Window's notepad is blindingly light themed, so i decided to make my own dark theme version with tabs and many other (probably useless) features. It uses WPF and MVVM (no MVVM Light or any nuget packages, i did it all myself). It's fairly robust, but it works. I dont think this program fully follow the MVVM standards, but who cares tbh Here's a snapshot of the program, showing the infolist at the bottom, file explorer on the right, multiple NotepadListItems and loads of text. The find, file explorer and infolist can be closed/opened to take up less space also.
the pic shows 2 opened windows (bottom left and whole right side), and the window manager on the top left. that windows shows the opened windows and the closed ones (history)
Most things have tooltips, which will explain what 'the thing' does (some things are explained in quite some depth too) NotepadListItems are the things on the left of the program, containing file and style info.
- Starting from the top, the titlebar. it does everything you'd expect.
- There's menus below that (file, theme, etc). File allows opening/saving/closing of NotepadListItems, and also has a thing for opening the preferences window. Theme allows you to change the application theme (dark/light). Windows lets you open the selected NotepadListItems in another window. Help... shows help :)
- Below, is some buttons. New File, Open File, Save, Save as Save all, Close selected NotepadListItem, Close all NotepadListItems, Print selected file and Find. There's also the new feature to open a window which will show every Notepad window that's currently open. you can then manually close or focus them (double click or use buttons on the right side). and there's also the closed ones (history), allowing you to reopen them or clear the history. And there's also the windows clipboard, in the Consolas font (right side of "Windows Clipboard:". This automatically updates whenever the windows clipboard changes, which is kind of a useless feature... but it doesn't cause any lag so might as well have it :) Clicking on the text opens a window containing the entire clipboard, incase you copied too much text to be displayed.
- Below that is styles; the Font, FontSize, Italics, font thickness (bold), and textdecorations like underlining and strikethrough and the ability to hide the Selected Line Outline (more on that later when taking about the Text Editor), and a check to watch files for changes (so a file you opened, if you haven't modified it in the program but its content changes on your pc, it will set the item's text as the new text).
- Below that, you have the top Notepad Items list. it's basiclally the same as the one on the left (except it's horizontal and the items dont show the filesize and show a save icon instead of "Saved/Unsaved"). More info below...
- Then you have the Notepad Items list to the left, containing NotepadListItem, aka files. Those NotepadListItem have a name, Saved/Unsaved tag, Character count and filesize in kb. There's a close button to the very right top, which will close/remove the NotepadListItem to the right of that is a button to open that item in another window. and below the close button is another button to rename the item (it just highlights the filename, not the extension). You can also drag these items out of the app and into file explorer or your desktop or something; dragdropping, just click and drag like in file explorer. Also, there's a grip thing on the left side of the items; this is a special dragdrop that will try and find the location where you dropped the file, it does this by using FileSystemWatchers which watch every drive for file changes. There's a 3 second delay between actually dropping the item somewhere and it actually being renamed. this is because it doesn't instantly rename on your desktop due to bugs... however normal dragdrop works perfectly. right clicking these items gives a menu with a few commands like closing/deleting/opening location in file explorer, etc. At the bottom of the list is a button to clear all items. it has the same functionality as the button at the top and theres also a Move up/down button. this moves the selected item up or down in the list. if you right click the list you can sort the items by name or by file size.
- In the middle is the TextBox, i'll call the Text Editor. This is where all the text goes. At the top are the Cut/Copy/Paste/Undo/Redo, text wrapping and auto-word selection (which selects a whole word when you select the first few letters of a word) Right click for a contextmenu with the same functions. Below the TextBox is the ammount you've zoomed in/out (hold ctrl and scroll to zoom), which is actually just the fontsize :/, to the right is the FileName (in a textbox so you can change it), and next is the file's path (also editable). There's a rectangle around the current line you're on (aka on the caret index); it's a good indicator as to which line you're on. can be enabled/disabled near the top (Show Line Border)
- At the top right in the text editor is the find panel/tab. this allows you to find all occourances of text within the Text Editor and then replace it with whatever text you want. Pressing enter to quickly find the next result is a bit buggy, i recommend initially selecting some text in the main Text Editor, and then using the buttons in the find tab.
- To the very right is the File Explorer. It's a tree based explorer, so double click to open/close trees of every folder and file. On files, there's a grip on the left which allows you to drag the file into the program (the notepads list)
- At the bottom is the Information and history lists. Information contains a list of info regarding things that have happened in the program (like Info, Statuses and errors). An example of info is creating a new file, opening one, saving one, Draging the NotepadListItem, or breaking the program somehow because i forgot to check if the file exists when saving or something lol. The history is obvious. When you close an item it adds it to the history. Click clear to permanently delete the closed items with no way to get them back.
