Notepad++: June 2008 Archives

Zack Whittaker's iGeneration blog has quickly become a must-read. His post on The Killer Apps of Academia is well worth bookmarking for future reference.

He mentions quite a few apps I use every day, from the obvious (Firefox, OpenOffice) to the less-so (Notepad++, Audacity).

Among the ones I hadn't heard of but want to try immediately are LogMeIn Free, which, if the description is correct, is like GoToMyPC, letting you control a Windows PC from a remote location, but without the costs involved. There is a "Pro" version with more features, but the fact that there even is a free version warms my cockles considerably.

I'm a simple guy.

In Windows, I used to use Internet Explorer 6 as my FTP client. Yep, you can do that.

And when I installed IE7 after much kicking and a little screaming, I was dismayed to learn that I lost my ability to use the Web browser and a drag-and-drop, fully graphical, albeit extremely simple FTP client.

I quickly learned that the Windows file browser, which I get to by going to Start -- My Computer (since I'm locked out of My Network Places by my paranoid sysadmin) and enter the FTP address as ftp://10.10.10.10 (that's a fake, not-real address for those who are wondering), and then do my FTP work just as I did in IE6.

And yes, I've tried the FTP plugin for Firefox.

I needed a real FTP client for Windows.

I tried a few that weren't free, open-source applications. They included CuteFTP and another I can't remember.

But I'm not happy with 30-day trials, and why pay for an app when you can use FOSS?

I finally downloaded Filezilla, which has FTP clients for Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you've been reading this blog for even a little while, you know I love apps that go across as many platforms as possible.

So far it works great. I set Notepad++ as my default editor, and I've already edited my first file on the FTP server.

So I have a fully FOSS FTP solution in Windows, and I'm happy.

P.S. In Ubuntu and Debian, I just use gFTP, which for some reason I also remember using in Slackware.

I've been all excited about how well the Geany text editor has been working in Windows.

But I never even tried to print a text file with Geany in Windows.

Until now.

First it did some kind of shell command. I don't have access to my shell, per my lovely employer, so that didn't work.

When I installed Geany, I used the "nogtk" version because I already had the GTK+ runtime libraries as a result of installing the GIMP image editor on a previous occasion.

So I reinstalled Geany with new GTK+ libraries. Then I went into the Geany preferences and turned on GTK printing.

It works.

But it looks HORRIBLE.

Each and every letter is separated by two lines in various stages of thickness.

Ugly. Horrible.

I wonder if there's a fix for this.

As it is, I had to return to Notepad++ just to print a text file.

So ... it's back to Notepad++.

I'm a fickle user of applications and operating systems. If something doesn't work for me, I'll switch things up in a minute.

Daily News online leader Ryan Garfat uses EditPlus, which is NOT a free, open-source program, but which does edit HTML exceptionally well. It offers a 30-day trial, then costs $35 for a single user.

But y'all know me. I want FOSS.

So does anybody out there have a favorite free, open-source text editor for Windows?

I'm back using the Geany text editor in Windows. I also use it in OpenBSD and in Linux.

I like applications that I can use across platforms. Things like Firefox, OpenOffice, Abiword, Pidgin, and other too numerous to name make life easier for those of us who use three or more different operating systems. The apps also showcase free, open-source software for those who are using proprietary operating systems and give them a reason to explore FOSS further, perhaps even trying something like Linux.

If you learn to love a bunch of free applications, why not try the OS that is just as free?

Anyway, I have a lot of requirements for a text editor, as I'm sure do most of us who use them heavily.

One thing that Geany doesn't do that I need is an easy way to rename files. It's easy enough in a Unix-like shell, or in the finder in Windows, OS X or anything else, to change a file name, but I like to be able to change the name of a file right in the text editor.

Sure, you could always do a "save as" and have the old file with the old name and a new file with the new name, but I like to save steps and have the application do it all for me.

EditPadLite, which isn't FOSS, has a "Rename/Move" function. I don't believe that Notepad++ has it, either.

At any rate, my life would be that much more complete if Geany had a "rename file" feature.

Now that I've got that off my chest, it's back to work.