NoteTab for note-taking

Posted by wreckonthehiway
Apr 17, 2011 at 06:50 PM

I used UltraEdit for years before switching to a Mac and it’s the only piece of software I miss. I loved it. I can’t remember what the keystrokes are now, but if you highlighted a word in a file, and pressed a certain keystroke, it would search for that word in all the files in a folder and list the result in a window at the bottom of the screen. Then, if you clicked on one of the results in the list, UltraEdit would open the file at that place.

I’m not a programmer, so only ever used UltraEdit for editing text but it was great. I used it for GTD—one file contained a project on each line with a Next Action under it along with a code for a context (@ca etc); I could then search for all Actions for a particular context. I used it for my Contacts—one file containing all contact information. I used it for contact history as well. So, if I did a search across files in a folder for a particular person, it would bring up that person’s contact details in my Contacts file and every line in my contact history where that person’s name appeared. Wonderful. It was also fast.

Before I discovered UltraEdit, I used NoteTab (recommended on the web by Jacques Turbe if anyone remembers him). NoteTab paled in comparison to UltraEdit.

I now use TextMate on the Mac which has the same search capability. I assume a lot of high-end editors have the same feature.

Of course, I haven’t used UltraEdit for about three years, so things may have changed.