Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 184 I can think of all sorts of analogies to explain the difference between a text editor and a word processor: You could ✦ Dig a swimming pool with a spoon or a backhoe. ✦ Get from Boston to San Francisco on foot or by jumbo jet. ✦ Cook a six-course meal using a wood fire and one tin plate or on a grand stainless-steel restaurant stove with eight burners, a griddle, an oven, and a built-in electronic sous-chef in the drawer. But if you’re already familiar with the capabilities of a computer when it comes to managing documents, displaying fonts and pictures, and its modern direct connection to the World Wide Web (the “old” name for the Internet), then here’s one more somewhat self-referential set of analogies: a text editor is like a pencil with an eraser. With that tool you can write, you can make changes, and you can draw stick figures. It’s very easy to use (Have you ever studied the instruction manual for a pencil?) and cheap. A word processor? Well, it’s got those same pencil and eraser features. But it also adds some fantastic power tools. If William Shakespeare had access to Microsoft Word, he might have written 100 plays instead of a mere 38. (And he could have cleaned up his spelling and grammar and maybe annotated his work with references to contemporary culture and classical texts.) Here are some of the features of a typical word processor: ✦ Fonts, sizes, styles (normal, bold, italic, and the like), and colors ✦ Management and application of styles to chapter and section heads as well as blocks of text ✦ Advanced layout of text including columns, embedded art, headers and footnotes ✦ Spelling and grammar checkers ✦ Dictionaries and thesauruses ✦ Indexing and tables of content generators ✦ Mail-merge and form-letter functions You can easily use Microsoft Word as an example of a word processor because, well, almost everyone uses it. Microsoft Office (which includes Microsoft Word) owns about 75 percent of the market. Would-be competitors, which include Corel’s WordPerfect Office and Apple’s iWork, are quite capable products . . . and they essentially mimic or duplicate Word’s features, as well as its look and feel. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 184 Book III Chapter 2 Using Built-in Windows Applications and Gadgets Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 185 Word processors have three important disadvantages: ✦ In most cases they’re not free. You have to pay for the right to use the program either as a component of the package that comes with your laptop or as a product you install on your machine. That said, free or shareware word processors are showing their faces. Among the more intriguing word-processing freebies: Google Docs from the people at Google (you guessed that, right?), which allows you to use a word processor and a spreadsheet that reside on a computer somewhere out there on the Internet. You can save your files in a free account at Google, or store them on your local hard disk drive. And you can share files from one machine to another because Google Docs can store files in the Microsoft Word format, as well as other formats including RTF, PDF, and Open Office (a shareware product). Google will eventually seek to make money through the sale of ads, which may or may not bother you. On the plus side, you won’t have to install a word processor on your laptop or bother to keep it updated if you use their application over the Internet. ✦ They’re complex. Over the years, word processors have added more and more features; some call it bloatware. The fact is that most people, including professional writers who spend nearly every waking moment of the day in front of a keyboard, use only a tiny fraction of the available features of a word processor. The good news is that Microsoft (yes, the company with the overwhelm- ing market share) has begun to rethink the way in which it offers all of those tools. You will now find context-sensitive menus that pop up with the click of the right mouse button, and the most current versions of Microsoft Office (beginning with the 2007 edition) also present a chang- ing selection of commands at the top of the screen; the computer attempts to anticipate your needs based on the sort of work you’re doing. All the functions are there, but they’re not all waving their hands for attention at the same time. ✦ Files tend toward large. Because word processors include all sorts of information about things like formatting and styles and multiple versions of a file or changes proposed by other users or accepted by the original author, a simple document can be quite large. Again, Microsoft has begun to address this with the latest versions of its Office suite. But in any case, a word-processing file will, by definition, be larger than a text-editing file, even if they contain the exact same number of characters. Notepad It’s better than a typewriter. And it’s almost as easy to use as a pencil and paper. You can type, move, print, store, and transmit characters to other users. You can’t, though, get fancy. It served a purpose — and for some users still does —where all you want is the information. Just the characters, ma’am. (See Figure 2-4.) 