Tag: text

  • Wordz: Freeware Word Processor

    Wordz: Freeware Word Processor

    Wordz (Version: 1.0) is a freeware word processor that is a lightweight and quick alternative for basic writing. Documents are saved in rtf or plain txt files and an export as pdf feature is available as well.

    Wordz, Word Processor

    Wordz comes with British English, American English, French, German and Spanish dictionaries and includes a live spell checker similar to Microsoft Word. The spelling options (Edit —> Spelling Options) let the user choose which dictionaries to load, disable the live spell checker or automatic corrector, ignore upper case words, ignore words containing numbers, prompt on repeated words and automatically correct dual capitals (For example HEllo is corrected to Hello). Image and object (clipart, scans, sound clips, etc.) inserts are supported. Additionally there are the usual formatting options like color, font, alignment plus insert date, line spacing, subscript, superscript, ordered list, paragraph spacing and paragraph margin.

    An useful additional feature is Additional Reading where a highlighted word can be looked up on Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Thesaurus and Dictionary. Also if a highlighted word is linked (using the Link button) it will become link to its Wikipedia page. Highlight and right click the text to add any custom, non-wikipedia, link.

    Wordz comes with an installer but its folder can be copied for portable use. It should run on all Windows versions.

  • FreeText: Freeware Notebook

    FreeText: Freeware Notebook

    FreeText (Version: 1.1) is a lightweight, freeware notebook. It is somewhat basic and it is probably best suited for taking quick notes and be able to organize them on a simple page.

    FreeText
    FreeText offers the chance to create folders and subfolders or perhaps nodes in what it calls Logic Frames. A Logic Frame becomes a root node that can be expanded and collapsed and given a title. Inside the box that is then created one can start typing and also add comments anywhere by clicking Comment.

    Tables and images are supported. Tables are initially 4×4 but row(s) or column(s) can be deleted by highlighting and added by highlighting and using copy/paste. Images can be added from a file –  and saved to a file – and edited. The Edit button shows the list from the system’s right click context menu for images.

    FreeText does have basic find and replace and all notes are automatically saved and backed up with the frt extention in the system’s Document’s folder. Additionally they can be exported and imported via the File menu for use between machines although they still retain the same frt extension. FreeText works on XP and newer, including Windows 8.

  • GloboNote: Desktop Sticky Notes

    GloboNote: Desktop Sticky Notes

    GloboNote (Version: 1.3) is a sticky notes program that is based on Java and therefore multi-platform. It doesn’t require installation and adds a few features to make it a bit more than a simple collection of sticky notes.

    GloboNote

    Right click or double click the tray icon to create new sticky notes, the sticky note will use the current time as its title but the title can be changed with a double click on the title area – and requires the Enter key for the change to take effect. A single click on the title area rolls up the note up to minimize it.

    Right click within any note to access its features and customizations. The features include the ability to assign a note to a (recurring) alarm and reminder.  GloboNote also features some basic rich text options plus image and file attachments. Images and files can be local or web based and the web based can be saved locally if required. Notes can be assigned to groups and be in hidden, parked or visible states per group, individually or altogether. Parked status doesn’t seem to be different than any other user created group, they are probably meant as a temporary or already available group. There is a built-in calculator that will work when mathematical calculations are entered followed by the F2 key. Notes can be printed and exported into txt files. Each note can be individually colored as well using its own Prefereces (sic).

    An import option is listed when right clicking within a note but it seems to be missing as of this version. A look at the program preferences reveals more empty areas, perhaps reserved for future versions (The Security and Keys & Sounds tabs are two currently unavailable sections in the preferences). Other preferences include options to detect links, highlight the active note, change look and feel of the program much other Java based programs, change the date format, change the default note appearance, not use the time/date as the default note title and more.

    GloboNote

    Using the advanced tab of the preferences it is possible to change the location of the notes ‘repository’ to perhaps move it to the program’s own folder instead of burying it in system’s AppData folder. GloboNote works on any system that has Java 6 or higher installed.

  • Capture2Text: Quick OCR And Speech Recognition

    Capture2Text: Quick OCR And Speech Recognition

    Capture2Text (Version: 2.4) is an open source program that can help a user capture text seen on the screen or transcribe speech.  It supports multiple language for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and recognizing speech. In limited tests it did a decent job of capturing the correct text and speech but it is never really 100% accurate. For OCR it supports 50+ languages and 15 for speech.

    Capture2Text

    Capture2Text does not requires installation. Download and run it. The default way for starting (and ending) text capture is Win+Q keys. There are other configurable key combination for ending captures, dismissing the program and others. Press the start capture keys, right click and move the mouse over an area, left click to end the area. Capture2Text will present a preview of the text on the top left of the screen and when the capture is finished presents a popup window with the captured text. The program site claims that the text is also sent to the clipboard by default but I noticed that in the preference this is unchecked. It is also possible to send the text to the cursor (ie another program) or a named external program (see last images below.)

