PCNet File Catch - Boxer Editor - Don't edit without it.

Sometimes old friends seem to just fade away. There's no good reason, life just happens, you get busy and distracted and somehow you lose touch. Then all of a sudden there they are and the friendship is renewed as good as ever and you realize how much you missed them.

I recently had that experience with software; Boxer Text Editor. I'd used Boxer way back in the DOS days, in fact I used it every day but then Windows came along, I got distracted and somehow it slipped off my hard drive. It was my loss.

First the name is really a misnomer, yeah, it's text but Boxer works on ALL text; html, flat database files, XML files, humongous log files (up to 2Gb), batch files, INI files, even binary files.

And it seems that there isn't anything it can't do. For instance I have a bunch of media files on multiple USB hard drives and it's hard for me to keep the duplicates down to a minimum much less find the drive a particular file is on when I need to locate it. My quick hack is to create a text list of the directory (dir > dir.txt from the command line) but then I end up with a bunch of columns that just tend to confuse the issue. Load the dir.txt file into Boxer, highlight the columns (date and time for instance) I want to delete and they're gone leaving all the other content intact. Combine the directory text from a couple of drives and then use the Boxer sort function to resort them and there it is, a complete listing that not only allows me to quickly identify duplicates but also to easily identify the filename and the drive it's stored on should I want to access it.

Since the contents of these drives tends to frequently change I end up doing this frequently and while it's not a finger breaker I created a Boxer macro to do it automatically.

Nor is that all; keystroke recording, syntax highlighting (very nice for coding, even HTML), active spell check, auto-complete words/phrases and outstanding customization provides a flexible and powerful environment that rivals "development studios". No, not rivals, outdoes.

For instance let's look at HTML. Code your page and mash a key and there is your code displayed in a browser. Befuddled by mismatched markup tags like TABLE? No problem, use Boxer's Find Mate command and discover them. Think you're ready to go? Spell check just to catch any typos in your content.

Want to get really creative? The aforementioned macro language can automate most anything. The macro language is an interpreted language with over 350 built in functions, not totally unlike C with variables, boolean logic, conditional execution, looping and even math operators. Run in debug mode with watches, breakpoints, single step.

But don't take my word for it, like any good software an evaluation edition is available for download so you can see how powerful Boxer can be in your own computer world. Fully compatible with all versions of Windows the paid version will set you back $60.

If you've never worked with a text editor before you'll be amazed at how much it can do for you. If you're an old hand at text editors you'll be amazed at how much it can do for you.

Just in: The day before I wrote this version 14.0 (yes, 14.0, this software has staying power!) came out. See the latest updates here.