In the early days of the Macintosh the standard notepad seemed indispensable. After much use, however, it's lack of capability became apparent; it only had eight pages, which don't hold much text.
I tried to find a substitute for the original notepad, but not one of them had all the features I wanted, so, I decided to write my own. Now, with Super NotePad, you have control over font, size, style, the number and size of pages, #chars per page (and color on Macs with color capability.) Super NotePad keeps the simplicity of the original notepad with the addition of several useful features.
Installation:
If you're running System 7.0, 7.01 or later:
Double click the Super NotePad DA. A window opens with the Super NotePad DA contained inside. Drag the file called"Super NotePad" into the "Apple Menu Items" folder (a folder which is inside the System Folder.)
If you're running System 6.07 or before:
Use the Font/DA Mover to install the DA into your system file.
How It Works:
After installing Super NotePad, select the DA from the Apple menu. The System Folder is searched for a file named "Super NotePad File". If the file is found, it will be opened. If not, (which happens when you first run the DA), you will be prompted with a dialog box:
(To create a new notepad when one already exists, just remove the file "Super NotePad file" from the System Folder, then open the DA.)
Select the desired page size, and #characters per page, then click on the "OK" button. Wait a few seconds for the Super NotePad file to be generated (longer for very large notepads). The file will be created in the System Folder, with an icon similar to the original notepad icon.
A menu entitled "Super NotePad" contains hierarchical menus from which you can choose the size, color, style, and typestyle. Any stylistic variation chosen will be applied to all typed text. Choosing the "goto page" menu item (or the keyboard equivalent command-G) lets you go to a particular page within the notepad. Command-N goes to the next page and command-P goes to the previous page. Double clicking on the bottom of the page will select/deselect all text on that page.
Find Menu Item:
Choosing the "Find..." menu item will bring up a dialog allowing you to enter text to find. Three check boxes entitled "Wrap Around", "Case Sensitive", and "Match Words" alter how the search is conducted.
"Wrap Around" will search all pages starting from the current cursor position back to the current cursor position. For instance, with the "Wrap Around" option checked if the current page is 5, the search will go from page 5 to the last page and then go back to page 1 and continue until page 5. If the "Wrap Around" option is NOT checked the search will go from the current page until the last page.
"Case Sensitive" will ensure that upper and lower case are distinct. ie, "foobar" is different from "Foobar".
"Match Words" will make sure that the text being searched is not a part of a larger word. For instance, if "ab" were being searched for (with "Match Words" option checked), the text "ab" would NOT match "abc". Having the "Match Words" unchecked is useful for finding words within longer words.
The default is none of the options checked.
ResEdit Buffs:
Using ResEdit (on a copy, of course), you can change the size/dimension of any of the three notepad sizes. After opening the DA with ResEdit, double click on the DLOG resource type. Then locate and open either the "Small", "Med", or "Large" DLOG resources. (Preferably, change either the "Med" or "Large" DLOGs, since the "Small" DLOG is the same size as the original notepad.) Change the size of the DLOG window then save the changes. The next time you create a new notepad, you'll be able to choose your size notepad.
Incompatibilities:
The only problem I've had with incompatibilities was with hierDA v0.9967. This version of hierDA seems unable to correctly handle desk accessories which contain hierarchical menu items. This DA was tested on an SE, Mac II, and MacIIx with System 6.05, System 6.07, System 7.0 and Suitcase II.
Version Information:
v1.1 Added case-sensitive, match-words and wrap-around search capabilities. Fixed problem with clipboard conversion on da-switching. DA recompiled to be 32-bit clean. Compatibility tested under System 7.0.
v1.01 Changed resource numbering of owned resources to fix incompatibilities under certain circumstances with resource renumbering done by the Font/DA Mover. Speed increase in file creation/update routines and minor enhancements.
v1.0 Initial Release
Features:
•Control over
Font
Font Size
Font Style
Font Color
•Variable number of pages (up to 1000)
•Variable number of characters per page
•Full Undo Capability
•Text search
•Choice of among three different notepad sizes
Hope you find this DA useful.
If you use this DA, a shareware payment of $5
is requested.
Have any suggestions for software that you'd like to see or for improvements to this DA?