    Capture2Text

    For speech recognition Win+A are the default keys for starting and the program will analyze the speech after it senses that there is no sound coming through the microphone and present the user with possible transcriptions.

    Capture2Text

    There is a subtitutions.txt file in the program folder which can be used to make automatic substitutions if the program seems to mistake a certain letter consistently. Languages not part of the download can be added and it is also possible to switch language on the fly using the program’s tray icon. Capture2Text also supports a set of command line options.

  • BabelPad: Feature Rich, Unicode And Freeware Text Editor

    BabelPad: Feature Rich, Unicode And Freeware Text Editor

    BabelPad (Version: 6.2.0.3) is a text editor or word processor that comes with a lot features, especially if Unicode, fonts or foreign languages are concerned. BabelPad supports rendering to make different language display properly, in particular it uses Microsoft’s Uniscribe services. It is made to ease rendering of different fonts, simplified and traditional Chinese for example. It supports CR and LF new line formats, left to right and right to left layouts, encoding like UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew), ISO-8859-6 (Arabic), Windows CP 1258 (Vietnamese), EUC-JA (Japanese), TSCII (Tamil) and many more and saves files in some and auto-detects them in many cases too.

    BabelPad

    Other features are drag and drop files, multiple undo/redo and an option to auto-indent text as you type, open large files and not only do a normal find and replace but batch replace whole series of words (Edit —> Batch Replace). Text conversion is another part of its strength in Unicode. It can convert case for multiple encodings and languages, between simplified and traditional Chinese, HTML entities to Unicode characters and lots more like it.

    Other tools included are font coverage, analysis and information to provide info about an open document or any section of one. An advanced character frequency and character map with 1000s of character and symbols. An Advanced Character Search tool (Tools —> Advanced Character Search) where it can scan an open document for every kind of character combination one can come up with (see image.)

    BabelPad

    BabelPad is less than a 3MB download and the few words above are just scratching the surface of the number of options available. It can run on Windows 2000 and newer and is made available in a portable version by portableapps.com

  • ClipMon: Freeware Clipboard Monitoring

    ClipMon: Freeware Clipboard Monitoring

    ClipMon (Version: 1.0.1.1) is a freeware clipboard monitoring tool with an aim to improve on the drawbacks of the Windows’ single clipboard feature.

    ClipMon

    The first and obvious feature is that ClipMon can remember and store more than one clipboard item. The second is that it keeps and categorizes them into text, images and files. It comes with history browser, a separate process (HV.exe) on its own, where clipboard items can be viewed and also edited. ClipMon also features a floating and resizable sticky note look-a-like window where the latest clipboard item is displayed.

    Text items can be edited inside the program and using available scripts text items can be opened in Notepad or Wordpad (with a double click), converted to numbered or bullet lists and encrypted/decrypted. The latter option didn’t work using the portable version of the program. Image files can be previewed and re-copied. Double clicking images shows them in the internal viewer. The viewer has a selection tool (drag the mouse to draw a rectangular selection) to be used to crop images. External programs to open images with can be added as well.

    Use the Send This Clip To to email or save an item outside of ClipMon’s history. Configure a recipient and then email items to him or her or send and save a copy of an item to a directory outside of ClipMon’s. The send to feature is rather non intuitive as ClipMon seems capable of sending any item in its history but it is not immediately obvious how to send the non current clipboard.

    The program’s options (accessible from the history browser window) include assigning hotkeys for opening the history browser window or the right click menu and defining the maximum number of text, image and file items ClipMon remembers.

    ClipMon works on XP and newer and is available in both installer and portable versions.

  • TagBook: Cross Platform Bookmarking Utility

    TagBook: Cross Platform Bookmarking Utility

    TagBook (Version: 0.1 beta 2) is a young beta software with a simple yet useful feature. It bills itself as a “cross-platform desktop bookmarking utility” but with a reminder that it can store any text information. Whether the text storage potential works for the average user will depend on the user of course but also on the progress TagBook makes.

    TagBook

    Download the jar file and run it. Click on the Database menu to create a new database. Add a new item using the Bookmark menu. The Edit window that comes up requires a Name, Description, Address, Notes and Tag(s). Tags can be added on the fly and applied using the same window or use F3 (View—>Tag Manager) to add tags separately.

    Bookmarks can also be added by dragging and dropping text into the Edit window or by pasting the contents of the clipboard using Ctrl+V and Ctrl+Shift+V or Bookmark—>Paste. Search and Filter as you type using Ctrl+F and Ctrl+Shift+F.

