions, code snippets & template support, a built in clipboard ring, and a whole lot more.

So what made me decide to switch? Well, one thing for sure, Twistpad is a really great looking app. It has a very Visual Studio looking UI, and I do like that. A lot. However, some of my favorite features are:

Collapsable sections (outline blocks)
The way it handles searches
Auto-complete
Color syntax-highlighting printing
File compares
Word-style spell checking
Very well thought-out and designed. It makes sense and it's layout is how you would expect a text editor to be
Did I mention how great it looks. I am just loving the VS look and feel

Visit the Twistpad site

All in all, I am loving my new text editor. I have to say I didn't think the day would ever come that I would move away from TextPad. So far I love what I see. Sure there are some things that are missing, such as unicode support (coming in the next version) and maybe a shell extension to get better context menu support in Windows, but all in all I am happy.

Comments

Ghassan 10/9/2006 9:42 PM

Very interesting
I was using Notepad++, but I think I will give Twistpad a shot.
Thanks for sharing this
Dave Burke 10/11/2006 9:57 AM

Stop using Textpad??? That's crazy talk!

I might have to look at those Twistpad screenshots again...
Ryan Farley 10/11/2006 10:25 AM

Hehe. Dave, isn't it though??!? I thought the same thing. I could never imagine moving away from TextPad. I've been a long-time lover of TextPad. I would have never thought I'd actually choose to stop using it. However, I've been extremely pleased with Twistpad and I've been very happy with the change.

-Ryan
abhinav 10/11/2006 11:06 AM

Hmm.. i thought i was the only one left standing using textpad -even for .Net projects.

Lets take a look at this twistpad thingy then.

BTW: how about the options for programming tools in twistpad ? do they match up?
Ryan Farley 10/11/2006 1:03 PM

Hi abhinav.

I do really love how Twistpad handles integration to other things (such as command-line compilers) and captures the output back to a dockable output window. I think that part is really slick.

However, the plugin/addon capabilities are where the real promise is at. The details on building your own plugins have not yet been released (although there are a few plugins available from the makers of Twistpad), but I would imagine they would be COM-based as the app is written in Delphi, which is fine. But when those details are released, the ability to integrate with other apps/tools will really be powerful.

-Ryan
Giddy Up! - Erik Lane's Blog 10/24/2006 11:38 PM
Keith Rull 10/25/2006 10:45 AM

hmm.. I think Notepad++ works better after i have used TwistPad. The UI in TwistPad looks good though.. but thats just eyecandy :)
Josh 10/26/2006 9:34 AM

Why don't you use Visual Studio?
Ryan Farley 10/26/2006 9:41 AM

Josh,

I do use Visual Studio. A text editor is a test editor, I use an IDE for an IDE. Although Twistpad looks very IDE-like, it is from from an IDE. I do use a text editor for a lot of things though (not for just looking at source code as shown in the screenshot - although that is nice to be able to quickly open source in a text editor without firing up VS). Once you're in the habbit of using a good text editor (emphasis on "good", we're not talking something like notepad) you can't imagine not using one.

-Ryan
zvika 10/27/2006 12:50 PM

I am always looking for something to replace TextPad.
TwistPad looks promising, but the current version want run under my windows vista without administrator privileges (TextPad does).
Jiho Han 11/7/2006 5:40 AM

I like it. But I still can't get a replacement for vi (gvim). I guess I'm just used to all the key strokes and especially its regex replace - I know a lot of editors including twistpad does this but there is just something about vi that's so easier. Sometimes less gui is simpler.
That and convert to hex and back.
akeru 12/8/2006 12:20 PM

www.vim.org :)
Clint Herron 1/18/2007 11:44 AM

Looks like a great program!

I too am a longtime Textpad user, but I'm interested in seeing what else is out there.

Two huge features that Twistpad is missing that Texpad has is a good hex edit mode (unless someone can show me where I'm missing this), and I also can't find out how to enter block-select mode in Twistpad (this is invaluable when one needs it).

I do like the folding and smart braces though -- those are the main things I want to see added to Textpad.

--clint
Joe Gakenheimer 1/19/2007 5:02 AM

I have been using <a href="http://editplus.com/">EditPlus</a> for year, it is free and use it for most everything; from basic markup, asp, xml, js, an ms format cleaner, ever .aspx files. Interesting enough, your new fav is quite similar to EditPlus.
Troels 5/20/2007 8:02 AM

I'm a textpad-addict myself, but I just discovered twistpad. I have been experimenting with other editors for the last couple of months, but always ended up going back to textpad. Twistpad may just have, what it takes though. The biggest problem is, that it has quite a few bugs. I can't use an editor, which may crash on me; That's just unacceptable.

FYI it appears that development has finally been resumed on textpad; There is a new version 5.03 out, which has a more VS look to it (Including the docking tool windows, which I btw. don't like).

@Clint Herron: If you hold down the ALT key, you can block-select in twistpad too.