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 185 Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 186 Notepad works very well in writing programs, creating notations for online calendars, or for those people who can appreciate the fact that a Notepad file of several hundred words can demand only a few hundred bytes within a container of 4KB; an equivalent WordPad file requires twice as many bytes, while the functional minimum size for a Microsoft Word file — even one made up of a single character — will be a minimum of 12KB and often larger. Notepad saves its files as a plain text document, helpfully labeled with a *.txt filename extension. Does size really matter any more? Yes and no. Today’s hard disk drives are so large, with prices dropping by the minute. The difference in overhead between a single Notepad file and a single Word file isn’t going to make any noticeable difference. However, if you think about the contents of your computer in its totality, a few thousand bytes saved here and there will quickly add up to megabytes and gigabytes. Less is more; your machine will run more efficiently, and you’ll help save the planet. (Think of the volts you will set free.) Opening Notepad You can open Notepad several ways: ✦ Click the Windows Button ➪ All Programs ➪ Accessories ➪ Notepad. Figure 2-4: Notepad is the most basic of text processors, supplied with all current versions of Windows. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 186 Book III Chapter 2 Using Built-in Windows Applications and Gadgets Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 187 ✦ Click a shortcut to Notepad that you created on the Desktop, or that you pinned to the Windows Start menu. If you’ve recently used Notepad, a temporary shortcut already exists on the Start menu. Book III, Chapter 1 tells you how to create a desktop shortcut. ✦ Double-click the file created with Notepad. If your computer has been instructed to associate the file type TXT with Notepad, it opens that program. If you have another text editor (or a word processor like Microsoft Word), the file may instead open in that program. See Book II, Chapter 4 if you’d like to change an association. Jumping to a line Actually, you can trace text editors one step back on the evolutionary path. The very first computers processed programs and accepted data one line at a time; data coming in or out was presented on numbered lines of a speci- fied length. The first crude tools for working with the data were called line editors. Buried deep within Notepad are some of the vestiges of a line editor. The program keeps track of information as if each line were a separate entity. And therefore, even though the document you’re working on may not have numbers on each line, you can jump to a particular line if you calculate its position in the document. Take a note Notepad is a holdover from the very early days of computing, back when machines dealt only with characters and not pictures. Quick lesson: Early computers assigned a number (called an ASCII code, if you must know) to each of the characters on the keyboard as well as a number of special purpose symbols. So, an uppercase A was noted with the decimal value of 65. Computer video cards knew that when they saw a 65, they were to look up in an index a predefined picture of an A. Computer printers worked in much the same way, con- verting a string of numbers into a command to print an A. Early computer printers were basically electric typewriters that accepted a string of numerical commands; you might be able to change the font by switching the type ball or other mechanism to produce a character. Today, though, Windows is a GUI. And as a graphical user interface, the image you see on screen or in hard copy from a printer is no longer (as far as you’re concerned) based on numerical codes but instead on a map of dots in the computer’s memory; to draw an A, the com- puter does the equivalent of blacking in the proper spots on a grid. And that grid can be manipulated: converted to boldface or italics or colorized almost without limit. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 187 Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 188 Jump to a specific line in a document this way: 1. Choose Edit ➪ Go To. 2. In the Line Number box, enter the number you want. For example, to go directly to the ninth line of the document, type 9. 3. Click OK. The deed is done. Setting font style and size Think of Notepad as a box of characters with a simple set of instructions on the label. You can assign any font available on your computer, choose a style such as italics or boldface, and pick a size. (See Figure 2-5.) So far, that sounds sort of like the way a word processor works. But here’s the difference: Whatever font, size, and style settings you make apply to all the text in the Notepad document. No menu bar offers quick choices for fonts; make settings by clicking Format ➪ Font. From there you see the list of available fonts and styles. Figure 2-5: Choices of fonts and styles within Notepad are applied to the entire file, not to individual characters or words. