6pad++ is the successor of 6pad; 6pad is now abandonned.
6pad++ is a simple and lightweight, yet powerful text editor for windows. Its main goal is to keep the accessibility and responsiveness of standard notepad, while providing a few not especially spectacular but useful features.
Latest version is alpha 3. If you have an improvement to suggest, if you found a bug, or if you have any question, feel free to contact me or post on the issue tracker.
Have fun !
There is no official download yet available. As soon as the features, code and python API become more or less stable, first betas will be released. IN the meantime, nothing stops you from compiling 6pad++ yourself.
Main distinctive features of 6pad++ includes :
- Edit multiple files in a tabbed interface and or in multiple instances of the program.
- Manage most popular character encodings as well as less popular ones; up to 150 if your version of windows supports them all.
- Search and replace using perl-like regular expressions (provided by boost::regex).
- Open files at lightning speed, even for files larger than a few dozen megabytes.
- Prevent opening a file twice in different tabs or windows, and automatically refreshing file's contents when modified in another external program.
- Use pipes to quickly read the results of DOS commands, or simply send them input without making temporary files
- Customize and extend the editor to fit your needs and liking, with a fully functional python 3 scripting API.
For a long time, I have been frustrated with the default notepad on Windows because of its lack of functionality for developers. There are, of course, dedicated text editors especially made for developers, but I either find them too heavy, or not as accessible as I would like with a screen reader.
For example, notepad2 and notepad++ are very lightweight, but only partially accessible. Screen readers don't always behave as they should, or don't always read what they need to. On the opposite side, complete integrated development editors like eclipse are known to be pretty accessible, but they are too heavy for most tasks, take too long to start up, and aren't that suited for a quick look at small files and or notes.
There is already a text editor made for screen reader users, it is called EdSharp. However, I find that its interface is not that easy to use. The menus are full of rarely used features, they are quite randomly mixed up and EdSharp lacks an obvious way to script one's own functionality. On top of that, I don't program in C#.
The main changes from 6pad are:
- 6pad++ is in C++11 instead of C99
- 6pad++ is scriptable in python 3.4 instead of lua 5.1.4
- Dropped PCRE API in favor of boost::regex; in practice it makes very few differences.
You can have a look at the old 6pad repository if you wish. But the old 6pad is no longer maintained.
- In the core directory, is the code for the 6pad++ DLL (qc6pad10.dll). This is separated from the main executable so that plugins can be written in C++. If you want to write a C++ plugin for 6pad++, you need to import this library.
- IN the main directory is the code of the main 6pad++ executable.
- IN doc folder, is documentation about the final product and the associated python API. This documentation is auto-generated from markdown files using pandoc.
- In lib folder, are python libraries or DLLs, needed for the python 3.4.2 runtime. *In plugins subfolder, are 6pad++ plugins programmed in python. Read each subfolder's readme for more info.
- In addons folder, are 6pad++ extension DLLs programmed in C++, and their associated source code. Read each subfolder's readme for more info.
- IN extensions folder, are python extensions; they are completely independent and might be used outside 6pad++. Read each subfolder's readme for more info.
Note 1: The 6pad++ binary is compiled with MinGW/GCC 4.8.1 in 32-bit mode. If you want to make C++ plugins that can be used seamlessly with the base distribution, you must use that exact same compiler and settings. This is because Visual Studio's and GCC's ABI are not compatible with one another.
Note 2: 6pad++ binary is linked with msvcr100.dll instead of msvcrt.dll. This is an obligation because python34.dll has also been linked with msvcr100.dll and I don't have any control on python34.dll. This python34.dll, as well as the whole python library found in python34.zip, have been taken unmodified from the default python 3.4 windows installer available at http://www.python.org/. I just removed the completely useless python modules.