Tag: text

  • Writemonkey Is Soul Food For The Modern Writer

    Writemonkey is described by its author as

    Zenware for full screen distraction free creative writing. No whistles and bells, just empty screen, you and your words. WriteMonkey is light, fast, and perfectly handy for those who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter but live in modern times.

    Writemonkey is a text editor where any writing, essay or note can be initiated while keeping a minimal look and feel. That is not to say Writemonkey does not have useful features but the full screen – which can be exited by pressing the Esc key – has a black background by default, or any other color using the preferences, and provides a good measure of quietness. To keep it in that serene look all settings can be accessed by right clicking on the ‘paper’ area so exiting from the full screen mode is rarely, if ever, necessary. It has many features that make it useful and interesting such as keeping a tab of number of words typed with the possibility of adding a progress bar to keep a running indicator of how close a user is to a word minimum or limit for an essay for example. This, with all other application settings, is accessed either in the relevant, in this case Progress, tab of the preferences or straight from a right click. On the same Progress tab there is also a timer feature to keep tabs on how long a project or writing is taking. Other notable and pretty rare and unique features include a Repository where unfinished notes can be stored and accessed later. Any text can be added to the Repository by highlighting it and then right clicking and choosing Move to repository. The Jump, a popup toggled on/off via a right click, lets the user move between paragraph and bookmarks within the document. One other, but certainly not the last, feature of Writemonkey is Replacements. This is a text replacement feature for re-using common words where triggers or hot keys are defined in the preferences.

    Of particular note is that if a user does not associate .txt files with Writemonkey the only way to access the said files is by opening the Writemonkey executable itself and then clicking Tab and Ctrl to get a list of recently open and used documents. Alternatively Open With Writemonkey can be added to the Windows context menu or the Start with last opened file setting enabled in the preferences’ Open & Save tab.

    Writemonkey is a no installation freeware and its executable file is less than 1MB. it is extremely fun to play with and has many simple yet interesting features. The features page has a more complete list and the application’s facebook group many screenshots. Writemonkey is also UTF-8, Unicode and ANSII capable, runs on XP, with .NET Framework 3.5 installed, and higher including Windows 7.

  • Depeche View Lets You Search For Text Fast

    Depeche View Lets You Search For Text Fast

    Depeche View is described by its author as

    fast search tool loads all text file content from a folder into memory

    Depeche View is capable of loading a very large amount of text in seconds and all into one window or instance of the application. In my usage I loaded over 100MB of text files in mere seconds. It does this by loading the files into memory so the program will actually show as a high user in the system’s task manager.


    Depeche View

    The real strength of Depeche View is in its other capabilities and the number of actions that can be taken with minimal, sometimes one, click. To start, Depeche View is a ‘search as you type’ application similar to that of Firefox’s search therefore eliminating extra typing and dialogue boxes. Some highlights (no pun intended) of the program are described in brief in the following lines. Shift-click on a word and all instances of the word will be highlighted. Right click on one instance of the search results to open a second window showing the search results leaving the original window for other searches or operations. Restrict the search to a case sensitive one by clicking the Case button to the bottom right of the program window. Click the Filter button in the same location to be presented with all and only the lines that contain the searched item. Use Showtab to highlight tabs and spaces in the opened files. Click Bookmk and then Alt-click a word to bookmark all instances of that word.

    Depeche View has so many tricks and possibilities and even an Easy Settings button, the round object or button to the left of the bottom menu items. Pressing it deactivates such actions as the one-click search. It is not immediately clear to me why this makes the program easier to use but it is an option to try out.

    As mentioned Depeche View has simply so many possibilities that can be played around with. Just as an additional example one can capture a clipboard item and perform a search for it. Read further in the ‘Further reading: help system contents’ section of the program’s homepage.

    Depeche View can be used to search inside text files, within a folder, like in such things as source code, logs or simple text files and it can be set to read .bin files and hidden and system files as well, an extended edition can look into archive or .zip and .jar files too. It is freeware and doesn’t require installation.

