(Guide/Review) QText is a note taking program that supports tabs, TXT, HTML and autosave

[Karlston]

QText is a note taking program that supports tabs, TXT, HTML and autosave

Note taking programs are handy, and the ones which support autosave are even better. QText is the latest one of this kind, that we took for a test drive.

 

 

The application minimizes to the system tray when you close it, double-click the icon to re-open it.

 

QText uses tabs for each file. To open a new tab, use Ctrl + N or the first icon on the toolbar. A pop=up window prompts you to choose between 2 options: Text and HTML. Give the tab a name and you're good to go.

 

Text tabs are saved in the plain text document TXT format, HTML notes are of course saved as .HTML QText supports formatting options (Bold, Italics, Underline, Strikethrough), which are placed in the toolbar for HTML tabs. The toolbar's appearance is dynamic, i.e., if you switch from a HTML tab to a TXT one, the formatting options are hidden and vice-versa. (compare the toolbar in the screenshots).

 

 

Note: A third option, Markdown, can be enabled from the Options > Experimental Features menu. But it does not have any formatting tools at the moment. That's because version of the program is still in development, refer to the note at the end of this article.

 

 

Right-click on a tab and use the menu to create new tabs, reopen, save, rename or delete the current tab. Tabs can be rearranged with a drag-and-drop. You cannot open existing files in the application, but the tab menu may be used to open the TXT/HTML files that it creates in their default handlers. Wondering where QText is saving the file to? Use the tab menu to open the destination folder, you may change this from the program's options. This menu has another useful option called Convert, which lets you switch from plain text to HTML or the other way around.

 

The text editor in the program has its own context menu, which apart from the usual editing options, has a menu item to add the current date/time at the cursor location.

 

 

QText has autosave to preserve the data you type automatically, though you can manually click the save button if you want to. Other options in the application include the Search tool, Print Preview, and Print as PDF. Set it to use HTML by default, toggle the option that colorizes HTML tabs to differentiate them from text tabs, pin the program to stay on top of other windows. The application supports quite a few keyboard shorcuts which can be used for every option on the toolbar, tab and editor context menus.

 

There isn't an option to change the font type and size in QText's GUI, use the Control button + mouse wheel to zoom in or out. For some reason, this only works with text tabs, and not with HTML tabs.

QText is not a portable software. The program is open source.

 

Note: This review is based on the developer's currently maintained project that has a page named QTextEx, though it's named QText too. The developer has mentioned in a comment on an issue page, that QTextEx will be released as version 5, to replace the older program. The new release is based on C++ and Qt5, and is nearly identical to the original application, which is written in C#. The older version (updated a few months ago) has a portable version, but instead of HTML formatting, supports RTF rich text format. On the other hand, it supports reminders, and allows you to customize the font settings.

 

Landing Page: https://github.com/medo64/QText/

 

 

QText is a note taking program that supports tabs, TXT, HTML and autosave