DocPad

Note: This review addresses v8.0 of the software.

DocPad is a free text editor that looks to be designed for programmers and others who need to work with plain-text documents.

Like Windows' Notepad, you can open only one .txt or .xml file at a time--the program can't handle .doc or .rtf formats. Once you've edited or created a document, you can save it as a .txt, .ini, .log., or .bat file.

DocPad has many more features than Notepad, however. In addition to the standard search-and-replace, DocPad's Edit menu provides an "Alphabetize all paragraphs" function, bookmarks, a character map, a macro manager, a "Convert encoding" feature, and many other options that could be useful to programmers.

Although DocPad doesn't offer full-fledged word processors like Microsoft Word any competition, it isn't meant to. If you need a powerful text-only editor, it's an excellent choice--and it's free.

--Kim Saccio-Kent