Version 2.9 (18/12/2021)

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Enhancements:

- This version adds more hot keys configurations. User can allow assign more custom keys to more actions. Edit the "hotkeys.txt" to customise.

- Refer to the "hotkeys.txt" file for the syntax guide.

- Bookmarks function has been revamped to allow up to 25 saved entries. Adding bookmark shortcut key is now user-customisable in the "hotkeys.txt" file.

Minor Changes:

- The "Settings" menu is now moved to the 2nd last position beside the "Help" menu.

- A new "Hot Keys" menu is created under the "Settings" main menu. Right-click on this "Hot Keys" menu will open up Window Explorer to the hotkeys.ini file location, ready for viewing or editing. Be sure to reload JovialNotepad after the hotkeys.txt is edited to allow the program to reload the newly-updated shortcuts.

- As this is a new menu item, add the entry, "hotkeys=xxxx" into your language file to display in your preferred language. If this entry is not entered, JovialNotepad will display it as "[HotKeys]".

I) JovialNotepad.exe Standalone Mode

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Jovial Notepad can be run on just the single file, "JovialNotepad.exe", and on any folder or thumbdrive, etc.

It needs no installation, though this will run without additional features which will be described later in this document.

The bare-bone "JovialNotepad.exe" includes features like:

1) Insert of current date/time in various selectable formats

2) Bookmarking of up to 3 lines

3) QuickSymbols for inserting into the content (built-in with 9 symbols)

4) Encrypt/Decrypt of text

5) Writing the content in rich text format, with support of direct copy and paste of images

6) Saving rich text format content in a compressed file - (.rtfc extension) - This feature is new in version 2.0

Notes on the features:

- Encrypt/Decrypt: The passphrase is not stored anywhere on disk. After the user has entered the passphrase, Jovial Notepad will use it to encrypt or decrypt the text in memory. It will be discarded when the program is closed.

- QuickSymbols: User can add their own symbols by using the "addons" features as described in the following section

- Rich Text Format: Jovial Notepad support saving the file in plain text or rich text format (with .rtf extension). Take note that any formating in rich text format WILL BE removed if the document is saved in .txt plain text format.

- Compressed Rich Text Format: When saved as .rtfc format, the file size is greatly reduced, which is ideal for file with many images. However, since the content is compressed, the characters stored in the .rtfc file will not be the standard rtf format.

II) JovialNotepad with Addons

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Jovial Notepad can be enhanced in terms of functionalities with the addons features:

1) Extensions

2) Quick Symbols (removed in version 2.6, replaced by QuickText)

3) Menu Caption Language

4) Themes (since version 2.3)

5) Syntax Highlight (since version 1.10)

6) Recently Opened Files (since version 2.3)

7) Quick Colours (since version 2.4, updated with user-definable font from version 2.8)

8) Text Lookup (since version 2.5)

9) File Link (since version 2.5)

10) QuickText (since version 2.6)

11) Favourites (since version 2.7)

12) Hot Keys (since version 2.8)

Extensions (Update 2021-09-30: Extensions is planned to be obsoleted and removed in future version)

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Extensions are small single .exe program that takes in the text from Jovial Notepad to carry some useful features.

Currently, there are 2 extensions included: JovialCalculator.exe and JovialDictionary.exe.

JovialCalculator.exe takes in the number string in Jovial Notepad and opens in its own user interface to perform the maths operation.

JovialDictionary.exe takes in the text string in Jovial Notepad and opens in its own user interface to query a web-based service for the meaning to it. Internet access is needed for JovialDictionary to work.

To use extensions, copy the folder, "extensions" with the included JovialCalculator.exe and JovialDictionary.exe to where JovialNotepad.exe is and they will appear as drop-down menu items under the "Extensions" menu.

Quick Symbols (this feature is removed in version 2.6, and replaced by the new Quick Text feature which is described at the end of this document)

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To add more symbol characters to use in Jovial Notepad, copy the included "quicksymbols.txt" file to where JovialNotepad.exe is and Jovial Notepad will load it under the "Symbols" menu.

User can modify this quicksymbols.txt file to add in their own.

Refer to the instruction in the quicksymbols.txt file itself for the correct format to use.

Menu Caption Language

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Jovial Notepad's menu will be displayed in English by default.

To have it display in other languages, copy the included "lang" folder with the various *.txt language files to where JovialNotepad.exe is and Jovial Notepad will load them under the "Settings\Language" sub-menu.

To add a new language, just copy and paste from an existing .txt language file and modify this new file and change the description to the desired language.

Whenever there's a new menu item added in new Jovial Notepad, and your existing .txt language file does not have the new entry, the menu will displayed in "brackets", e.g. [Themes].

To see the menu in your language, add a line in your .text language with:

Themes=xxxxx

where xxxxx is text you want Jovial Notepad to display as the menu item text.

Themes

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Starting version 2.3, Jovial Notepad allows user-defined colour, font, font size for:

a. menu

b. contextmenu (i.e. right button menu)

c. status bar

To use Themes, just copy the folder "thm" to your Jovial Notepad.exe directory, and a new "[Themes]" drop-down menu will appear.

Each file in the "thm" directory contains 3 lines that defines the colour, font, font size for the menu, contextmenu and status bar.

To create a new theme file, just create a new .thm file in the "thm" folder, and follow the text content of the sample .thm file.

Follow the comments any of the .thm file on what each text in the line mean.