    TagBook can be locked into a read only mode by clicking the lock button to the far top right. It can export whole or selected items to csv, xml and html formats and attempt to import them from the same file formats too.

    Using the filter sometimes causes errors with a disappearing database, this requires reloading or reopening a database, not unexpected for an early beta.

    TagBook has potential and worth keeping an eye on. It requires java and is cross platform.

  • TinyPad: Small Freeware Notepad

    TinyPad: Small Freeware Notepad

    TinyPad (Version: 3.0.1.0) is a simple note taker or notepad. Notes can be uploaded to the sharednote.com site and shared online.

    TinyPad

    Notes are automatically saved in tabs or pads and all are re-opened when the program is restarted. To avoid clutter when pads add up any number of them can be archived to remain hidden unless the View the archive cabinet button is clicked.

    TinyPad’s toolbar covers some text operations like text size, color, style, alignment and lists. There is also an insert date/time stamp button but strangely, even though images are supported, there is no add image button. The only way to add an image is to right click inside a pad and paste a copied image.

    Multiple undo and redo is available and Ctrl+F searches inside the current pad or use the search and highlight as you type field.

    TinyPad can export all notes and save them anywhere, but in .tp files. It is possible to tweet directly from within TinyPad. TinyPad comes with several themes and should work on all Windows versions.

  • DtPad: Interesting Freeware Text Editor

    DtPad: Interesting Freeware Text Editor

    DtPad (Version: 2.7.4.40) is a text editor with an interesting and potentially useful set of features.

    DtPad

    The file menu can open a new document and paste the contents of the clipboard into it automatically. It can open a web page source by typing the address inside DtPad. There are options to save file(s) in zip format, save one as pdf or get or save documents in Dropbox using DtPad’s internal browser.

    The edit menu can append text to existing files and ‘swap’ highlighted text with the contents of the clipboard. One can select text by multiple rows too.

    The view menu is the place to launch the command prompt, hide or show an annotation panel (see image), launch a hexadecimal viewer/editor or a Windows hosts file editor.

    DtPad also has a session feature that is not just save or restore but also can list ‘lost’ (those that were part of a saved session but may not exist anymore) files and more.

    The search feature is a powerful one, options like highlight results are there so are number of occurrences and  find or replace last and next occurrence. All come with regular expressions support. DtPad can also look for patterns like duplicate rows, capitalized words, html tags, IP addresses and email addresses. Not forgetting searching selected or highlighted words using google or wikipedia.

    The actions menu is where tabs (different open files) can be merged and compared, indentation added, rows moved up and down, case converted, html converted to text and vice versa, space converted to tab, date inserted and lots more. Other interesting features like validating html and translating selected text too.

    Options is the menu to toggle word wrap, choose file encoding and font plus export or import DtPad’s settings.

    Tools is the place for launching external programs. Notepad and Internet Explorer are available by default but others can be added.

    DtPad’s side panel has a notes section to keep text or notes that don’t belong in the files themselves, a tab explorer to move or sort open files, a file explorer to navigate and browse the system, a clipboard monitor, a calculator, a calendar, and another location for searching inside files.

    The program settings (Options—>Settings) include options for the looks and feel of the program and others to add DtPad to the Send To, Open With and Windows 7 jump list menus.

    DtPad requires Microsoft Windows XP or newer and the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. It is available in a portable version.

  • Copy Contents: Fast Copy And Text Replacement

    Copy Contents: Fast Copy And Text Replacement

    Note: Copy Contents is in beta. Correction made to a screenshot that appeared earlier.

    Copy Contents is a new program. It copies the contents of text or rtf files to the clipboard without opening them. It also copies image files (jpg, bmp, gif, tga, png, tif, pcx) to the clipboard, also without opening them. Right click on the supported formats mentioned and choose Copy Contents, the (successful) copied message appears briefly on the screen, now open a blank file (either text or image) and Ctrl+V to paste.

    Copy Contents

    Copy Contents does (plain) text replacements to make better and more efficient use of the copied text. Click Ctrl while clicking on Copy Contents and set up or use text replacements. It comes with three default macros in #date#, #time# and #ask#:<default text>. If a text files written for repeated use has [[date]] and [[time]] in it they will replaced with the current date and time when pasted. The third macro generates a dialog window and the text in between < and > will be replaced with the word entered in the ‘Replace with’ box.

    Copy Contents
    Copy Contents can be set to always ask for replacements, use the included ones without prompt or not use them at all. The OFF setting can be overridden on a case by case basis by holding the Shift key when clicking on Copy Contents in the right click context menu. Copy Contents is by http://starpunch.net/ and is currently available at the DonationCoder forums.