Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Use WordPad for letters that you want other people to see. Notepad works best for stuff you're going to keep for yourself. Like its name, it's designed for typing notes to save on the fly.
To nudge Notepad into life, choose All Programs from the Start menu, choose Accessories, and click on Notepad.
Unfortunately, Notepad tosses you into instant confusion: When you start typing, the sentences head right off the edge of the window and out of sight. To turn those single-line, runaway sentences into normal paragraphs, choose Word Wrap from the Format menu, as shown in Figure 5-12. Windows XP remembers your preference and wraps the lines to fit the page the next time you reach for Notepad.
Another warning: Unlike most word processors, Notepad doesn't print exactly what you see on-screen. Instead, it prints according to the margins you set in Page Setup from the Format menu. This quirk can lead to unpredictable results. Stick with WordPad for documents you want to print.
Turn Notepad into a logbook by typing .LOG as the first sentence of your file. Whenever you open that file, Notepad jumps to the bottom of the file and inserts the current time and date before you start typing.
To nudge Notepad into life, choose All Programs from the Start menu, choose Accessories, and click on Notepad.
Unfortunately, Notepad tosses you into instant confusion: When you start typing, the sentences head right off the edge of the window and out of sight. To turn those single-line, runaway sentences into normal paragraphs, choose Word Wrap from the Format menu, as shown in Figure 5-12. Windows XP remembers your preference and wraps the lines to fit the page the next time you reach for Notepad.
Another warning: Unlike most word processors, Notepad doesn't print exactly what you see on-screen. Instead, it prints according to the margins you set in Page Setup from the Format menu. This quirk can lead to unpredictable results. Stick with WordPad for documents you want to print.
Turn Notepad into a logbook by typing .LOG as the first sentence of your file. Whenever you open that file, Notepad jumps to the bottom of the file and inserts the current time and date before you start typing.
