NotePad Deluxe: A Powerful, Friendly Information Organizer

Computers are wonderful devices for accessing and storing information, but organizing and keeping track of the data you have can be a daunting task.

While researching and reporting the news and getting data for feature columns and articles, I collect and process a lot of text each week - press releases, information downloaded from websites, my own drafts, and hundreds of emails. Eudora does a pretty good job of managing the latter for me.

As for the rest of it, my data management system, such as it is, has for some time been based on the very low tech method of dumping everything into Tex-Edit Plus documents and storing them in a selection of folders. It's relatively crude, but it has worked reasonably well for me.

However, I am open to exploring better ways of doing things, so long as they really are better, and one little desktop database program that is both pleasingly simple and powerful enough for my purposes is NotePad Deluxe from Ibrium HB of Sweden. They released version 2.3.5 of the application last week.

I think the name is a bit misleading, because it makes NotePad Deluxe sound like a slightly enhanced version of Apple's venerable NotePad, when it fact it is a much more powerful and richly featured program.

NotePad Deluxe version 2.3.x supports embedded pictures (pictures within notes), browser objects (QuickTime movies, pictures, sounds, etc.), file links/aliases to external files, RTF import/export, export to single file, Mac/Unix/PC line feeds, trash system, global scrap, search result listing, database file structure (the database is now a bundle), Quartz rendering in OS X 10.1.5 and newer, more than 30 chars in the header, inline input, supports two/three-button mice in OS X, has Unicode support in RTF documents and file names, and supports bundled services (e.g., Excalibur).

Some other desktop database programs I've sampled were powerful enough but had non-intuitive interfaces and complex file hierarchies that did not appeal to me.

NotePad Deluxe, on the other hand, has a single and simple but very intuitive user interface window, and it stores its files in its own application folder in database documents that the user creates, names, and manages. This is neat, slick, and user-friendly.

For my purposes, I have created a database called "News" into which I dump all the research data I collect for news briefs. NotePad Deluxe databases are structured on three levels, all within a single database metafile:

1. The database itself
2. Topics
3. Notes

You can also have subtopics inside your topics.

Topics use the familiar folder metaphor and iconography within the in NotePad Deluxe browser window. Notes are analogous to documents within a folder, but in both cases these are virtual files contained within the database metafile. In other words, you can't find NotePad Deluxe Topic folders and Note documents as separate files using the Finder.

The NotePad Deluxe interface window is divided into two side by side panes. On the right is the Browser, in which appear the virtual Topic folders and Note files within the active database. On the left is a text field in which data from whatever Note is currently selected in the Browser field appears. You can instantly select among Topics and Notes by scrolling and clicking in the Browser. You can also minimize the window and hide/show the browser side with a click. There is also a palette of appearance "skins" in the Preferences.

New Topics and Notes can be created using menu commands or keyboard shortcuts, and you can delete existing notes in or topics by dragging them to the Trash icon in the interface window.

This is all clearly and elegantly integrated - and very intuitive. NotePad Deluxe also includes built-in support for an infinite number of notes, styled text, strong encryption (Blowfish), spell checking (through the Word Services system), Web links, labeling, sorting, a crash recovery system, topics within topics, instant scrollbars, other fonts/scripts in header and browser, and extensive drag and drop. There is also support for find with replace, local/global text formats, quick-find, labels, lock, a floating database palette, context menus, and a useful tab ruler (real tabs) in the main window.

NotePad Deluxe supports the use of multiple databases simultaneously. Each database, where the notes are stored, is handled in a separate window. Your notes can be arranged in the browser, labeled, sorted, locked, printed, encrypted, and so on.

Simple text documents can be added simply by dropping them onto the program or into the browser. Drag notes to the desktop or use the browser popup menu to export selected items.

NotePad Deluxe saves your changes automatically when you go to a new note or topic. The notes are also saved when another program is activated. To save time and speed up the program, this kind of saving is only partial. Therefore changed data could be lost (but usually not) if the program crashes.

If "Save prior to program switch" is checked in Preferences, all notes will be completely saved as soon as another program is activated. The drawback with having this feature activated is that it will cause a small delay when switching from NotePad Deluxe to other programs.

I think one of NotePad Deluxe's coolest features is the Export Text command, which allows you to save the selected as Text, RTF, or a variety of other formats from a popup menu.

The only bug I've found in NotePad Deluxe is that cut and paste from WannaBe running in Classic mode doesn't work (you get a "System Error" dialog) - but interestingly, drag and drop does. One other shortcoming is that the find function could be better and fuller featured, but it does the job for simple searches.

I really like this little program, which I have used for several years in both its classic and OS X iterations (NPD 2.3.3 is available for Classic users running System 7.5 or later, and the databases are compatible). While $25 is on the steep end for shareware, this is such a well engineered, thoughtfully conceived, and obviously high quality product that it's worth the extra few bucks. Recommended.

System requirements:

• System 7.5 or later
• Around 1 MB of free memory

Version 2.3.5 fixes some bugs and conflicts with OS X 10.4:

• The size of the browser can now be changed again
• In a few cases, windows were still not activated when switching to NPD (10.3)
• Better recognition of URLs
• Several print fixes (the same page was printed several times, missing pages, position of page number, wrong margins, etc.)
• More robust bundles (e.g. NPD will open and fix some broken DBs)
• The modification date of a DB is only bumped when a "real change" takes place
• Fixed crashes when activating NPD (frequent in 10.4)
• Several other bug fixes

System requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.0 or higher
• Tiger compatible

NotePad Deluxe is $25 shareware. 

• Link: NotePad Deluxe, Ibrium HB
• Link: WannaBe browser review
• Link: Tex-Edit Plus, Trans-Tex Software
• Link: Eudora, Qualcomm