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Point this tiny portable program at a location and it will open every plain text file in that folder tree (up to a maximum of 10,000 in this build, anyway – the $40 commercial version is unrestricted). These are all displayed in a flat view, one above the other, and that alone can be useful as it’s easy to scroll down and browse them all.
When you do have a lot of files then you’ll soon want to start searching, of course, and this is extremely easy. There’s no need to open a dialog box, just start typing and the screen immediately updates, displaying only matching files and highlighting every occurrence of your keyword.
Should you need more searching power, your text can also include operators like AND, OR and NOT, as well as the * wildcard. And you’re able to define a path mask which restricts your searches to particular files (main*.html NOT .html.old , say).
Just start typing and your search text will be found and highlighted immediately
And if you need to keep track of the various items you’ve found, that’s not a problem. Locations within any file can be bookmarked for speedy recall later.
At some point you may want to edit a file, and life isn’t quite so convenient here: unlike its commercial big brother, Depeche View Lite doesn’t have an integrated text editor. Just pressing Ctrl+E at any point will open the current file in Notepad, though, and you can customise this to have the program use whatever editor you like (Settings > Options > Search, Edit).
There are some issues with the program, and most of them relate to the, well, quirky interface. Features don’t always work as you expect, and it takes a while to find your way around.
Once you’ve learned the basics, though, Depeche View Lite proves an interesting and very capable search tool. And if you regularly work with large numbers of plain text files then it could save you a lot of time and hassle.
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3 comments:
A Plain Text Editor
Plain Text files
That's right, if you're writer on a budget, you don't need to spend any money buying expensive writing software or apps. Instead, you can use the text editor that comes free with your operating system.
Just open up Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac. I like plain text editors for writing something short quickly and easily, without thinking much about it. I wrote a blog post about the benefits of using plain text editors as writing software.
Use for: writing whatever, wherever
A Plain Text Editor
Plain Text files
That's right, if you're writer on a budget, you don't need to spend any money buying expensive writing software or apps. Instead, you can use the text editor that comes free with your operating system.
Just open up Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac. I like plain text editors for writing something short quickly and easily, without thinking much about it. I wrote a blog post about the benefits of using plain text editors as writing software.
Use for: writing whatever, wherever
A Plain Text Editor
Plain Text files
That's right, if you're writer on a budget, you don't need to spend any money buying expensive writing software or apps. Instead, you can use the text editor that comes free with your operating system.
Just open up Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac. I like plain text editors for writing something short quickly and easily, without thinking much about it. I wrote a blog post about the benefits of using plain text editors as writing software.
Use for: writing whatever, wherever
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