Though WordPad has improved largely over the years and has become the default plain-text editor for Windows users, DocPad offers you a free and superior alternative with a much wider functionality. This ribbon-based text editor comes with a calculator, a calendar, a macro manager, a spell checker, and TTS capabilities together with a long list of editing features and tools.
DocPad is somewhere in between WordPad and Microsoft Word both in appearance and in functionality (with the limitations inherent to plain ASCII files, of course). Apart from the usual suspects (cut, paste, copy, print, search, replace, etc.), this free text editor comes with a series of editing tools that you will not find easily in its competitors. You can open multiple files and manage them easily in a multi-tabbed interface. It will “back up” the different versions of the files you’re working on, which will allow you to roll back any changes at any time. It includes case conversion capabilities, text drag-and-drop, print preview, space normalization, paragraph alphabetization, and many more.
On a different note, DocPad is also equipped with various heavy-weight functions, such as a spell checker for English and Spanish texts so far, support for unlimited user-made macros, a TTS engine that reads aloud the text on the screen (regrettably, the program does not offer recording capabilities), and extensive statistics about the text on the screen. Apart from the number of characters, words, sentences or paragraphs, this statistics will tell you the reading time, the characters used from the entire map, and the longest and shortest words, among other interesting facts.
All in all, DocPad not only makes WordPad pale in comparison, it also provides you with tools that not even “more professional” word processors such as Microsoft Word can offer. This program is not an interesting addition to your desktop – it’s the ultimate substitute for your default WordPad.
v11.0 [Dec 8, 2011]
- Major interface improvements, too many to list. Added support for Aero Glass (Vista/2008/7).
- The "Associate" tool will now work even if there is a user-specific association override (Vista/2008/7). This type of association is made in Control Panel > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program.
- Added the "Whole Word" option to the "Discard Paragraphs Containing" tool. Also, this tool will now report the number of paragraphs that were discarded.
- Added the "System Default" and "Korean/Hangul" character set options. New installations will default to "System Default" instead of "European, Western".
- Added the "Speak" tool to the toolbar, although it is hidden by default.
- Added the "All/Paragraphs/Longest/Words" statistic.
- When copying text to the clipboard, the character set is now recorded in the clipboard as well. Previously, when pasting into another application, the characters were being converted to the system default character set.
- When recording a keystroke macro, instructions will now appear on the status bar.
- The status bar now labels the last two sections "Column" and "Line".
- The status bar now obeys the "Balloon Help Disabled" option.
- When pressing Home/End/Up/Down when there is a selection, the cursor will now move as normal instead of moving to the beginning or end of the selection.
- Improved the text drag & drop behavior.
- When a file is opened or saved, this is now reported on the status bar.
- The "Visit Hyperlink" tool will now work if a domain name is selected.
- When dragging and dropping text, the user may now press Escape to cancel.
- Fixed: the "Associate" tool was not always automatically relaunching with Admin rights under certain circumstances.