- Removed the list-based history on the right and replaced it with a tab at the top right. i tried to replicate the one from vscode and so far it works great, however i recommend using the buttons rather than pressing enter in the Find input bit, due to a slight bug with the selection stuff. and i also fixed the Line Border thing, it is no longer buggy when scrolling.
- Added a new Notepad Items list at the top. so if you dont want side items, you can have "Tabs" on the top. You can also now hide the left and/or top list incase you dont want them showing (it remembers for the next time you open the app). And also changed a few icons and made them more HD lol.
- Added the ability to refresh file contents. also added a file watcher to watch any notepad item's path for any changes in its text. it will only auto-update the notepad's content if you've made no changes. also added a button to notepad items to rename file (just highlights the name, not extension).
- Added a new drag dropping thing. If the option is enabled (in File>Preferences -> Window) then files that dont exist (aka new files), if you dragdrop them somewhere on your PC, the file's path will automatically be set once the file watcher finds it. it can take a second for the path to update. However, be aware when dragdropping to the desktop because the file will takes 5 seconds to rename after you drop it. So unfortuntately you cant just drop it and expect it to instantly rename (because the desktop is a bit buggy). Normal dragdrop still works perfectly fine so dont worry. Ctrl + T for new window, Ctrl + W to close window, Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen recently closed windows, Ctrl+ Shift + W to shutdown program.
- Added a history system to the windows (in the window management thingy), allowing you to reopen closed windows. i think the shortcut to do this is broken, so just manually reopen files in the bottom expander and on the right is a groupbox. click Repoen
- Added a new window management system. At the top next to find is a button to open a window which will contain items which preview some stuff about the currently open windows. you can close and focus them with the buttons on the right or by double clicking. It might be slightly buggy however, but ive used it for a few hours and it's fine with no bugs.
- Added a new history system. If you close a file by accident, press Ctrl+Shift+T to reopen it. You can also reopen files manually by opening the Information and History expander at the bottom, and on the right are some items. Click Reopen or double click the items to reopen them.
- Added a properties window (File>Preferences) for editing things like whether holding shift + scrolling mouse wheel scrolls the text editor horizontally.
- Fixed TextDecorations not displaying properly in the ComboBox. Now it works :) Also, the FindResult panel has majestically shortened for some reason. To counter that, the items now have a maximum height of 120px, allowing multiple preview lines to me displayed. Its still a bit buggy but it should be okay.
- The windows clipboard is displayed at the top next to "Windows Clipboard:" and always updates with any change to the clipboard in or out of the program. will also display if the data is null... aka the data isnt a string (an image for example)
- Added more shortcut/hotkey commands. These can be found in the help menu at the top, and then at the bottom of the window that opens.
- There's a border around the line which the carex is on (aka the selected line outline). it's a bit buggy when vertically scrolling. There's a checkbox to disabled it (at the top next to wrapping). Also, the Text Editor is now it's own control... which inherits from TextBox. soon i might make my own texbox, but that'd take quite a long time.
- Added a file explorer (to the right) for fun, in case you want to navigate somewhere to drag a file. There's a grip on the right side of files (a checkerboard sort of thing, like with NotepadListItems). Click and move your mouse to drag it to the NotepadListItems list
- Also fixed DragDropping slightly. Before, you could drag the entire NotepadListItems. Now, you have to drag the grip (on the left of the item). This is makes sure you dont accidentally start dragging by accident
- Added ability to add extensions to file, or change the existing extension with another. can do this by right clicking the NotepadListItems and at the bottom is a dropdown menu with a list of extensions. Nifty feature tbh, but kinda useless as you could just rename the file. oh well.
- Added a list at the bottom for errors, alerts and information the programs throws. Click the expander to show it. Also added an orange/red ribbon to the NotepadListItems when the file size goes over 100kb/250kb, because at those points the program might lag.
- Added even more colourful icons, better than the other ones
- Added a Drag and Drop feature to the NotepadListItems. you can drag them to a folder, and it creates a file with the specified extension at that location. can also be used to transfer NotepadListItems between different windows
- Added a light theme, and also colourful themes too (4 themes in total: colourful light and dark, and normal light and dark)
- Can open selected notepad in another window (bugs may occour, so be careful with it)
- Auto-prompts you to save unsaved/edited work/files when you exit. Click no to just exit
- Added ability to change fonts/fontsizes/wrapping, etc. affects all of the text in the selected NotepadListItems because this isn't a rich text editor.
the items on the left are a separate control (NotepadListItems), and their DataContext is a NotepadItemViewModel which contains a TextDocumentViewModel which also contains a DocumentModel (containing a path, filename, text, etc) and FormatModel (fontsize, wrapping, etc). When you select an item, it sets the Text Editor's DataContext as the selected NotepadListItems's DataContext (aka the TextDocumentViewModel). and through binding, it updates the view accordingly.
it's completely opensource so you can edit it and stuff. would be nice if you credited me if you post it somewhere else :))