Metapad is a great free text editor. The author has released the source.
The site is: http://liquidninja.com/metapad/
In order to make it portable, I think all you have to do is create metapad.ini in the install folder, and it will automatically use it instead of the registry.
This would make a great addition to PortableApps.
Metapad was discontinued in 2011 and no development has been undertaken since then. Is there some feature within it not available within all the other text editors we already support?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John,
Good question. Although there has been no development in metapad for several years, I believe that's because there are no known issues. It simply works.
As far as a comparison with the other text editors offered, I cannot say for sure, as I have not spent the time to try them all.
Here's what I love about metapad:
1. Tiny. It is tightly written in C and when uncompressed occupies less than 200KB! About half of that is for the large icons to support the latest versions of Windows!
2. Because it is so small, it loads ultrafast on any computer.
3. It is so small and fast, it can be used a true replacement for notepad.
4. It has a toolbar that instantly lets you switch between any 2 fonts, instantly toggle 'always on top', and instantly toggle word wrap. Those are three functions that I find extremely useful, and many editors do not offer such ease of use to accomplish.
5. It can handle loading binary files as well as text files. This makes it a great tool to look for text within binary files.
Notepad2 and the associated -mod to add extra features fits basically all of those criteria with the exception of the font bit. And -mod is under active development by multiple developers. Metapad seems like it was one developer that then open sourced and abandoned it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!