[sotd] January 31, 2002 [Software of the Month - Treepad]
- From: "The Site of the Day" <sotd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: sotd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 01:48:59 -0400
Site of the Day for Thursday, January 31, 2002
Software of the Month - Treepad
For the past few months, the List has been examining software which is used
primarily to store those jottings which all too frequently are randomly
scattered over any well-used hard drive. Many of the List's gentle members
are shaking their heads sadly in acknowledgement at this point, for they
too, have a collection of judiciously acquired notes on car tune-ups, dog
training tips, and lists of must read books. The problem is they can't find
them.
To the rescue comes an application type specifically designed to store all
these little gems in one convenient location. A further advantage of this
type of program is that by consolidating these text files in one umbrella
location, hard disc space is also conserved.
Treepad 2.8.1 is the freeware version of TreePad Plus and what a well
written and user friendly program it is. If you assign an obvious keyboard
shortcut to it like "Windows key + T with the previously featured utility
"Winkey", Treepad seems to load almost immediately even on a system with
modest resources. The interface is intuitive, with what is usually termed
an "Explorer type" window, with your list of notes, articles and essays in
a tree-like structure in the left pane and the composition editor on the
right. Hate being boxed in while you write? The Function keys, 10, 11 and
12 will toggle among various views - tree only, editing window only or the
split view.
While on the topic of keyboard shortcuts, this application has the easiest
selection of shortcuts to use. A simple "Control +Tab will move you from
the editing window to the tree pane, while a simple "Tab" by itself will
move you back. Highlighting one of the nodes in the tree pane and pressing
the "Insert" key will instantly create a new Node / file and deletion is
equally simple. If you have a right-click menu key on your keyboard, it
will function in both the tree pane and the editing window, making every
shortcut even more closely at hand.
The editing window allows the user to set the font for size, color and
attribute, as well as the background, while these same capabilities are
available independently for the tree pane. If you really, really like to
compose with white type on a puce background, this program will allow you
to do so. Naturally, the usual features of copy / paste and drag and drop
are available. Even in its reference to the paid version, the program
strives to be useful, for it consists of a few words which appear in the
status bar only when changes made to a file have **not** been saved - a
rare instance of truly helpful 'advertising'.
What places this program over the top in terms of functionality is its
ability to import and export individual article files in the simple 'text'
format. This means that you can not only easily tidy up those "Notepad"
entries you have littering your hard drive but export, as a text file, any
deathless prose you may have composed in Treepad. That 5000 word essay on
"Appearance and Reality in Troilus and Cressida" can be exported into a
proper word processing application, gussied up to the proper formatting
requirements and then printed in a matter of a few minutes.
If you have more modest requirements, like somewhere to store an address
list, gardening information and 87 recipes for brownies, then this is the
program for you.
Pad over to the website to view screenshots, helpful information and the
TreePad download itself - a mere 427Kb zipped - at:
http://www.treepad.com
A.M. Holm
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