Forced Change

For a long time my text editor of choice was PSPad. Over time I got very much used to it and it became standard part of all my installations. Yes, few versions back it had some toolbars that you could deselect if you wanted to. I guess if Oracle can pack a crap with Java installation, so can everybody else.

Nitpickers would say that you can always download files without installer and copy them on system manually. In my opinion, installer is integrated part of software experience and, if you don't have installer, software is unsuitable for any use. It will get on my system only if it offers something that you cannot otherwise get. I have few such tools and almost all of them are part of Sysinternals family.

Latest version of PSPad went a bit too far for me. In EULA you will find that "PSPad editor installer contains third party bundled software provided by InstallMonetizer." And there is no way to install PSPad without getting it on your system. No checkbox, no anything. Just a paragraph that is visible ONLY if you scroll down to the very end of EULA. Yes, we all read those.

There is only one real replacement for it - Notepad++. It comes at same price point (freeware) and it covers most of my text editing needs. No, it does not have hex mode. No, it does not know how to wrap and unwrap HTML and XML. But those operations I used rarely anyhow. Most important feature at this time is clean installation.

Other program I had to replace is GOM Player and I already wrote a bit about it. Something that used to be nice and comfortable player became bundling annoyance during installation and upgrades. It might seem that I have some sort of fetish when it comes to Korean media players.

My new choice is named PotPlayer and I haven't found a thing missing compared to GOM Player. Downside is that home page comes only in Korean which is not really language I understand. Fortunatelly, there is up-to-date list change log in English and there is an English installation.

Now only if I could find some other Java installation...

PS: And don't even mention KMPlayer. It is bundled with Softronic's download manager.

3 thoughts to “Forced Change”

  1. I’m pretty sure that N++ has plugins for that. I now at least two for XML formatting:
    TextFX -> HTML Tidy
    Plugins -> XML Tools -> Pretty Print

    I remember there was a hex plugin, too.

      1. You’re welcome. Note that HTML Tidy is less sensitive to poorly formatted input documents. If Pretty Print doesn’t work as expected, apply HTML Tidy beforehand.

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