  • Minipad2, Store Notes, Set Reminders And More

    Minipad2, Store Notes, Set Reminders And More

    Minipad2 is a tabbed, lightweight and portable – 305KB download – single executable that can be used as an text editor, note taker, calculator, dictionary and memo or reminder (tray popup without sound) program.
    It is also capable of watching the clipboard and inserting pre-defined text such as time, date, separator and signature – which can be defined via the Tools—>Edit Template menu. New tabs can be created for separate notes and aforementioned included functions. The features such as the calculator, memo and dictionary are available via typing and following a certain format. For example a memo or alarm can be set by typing

    @m1, 15 9:00, write report

    and pressing enter, this translates into a popup reminder every first and 15th of the month at 9AM with the text ‘write report’ (see images for two more examples).

    minipad2

    Other examples and syntax are given in the accompanying help file. Search and replace is also available but in my testing the search only worked on the current visible tab and not all text stored across the many tabs I had open. Another feature of minipad2 is called Special Effect. Effects can be enabled under the Options menu and chosen in Options—>Preferences. The two main effects available are auto scroll and auto hide. The auto scroll rolls up the window leaving only minipad2’s title bar intact. Auto hide, which didn’t perform as expected in my testing and usage, hides the window when focus is off minipad2, much like the feature available with Windows’ taskbar. But as mentioned, in my testing the minipad2 window seemed to want to hide – the animated effect hovered over my monitor – but the minipad2 window didn’t actually go away.

    minipad2

    To use the dictionary one or more chosen languages must be added via the Preferences menu after they have been downloaded separately. Currently Chinese, Spanish, French, German and Japanese are available.
    A very interesting application with a couple of unusual features and different ways of doing things. Minipad2 is a single executable that after hours of being used and tested remained under 10MB of RAM usage. Minipad2 is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista.

  • Capture All You Want From The Internet Using Canaware NetNotes

    Capture All You Want From The Internet Using Canaware NetNotes

    Canaware NetNotes allows the capture, organization and storage of whole webpages or excerpts directly from a browser. It is really easy to create a knowledgebase or simply a collection of text using NetNotes. The captured material can be categorized, highlighted and even edited using the built-in editor. The captures are organized and saved in folders that reside within libraries, all of which are fully searchable, movable and mergeable. It is further possible to email notes and captures and also to back them up in zipped format and since all are stored in HTML they remain usable even without the NetNotes application.

    netnotes

    Canaware NetNotes’ usage consists of highlighting the portion of a web page or just right clicking (Firefox requires the accompanying but optional Add-on) on an empty area of a page and choosing the Export To Canaware Netnotes option. The program then opens with the option of saving the capture and optionally editing its title and adding keywords. Prompt will be given to choose and download any attachments that are part of the capture as in elements that may exist within a webpage.
    Under the Tools—>Option menu such things as the default library, in which to automatically save new notes, is configurable but more importanly it is possible to make the captures safe by forcing NetNotes to filter out potentially dangerous elements and scripts. (see image above)
    Canaware NetNotes runs on Windows 2000 and up and requires Internet Explorer or Firefox and perhaps as a con the .Net framework. The limitation on browsers of either not being directly supported or needing an Add-on can be viewed as a negative, and when there is no support such as for Opera, to a positive because one is not forced into yet another download and can just launch the program directly to and paste the contents of the clipboard and use the program.

  • Easily Gather And Collect Notes with CintaNotes

    Easily Gather And Collect Notes with CintaNotes

    CintaNotes is a lightweight and potentially extremely useful note taking program. At a portable download of 344KB and an executable of 625KB CintaNotes is useful and small. Notes are collected via a configurable hot key (Ctrl+F12 by default), a simple paste or by opening the program and using the Add option. In the first two cases the title of the note is automatically taken from the originating application window and if it happens to be from a web browser the URL is added to the note’s Link field.

    CintaNotes

    Each note is dated and can be tagged. A real time search bar finds them by any or all of text and title, time, link, title, text and tag. It is also possible to merge notes by selecting them, by using the usual Ctrl or Shift keys, and pressing Ctrl+M. The font and color of notes and the whole program itself can be configured as well. A hot key is configurable to bring focus to the program and also to add a new note. Perhaps the feature that makes CintaNotes most useful and hassle free is the Silent Clipping one. When checked under the Options menu the program window does not pop up whenever a note is added, when using the aforementioned Ctrl+F12 for example, the program will instead show a balloon tip at the system tray with the contents of the note being captured.

    CintaNotes runs on Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista and fully supports unicode text.

  • Clipboard Help+Spell From Donationcoder.com

    Clipboard Help+Spell From Donationcoder.com

    I wrote about the Donationcoder.com’s website in a previous article and one of the more impressive and useful software written there is the Clipboard Help+Spell.

    There are certainly many freeware, well reviewed, useful and popular clipboard utilities available. The sadly semi-abandoned Yankee Clipper, the open source Ditto and ArsClip just to name three and of course the clipboard capabilities of the all powerful PowerPro.

