All those users who are dedicated to programming or design, may need a text editing tool to do their job. Within text editors, Windows Notepad is the best known, although we can find more complete tools on the market, such as Hekapad , a lightweight text editor with which to replace the classic Notepad since it has some interesting and useful features as we will see next.
Hekapad, main features
Hekapad is a completely free text editor for Windows, which will allow us to edit any type of text completely freely, allowing us to modify even some of the text symbols. All changes can be saved in different formats like TXT, INI, INF, LOG, and NFO, among a total of 19 different extensions.
This application has automatic saving , always making a copy of our work to prevent us from losing what we did in the event of any eventuality. We can also easily import all the plain text files into the document we are working on, and even join two or more files in the same text.
Also convenient is Hekapad’s ability to encrypt text files and save them to TXT. It has three levels of encryption (simple, standard and advanced), using AES-256 encryption for this, being able to combine the three types of encryption to obtain a completely customized encryption system.
Other characteristics to highlight
- Drag and drop text within the document.
- List of recent open documents.
- Insert symbols into a document with one click.
- Insert date, time.
- Change font and color.
- File information.
- Option “Go to line, character and word”, to jump to a selected line.
- Supports 19 different extensions.
- Printing options.
- Find and replace text.
- It allows counting document characters, words and lines.
- Click a link to open it.
- Open multiple files simultaneously.
- Copy / cut and append to clipboard.
- Full screen view
Hekapad, as an alternative to Notepad
Once we have run Hekapd we will find the main menu where we check that it has a simple graphical interface . At the top it has a toolbar and a menu consisting of tabs with the options of File, Edit, Enter, Favorites and Tools. At the bottom we find a status bar and in the middle a large blank workspace for the editor.
Although the program is initially shown in English, it is possible to configure it in Spanish . To do this we must click on the Tools tab, then Options, and here we change the language to Spanish. Although it must be said that the translation is not 100% perfect, it will help us a lot to handle us more smoothly with this application.
Edit
Within the Edit menu, we find one of the most outstanding features of Hekapad, such as Cryptography . From here we can encrypt the text, using three levels of security.
- Simple : it has a low level of security.
- Standard : It has a high level of security with AES-256 encryption.
- Advanced : we will achieve the best level of security, since in addition to having AES-256 encryption, it will be combined with a custom key.
For this we will Edit, click on Cryptography and select the chosen security level. Once selected we will see that the text will appear encrypted automatically. In this way we can generate a TXT text file and keep it safe. Once we need to decrypt the text, we will only have to carry out the same process, but clicking on Decryption, and select the encryption time that we had chosen. In this way, we will have the text available for editing again.
Introduce
Within the Enter section, we will find the possibility of adding the current Date and time , as well as Symbols (Copyright, Trademarks, Brackets, Tilde, Point and Registered trademark) and Currency (Euro, Dollar, Yen, Pound, Sign, Penny ).
Favorites
From the Favorites tab we can mark our documents as favorite s or manage their access. From here we can add a new document, delete it, check the links. In this way, every time we add a new document to Favorites, we can quickly access it from this tab whenever we need it.
Tools
From the tools menu we will have the possibility to control the opacity of the text, and can be graduated from 30 to 100%. In addition, we can use the hot keys of Ctrl +1 (100%), Ctrl +2 (90%), Ctrl +3 (80%), etc. for this. It also has a useful option called Always on top . When activated, it will show us the menu always in the foreground above any other application that we are using, so it is quite practical.
Download Hekapad
Hekapad is a completely free tool that we can download from its website . It is compatible with all versions of the Windows operating system, from XP to Windows 10. We download a file that weighs just over 2 MB , from which we can install the application, being able to choose Spanish, among the available languages. The installation is tremendously fast, so we will have the program ready to run in seconds. During its installation, at no time does any kind of additional unwanted software try to sneak in, resulting in a completely clean installation.
Alternatives to Hekapad
Hekapad is a good text editor, with many possibilities, standing out above all for the possibility of encrypting files for our security. But, if you don’t like this application, we offer you a couple of alternatives that you can try:
AkelPad
It is a fast and lightweight open source text editor, with support for single window, multiple window, Unicode codes and online formats. With this application we can divide the window into 1, 2 or 4 parts, so that we can have up to 4 documents loaded at a time. If we want to try AkelPad we can download it for free from its website.
QOwnNotes
With this open source application we can take all kinds of raw notes, allowing us the ability to encrypt in AES-256 format. It has a very simple and intuitive interface so that any user can access its management without problems. As it is an open source tool, we can download it from its website and use it for free.