PSPad – Freeware Editor

Keywords:

editor, text editor, HTML editor, PHP editor, code editor

I was tired of having to do kilobytes of manual and routing typing work. I wanted to find a tool that would turn my everyday coding into a kind of - after all - intellectual work. And I found PSPad!

Overview

PSPad is a powerful application for professional coders and programmers. Among usual functions like font formatting, highlighting, auto-save, spell check, search etc. it pleasantly surprises you with really competitive tools like code compilers, code check, macros, automatic FTPing, HTML-specific actions, wise auto-completion, comparing two files, backup and many, many other things.
Learning all the functions takes a while, but I bet you won’t regret it, because once you know how to use them, you’ll save 50% of your time that you previously used to spend on routine.

Installation

Installation is unpretentious. You just download an archive and unpack it into the directory where you want the program to be stored. No setup files. The distributive file also doesn’t contain spell checkers, but you can download it later. If you want to associate certain file extensions with PSPad, you’ll have to do this manually, for PSPad doesn’t write anything to the Windows register.

Process description

I start the process every day when I work on my current project :) I associated all *.php, *.asp, *.css and *.cgi files with PSPad. When there is a lot of files in the project, I usually create a PSPad project and add all the folders and files to it (the way you do it with a C++ project). Each time I add a new file to the project, PSPad inserts some initial code in it. For example, for PHP files it adds <? ?>tags, for Perl - #!/usr/bin/perl, for HTML – standard header and body tags. Code highlighting is very adequate and easy to read. Moreover you can configure all editor options using the main menu.
I often use code checker that finds unclosed tags. I can prepare some HTML code and then let PSPad tighten it up, automatically stripping all spaces and linefeeds; or vice versa – insert indentations to make the code look clearer.
I sometimes tend to work directly on one of my servers, that is not localhost. PSPad allows me not to notice I’m actually working on my local computer.
The only thing that still has to be fixed is text wrapping. Unfortunately PSPad doesn’t treat it well. Sometimes pieces of code appear in unexpected places. So I advise you to use it cautiously.

You may combine files of different format in one project. For instance, HTML templates and PHP source files. HTML pages and JavaScript code.

Output format

The main format of PSPad is a special extension for PSPad native projects, *.ppr. But you don’t necessarily have to create a project. You can edit files in the following formats (according to the author’s web site):
C++, Cobol, MS-Dos batch, CSS, Forth, Fortran, FoxPro, HTML, XHTML, INI, Inno Setup, Java, JavaScript, KixStart, Object Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, RSS, SQL, TCL/TK, Unix ShellScript, VBScript, Visual Basic, X86 assembler + 56 other languages as user highlighter definition
Of all above file formats I tried C++, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, VBScript and SQL. Works perfectly. Of course PSPad can’t replace the IDE of Borland C++ Builder for example, or MS SQL Server for SQL files; but I prefer to edit PHP, Perl, VBScript and CSS files in this application.

Interface, wizards, help files

The interface contains so much settings, configuration parameters, buttons, tools etc., that I could hardly use at least half of them. The author has made a really hard work! The help file is quite informative, though expects from you general knowledge of text editors and their functionality.

Among wizards I can mention macro recording & execution, ability to work with files directly on some FTP server, tools for color interpretation (eyedropper for example! How many times I had to open my PhotoShop before, when I needed to pick some color in hexadecimal format!).

Code Explorer is a great tool. It detects what kind of file you are editing now, and displays all key parts of the text/code in a tree of expanded nodes. For example, if you are editing a C++ file, it’ll display all functions, methods and objects that the file contains. If you are editing a HTML file, PSPad will list all tags in the tree, starting from <html>, then <body>, then each of the <TABLE> tags that it meets in the text. Very convenient!

Isn't it great that some people still let us use their products for free? Thanks, Jan! 

Prices, where to buy, URL

As it is implied by the title, PSPad is a freeware application. You can know about new versions, features, translation and bug reports at their web site http://www.pspad.com (in four languages, including English).
Also they have a special email for requests: support@pspad.com.
They have a forum where users, testers and developers can share their opinions. I must say the conversation is very lively. The author of PSPad, Jan Fiala, supplies users with many new features and additions to the application to keep it up to date. The users of old good Windows 95 are not forgotten too, there is a special version for them.

My personal conclusion

Thanks, Jan! Well Done!

You're welcome to discuss this article at WellDone Software Forum.