    Clipboard Help+Spell is nevertheless a worthy contender, if not down right winner in the category. It is simply described as

    …a text-based clipboard utility

    But it has many features. Among its many features is the ability to archive and delete clipboard based on configurable dates, defining hot keys for viewing, pasting and working with the stored clipboards, filtering entries to find the forgotten ones and backing up the database of collected clipboards. The features don’t stop there, an internal editor spell checks and adds text editor features to manipulate the entries as well. For example it possible to change the case of the clipboard entries within the editor, strip characters, add lines and even find and replace words using regular expressions.

    A clipboard utility won’t be complete without the ability to permanently store ‘favorites’ and in this case it is only a matter of dragging an entry into the said category (see images below).

    cliphs1cliphs2

    Having said all that one of the most innovative features is the ability to create ‘Virtual Folders’. This feature allows certain definable clipboards to be grouped separately. For example a preset Virtual Folder is  ‘Clips With URLs’ and the way it is defined, using SQL database conditional statements, is as follows

    (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%http:%’) OR (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%www.%’) OR (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%https:%’) OR (Lower(ClipText) LIKE ‘%ftp:%’)

    in that the clipboards containing any of http, https, ftp or www will be placed as a subset of all clipboards under a separate icon (as shown in the above image).

    The program’s Windows tray icon is configured such that left click, double left click, right click and double right click are all defined and show stored clips, the program’s main window, the program’s general menu and the program’s on and off toggle respectively. With Clipboard Help+Spell there is a lot to play around with and discover, well worth the support and download.

  • Text File Stats & Watermark Images

    Text File Stats & Watermark Images

    Two GNU licensed freeware courtesy of Lune Rouge offer easy and lighweight means of achieving sometimes useful tasks.

    Firs off line TextStat described simply as

    Create statistics on a text file

    Using it is as simple as browsing for a file and then clicking the “TS” icon. Using TextStat it is possible to analyze any text or HTML file and generate wide ranging info. Among others TextStat produces stats on the number of words and paragraphs to such things as number of carriage returns, number of occurances of every word and an estimate on the number of syllables. TextStat supports such options as exluding words and separators like question marks (see image below). The results can be viewed in the program itself, copied or exported into a text or HTML file. An additional tool is the calculation of the Flesch Reading Ease test or score which calculates the readability of the text based on the number of words and syllables per sentences and words respectively.

    textstat

    Next up is CopyrightLeft described as

    …add a copyright on or below your images

    Also GNU licensed, CopyrightLeft offers a no frills way to add watermarks to any image. It offers the needed options such as color, text position, rotation and transparency and even more (see image below). What makes this 799KB download even better is its batch processing. It is possible to force the output format of watermarked images, such as converting images to .jpg, and also one can create a HTML file with a linked listing to the said images. It has worked well for me except in one case. If the option to add ‘Shadow’ or ‘Glow’ is checked and the watermark text is rotated the shadow and glow remain at zero degrees and do not follow the text orientation. Sometimes, but not in all my tests, checking ‘Transparent background’, as if to hide the glow or shadow, solves this issue.

    copyrightleft

    Both should work in all Windows versions.

  • Windows Grep Text Search And Replace

    Windows Grep Text Search And Replace

    Windows Grep is described by its author as

    Windows Grep is a tool for searching files for text strings that you specify. Although Windows and many other programs have file searching capabilities built-in, none can match the power and versatility of Windows Grep.

    Windows Grep is more or less a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the grep command line utility. In addition to searching for text it also supports replacing of text.

    Searches can be performed using either the beginner or expert mode, with the former providing a wizard. The wizard is basically a step by step version of the expert mode that does not necessarily make the searching task easier and in reality only offers less options.

    File formats supported include plain (source code, batch files, etc.) and binary (EXE, DLL, etc.). It is possible to perform searches based on the size and the date of the files in question and also use regular expressions in the search. Search results can also be saved and printed. Additionally Windows Grep can search inside ZIP archives thus making it handy for searching backups for example.

    One of the strengths of Windows Grep is the way search results are displayed. The user can control the number of lines displayed around either side of the matching text, whether to include whole lines and some others. (see image below). Worth a mention is the support for searching delimited (text separated by a constant character such as a comma) and fixed length text file formats.

    windowsgrep

    Windows Grep runs on Windows 98, 2000, XP and Vista  and is a non-expiring and non-crippled shareware. It prompts for registration at program exit.