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 188 Book III Chapter 2 Using Built-in Windows Applications and Gadgets Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 189 Special functions Notepad includes basic cut-and-paste facilities. As with other text editors, the process works much the same way: 1. Select text. 2. Click the Edit menu. 3. Choose based on your needs: • Cut. To remove the text and place it in memory for insertion elsewhere. • Copy. To leave the text where it is but store a copy in memory for use elsewhere. • Paste. To put text from memory into a document. To back out of a cut-and-paste operation, click Edit ➪ Undo. Or, you can use keyboard commands to accomplish the same tasks: ✦ Ctrl + X to cut text. ✦ Ctrl + C to copy text. ✦ Ctrl + V to paste text. ✦ Ctrl + Z to undo the cuts, copies, and pastings. Other available functions include Search and Replace, available from the Edit menu. And, as with WordPad, Microsoft programmers have blurred the distinction between text editor and word processor a little bit by adding headers (lines of text at the top of every page) or footers (text at the bottom of printed pages). To create a header or footer, follow along: 1. Click File ➪ Page Setup. Both a Header and a Footer box appear. Default settings place the file- name at the top of the page and a page number at the bottom. 2. Enter text. You can use just the text you enter or use it with special characters that tell the system to insert specific information. The codes in the following table are some of the most common within headers and footers. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 189 Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 190 Insert the date (from the computer calendar) &d Insert the time (from the computer clock) &t Insert the name of the file &f Insert the page number &p Align the header or footer flush left or flush right &l or &r Center the header or footer &c WordPad You want free text editing that comes pretty close to offering the basic func- tionality of a word processor? Every owner of a laptop running current ver- sions of Windows can find a copy of Microsoft’s almost-ready-for-prime-time text editor, WordPad. Not all that long ago in the history of personal computing, WordPad would’ve been considered a pretty capable word processor. Now it sits somewhere between a simple text editor and one of the big boys. WordPad documents can ✦ Include complex formatting and graphics. ✦ Link to or embed objects such as pictures or other documents. ✦ Save your files. Files can be saved in RTF (Rich Text Format) and later imported and converted for use within most other word processors, including Microsoft Word. And you can use WordPad to open most Word files, but you can’t re-save them in Word’s DOC or DOCX formats. ✦ Let you reopen and edit files. ✦ Print. WordPad is more advanced than Notepad, but what does it lack? In two words: bells and whistles. It has no spell checker, thesaurus, or grammar utility. You’ve got to jump through a lot of hoops to work with images (as objects created in other programs and brought in). And you can’t create tables. Truth be told, though, WordPad is perfectly adequate for note taking and even preparing simple documents. Opening WordPad WordPad is included in the standard set of accessories installed with Windows. You can open it in several ways: ✦ Click the Windows Button ➪ All Programs ➪ Accessories ➪ WordPad. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 190 Book III Chapter 2 Using Built-in Windows Applications and Gadgets Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 191 ✦ Click a shortcut to WordPad on the Desktop, or on the Windows Start menu. If you recently used WordPad, a temporary shortcut is already on the Start menu. Book III, Chapter 1 tells you how to create a desktop shortcut. ✦ Double-click the file created with WordPad. If your computer has been instructed to “associate” the file type (RTF, TXT, or Unicode) with WordPad it will open that program. If you have another text editor (or a word processor like Microsoft Word) the file may instead open in that program. See Book II, Chapter 4 if you’d like to change an association. Creating a document in WordPad To open a new document, do one of these things: ✦ Click the new blank document icon on the toolbar. ✦ Click File ➪ New. From the list of document types, choose from these types. ✦ Rich Text Document. This simple text file that includes codes for for- matting and styles that can be used or converted by most other text edi- tors and word processors. If you were to read an RTF file in a text editor, you might see a line like this: This sentence includes a {\b bold} word, enclosed within curly brackets and indicated with a \b. Onscreen in a word processor or printed out, the sentence looks like this: This sentence includes a [BOLD]bold[UNBOLD] word, enclosed within