Syntax Highlight

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Starting version 1.10, Jovial Notepad allows user-defined syntax highlight.

To use syntax highlight, copy the included "syn" folder and the file "SyntaxHighlighter.dll" to where JovialNotepad.exe is.

Jovial Notepad will display the .syn files in the "syn" folder as submenus under the "Syntax Highlight" menu.

The syntax can be modified but have to stick to the few syntax types that are used in the .syn file.

Follow the comments in the .syn file for the allowable modifications.

NOTE: Syntax Highlight does NOT work in rich text format. When a syntax submenu is selected, all rich text content will be default to the default font.

The syntax highlight files (*.syn) are created manually be me and in anywhere great. I do appreciate anyone who can modify them to a better looking syntax highlight or have additional new *.syn files to share with me by:

Emailing me at javahoe@gmail.com; or

Sharing in my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/jovialnotepad; or

Sharing in my Telegram page at https://t.me/jovialsoftware

Recently Opened Files

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This function adds a "[RecentlyOpened]" menu item under the File\Open menu.

It will show the last 15 most recently-opened files. Click on any of the file path to open the file in Jovial Notepad.

To enable this function, copy the "recents.txt" from your JovialNotepad .zip file that you've downloaded to the directory that contain JovialNote.exe.

Alternately, you can also create an empty "recents.txt" file.

If the menu is displayed as "[RecentlyOpened]", follow the section "Menu Caption Language" above to learn how to display it in your language.

If for some reason, the user does not want this feature, just delete the "recents.txt" file and the "RecentlyOpened" menu will not appear.

Quick Colours

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Starting version 2.4, the fixed text colours and highlight colours that are shown in the right-click context menu are made user-definable.

A new "Quick Colours" context menu is shown when a mouse right-click is executed on a selected text.

The list of text colors and highlight colours and loaded from the quickcolours.txt files.

Follow the instruction in this "quickcolours.txt" file to define your own preferred colours.

To disable this feature, just delete this quickcolours.txt file from your Jovial Notepad folder.

Starting version 2.8, the user can specify [Font Family Name], [Font Size] to a Quick Colour entry. Refer to the "quickcolour.txt" file for the syntax.

Text Lookup

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Starting version 2.5, Jovial Notepad allows looking up of a selected string of text in an website defined in a user-customisable "textlookup.txt" file.

E.g. to look up a word definition of the selected word in the "TheFreeDictionary" web site, add this entry in the "textlookup.txt" file:

- TheFreeDictionary, http://www.tfd.com/@

A new context menu item with "TheFreeDictionary" will appear for clicking.

There are a few frequently-used web site URLs that support text lookup in the "textlookup.txt". Users can easily edit/add/remove the entries in this file to their preference.

File Link

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Starting version 2.5, Jovial Notepad allows the insertion of a clickable link to a local file.

This function is accessible under the "Insert\File Link" menu.

When clicked, a file selection dialog will show for user to select the file to have the link created in the text area.

The link will have "file:" prefix. E.g. "file:c:\folderone\file one.docx". When this link is clicked, Windows Explorer will open to the folder where this file is in, and the file highlighted.

Quick Text

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Quick Text is a new feature that replaces the previous Quick Symbols feature.

Quick Symbols support only a single "quicksymbols.txt" file that will shown in Jovial Notepad as a single level dropdown menu items.

Quick Text enhances over this limitation and allows more than one files.

Jovial Notepad will load these files in the "qtext" folder and create a sub-menu for every file found there.

In the JovialNotepad.zip, there's a pre-create "qtext" folder with 3 text files, "Emoji.txt", "General.txt", "Math.txt". When Jovial Notepad is run, 3 submenus will be created under the "QText" main menu.

Users can edit these .txt files to add or remove their own entries. To add a new submenu, simple create a new .txt file in this "qtext" folder. Refer to the pre-bundled .txt file for the syntax to the file content.

For a recap, you can change the "QText" main menu label in you "lang\xxx.txt" language file under the "QuickText=xxxx" entry. If this entry is not found in you language file, simple add one line there.

Favourties

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Favourites allows the user to add the currently-opened file to the "Favourites" menu as a drop-down menu item. So that, the file can be later easily opened again by clicking on this menu item.

To add the currently-opened file as favourite, click the "☆☆☆" menu item under the "Favourites" menu.

To remove an existing favourites menu item, right-click on the menu item and click "yes".

The menu items information are updated in the "favourites.txt" in the JovialNotepad.exe directory.

If the menu is displayed as "[Favourites]", follow the section "Menu Caption Language" above to learn how to display it in your language.

If for some reason, the user does not want this feature, just delete the "favourites.txt" file and the "Favourites" menu will not appear.

Hot Keys

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Hot Keys allows the user to define their own keyboard shortcuts for some text editing functions, such as bold, italic, etc.

To customise the keyboard shortcuts, edit the "hotkeys.txt" file that is found in the same directory of JovialNotepad.exe.

This "hotkeys.txt" is optional. It's only needed if the user wants to customise their own shortcuts.

Instructions to edit the hotkeys.txt is found in file itself.

The assigned shortcut keys can also be viewed by clicking the "Help\Text Edit Shortcut Keys" menu.

Right-clicking on this menu will open the "hotkeys.txt" in Windows Explorer for editing. Restart Jovial Notepad after editing to let Jovial Notepad reload the new key assignments.