curly brackets and indicated with a \b. ✦ Text Document. In theory, a plain text file is just what it sounds like; plain text, unadorned with any formatting or fonts. The original idea was that files would be like typewritten text, without any emphasis or for- matting other than paragraph marks and spaces; over the years, though, some simple formatting and choice of fonts has been allowed. The let- ters, though, are all simple Roman characters. Plain text files are per- fectly adequate for composing messages that you’ll cut and paste into an e-mail program or are used just as notes. ✦ Unicode Text Document. This file type is for use with nearly any lan- guage, not just the Roman characters of English. WordPad stores these files using a format called UTF-16, which many other programs can use. Unicode files allow simple formatting, including choice of fonts and emphasis including boldface, italic, and underlining. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 191 Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 192 Which file format should you use? For most people, the best choice is RTF. A Rich Text Format file should be readable by almost any other text editor or word processor. Click View ➪ Options to instruct WordPad whether the words you write should ✦ Wrap at the end of the displayed window ✦ Wrap at the end of the ruler on the page ✦ Not wrap at all Most users find it much easier to work with a file that wraps the text to the ruler or the displayed window. For certain technical uses, including writing a program or preparing code for a web site, you may need to turn off wrapping so that the file that is created is a pure text file. To read a file like this, scroll all the way to the right until you reach the end of a sentence (or the entire file). The settings you make for word wrapping affect only how the text appears on the screen and in the raw file itself. If you printed from within WordPad or another text editor or word processor, it would automatically format the lines of characters to fit on the printed page. Opening an existing WordPad document To open a file previously created and saved using WordPad, or to open a file created in another program but stored as an RTF, TXT, or Unicode file, do this: 1. Click File Menu ➪ Open. 2. Click the file you want to work with. 3. Click Open. Saving a WordPad document When you’re ready to put away a file you created, follow these steps: 1. Click File ➪ Save. 2. Enter a filename in the highlighted space. 3. If you want to change the file type, click the Save as Type arrow. The file-type options appear. Even though you were asked the type of file you want to create when you began working on the file, you can save the document in a different format. You can enable the Automatically Save All Files as a Particular Type By Default check box. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 192 Book III Chapter 2 Using Built-in Windows Applications and Gadgets Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 193 4. Ensure the name in the filename area is what you want. If you want a different name than one it had before, change the entry under filename before saving. 5. Click OK. Printing a WordPad document WordPad integrates with the settings you made for printers on your laptop. If Windows knows of a printer and you properly installed its driver, you can create a hard copy of a file created in WordPad: 1. Click File ➪ Print. 2. Go to the General tab. 3. Select the printer you want to use. You can add a printer if the one you want to use doesn’t show up. 4. Choose the range of pages to print: • All • Pages (ranging anywhere within the document) • Current Page • Just the highlighted block of text To see what your document will look like when you print it, click File ➪ Print Preview. Click Close to return to the document. 5. Click OK. Finding and replacing words Why does a text editor include a relatively sophisticated function like find and replace? Just like car manufacturers, programmers can’t keep their hands off their work; with each new version of WordPad (and as of the release of Windows Vista, there’ve been six major and many minor revisions), they pack more and more into the box. Anyhow, WordPad has a basic search-and-replace function. To find a word or a particular group of characters in the file, do this: 1. Click Edit ➪ Find. 2. Type the characters you’re looking for in the Find What box. 3. Click Find Next. 16 140925-bk03ch02.qxp 4/8/08 12:38 PM Page 193 . they’re not all waving their hands for attention at the same time. ✦ Files tend toward large. Because word processors include all sorts of information about things like formatting and styles and multiple. complex formatting and graphics. ✦ Link to or embed objects such as pictures or other documents. ✦ Save your files. Files can be saved in RTF (Rich Text Format) and later imported and converted for. 191 Sweating the Small Stuff: Text Editors 192 Which file format should you use? For most people, the best choice is RTF. A Rich Text Format file should be readable by almost any other text editor