Open Files Preferences

On the Open Files tab in the Preferences screen, you can configure how EditPad should handle files when opening them.

Folder to Use for Open and Save Dialog Boxes

You can choose the initial folder of the file selection dialog boxes that appear when you want to open or save a file. First, you can choose which folder is the default when you do not have any file or project open in EditPad, or when the active file or project is untitled. The default folder can either be the last folder you opened a file from or saved a file into, or be a specific folder such as your “My Documents” folder.

In addition to specifying the default folder, you can choose if the folder containing the active project or file should be used instead of the default. If you turn on the active file option, the folder containing the active file will be used for opening or saving a file when you have a file open. If you turn on the active project option, and the active file option is off or the active file is untitled, the folder containing the active project will be used instead. The default folder is only used if you turned off both options, or the active file and project are both untitled.

You can also set a default folder for opening and saving projects in the same way.

Locking and Reloading Files

By default, EditPad does not keep a lock on files. This means that other applications or users can modify files that you have open in EditPad. If you don’t want this to happen, turn on “lock files being edited in EditPad, preventing other applications from writing to them”. The option whether or not to lock files only applies to files smaller than the huge file threshold (see below). Files larger than the huge file threshold are always locked. EditPad Pro doesn’t read those files into memory entirely, so it needs to keep access to the original file on disk.

When not locking files, EditPad can automatically reload files that have been modified on disk by another application or user. If you turn on this option, EditPad will check whether a file’s modification date has changed each time you switch between files in EditPad, and each time you switch between EditPad and another application.

By default, when you switch from another application to EditPad, EditPad only checks whether the active file was modified on disk. If you have multiple files open in EditPad that were all modified on disk, you’ll only be prompted to reload the active file. When you switch to the other files, you’ll be prompted for each of them at the moment you switch to them. If you turn on “automatically reload all files in the active project that were modified on disk”, then EditPad Pro checks all files in the active project whenever you switch from another application to EditPad. If multiple files were modified, you’ll be prompted for all of them at the same time. You’ll be able to choose for each file whether you want to reload it or not. Regardless of whether this option is on or off, when you switch files within EditPad, EditPad checks whether the file that you’re switching to needs to be reloaded.

When automatically reloading, EditPad will prompt when you’ve modified the file in EditPad, but not when you haven’t modified the file in EditPad. Turn on “always prompt before reloading files from disk” to make EditPad prompt to reload the file even when you haven’t modified it in EditPad.

When editing files over a slow network connection, checking whether a file was modified on disk may cause a brief delay when switching between files in EditPad or when switching from another application to EditPad. If you experience this, turn on “only reload local files automatically; do not check whether network files were modified on disk”. Then the options to automatically reload will only apply to files stored on your own computer. Modern storage devices allow EditPad to do this check instantly. EditPad won’t check files stored on another PC or server that you’re accessing via the Windows network, so a slow network doesn’t slow down your work in EditPad.

Huge Files

EditPad Pro is capable of handling files of almost any size, including files larger than 4 gigabytes (a common file size limit). However, loading such large files entirely into memory would quickly exhaust the available memory of most computers, slowing down the system to a crawl or even causing Windows itself to crash.

The total amount of RAM available to EditPad is all your computer’s RAM if you are using the 64-bit version of EditPad. It is a maximum of 2 GB (2048 MB), or the actual amount of RAM in your PC if it is less than 2 GB, when using the 32-bit version of EditPad. You are using the 64-bit version of EditPad if Help|About indicates “x64” after the version number. If it indicates “WOW64” then you are using the 32-bit version of EditPad on 64-bit Windows. You should install the 64-bit version so that EditPad can use all of your computer’s RAM. If it indicates “x86” then you have a 32-bit version of Windows which cannot run the 64-bit version of EditPad.

To be able to edit files of any size, including files larger than the amount of RAM available to EditPad, you can specify a threshold for “huge files”. Files smaller than this threshold are read into memory entirely for maximum performance and flexibility. You can choose any threshold between 10 megabytes and 1/16th of the total amount of RAM available to EditPad. Increasing this limit improves EditPad’s performance. But it makes EditPad use more memory, particularly when you open many large files at the same time.

Files larger than the threshold are treated as “huge files”. EditPad reads huge files into memory as needed. When EditPad reads a part of a huge file into memory, it may unload another part of the same file or of another file that EditPad isn’t working with at the moment. If the unloaded part is needed again later, EditPad reads it back from the original file. Frequent unloading and reloading of file parts slows EditPad down. You will certainly notice this if your files are stored on a mechanical hard drive or on a network drive. For best performance, copy huge files over to a local SSD.

To be able to partially read files as needed, EditPad Pro needs to keep a lock on those files. This means that EditPad Pro will lock files larger than the huge file threshold, even when you’ve turned off the option to keep a lock on open files.

Unedited parts of huge files can always be read again from the original file. If your PC is starved for RAM, you can tell EditPad Pro to not keep more than 50 megabytes worth of unedited parts of huge files in memory. But if your PC has plenty of RAM available, you can increase this limit up to 1/8th of the amount of RAM available to EditPad to improve performance, particularly if your huge files aren’t stored on a fast SSD.

Edited parts of huge files cannot be read from the original file. EditPad Pro keeps all edited parts in memory until it exhausts the maximum number of megabytes worth of edited parts that you allow it to keep in memory. You can set this limit between 50 MB and half of the amount of RAM available to EditPad. When the limit is exceeded, EditPad writes some of the edited parts to a temporary file and unloads them from memory to bring memory usage of edited parts back under the limit. If an edited part that was unloaded needs to be displayed or edited again, it is reloaded from the temporary file. When you save a huge file all its parts that were edited become unedited parts again.

The size of the temporary file is only limited by available disk space. You can specify the folder in which this temporary file should be created. For best performance, that folder should be on a fast SSD. If you do not specify a folder, EditPad uses the folder that Windows uses for temporary files. Each EditPad instance creates only one temporary file to hold the edited parts of all the huge files you edit with it.

You can turn off the option to swap edited parts of huge files to disk. EditPad Pro then keeps all those parts in memory even if their size exceeds the amount of RAM in your PC. EditPad Pro then relies on Windows itself to swap out the memory used by EditPad and other applications to disk using the Windows page file.

To avoid constantly re-reading entire files and to avoid taking too much (CPU) time on very large files, EditPad disables some of its functionality for huge files. This way you don’t need to wait on EditPad while processing huge files and you don’t have your laptop’s battery drained unnecessarily. Syntax coloring is disabled for huge files, unless you’ve selected a “fast” syntax coloring scheme in the file type configuration. Fast syntax coloring schemes are schemes that don’t require the whole file to be processed. File navigation schemes are also disabled as they always require the whole file to be processed. The File Navigator will remain blank and automatic folding points will not appear. EditPad does not preserve the cursor position and folding for huge files. It will instantly open the file with the cursor at the top or at the bottom. A position in the middle of the file would have to wait for line breaks to be scanned, which can take some time for huge files. Switching from hexadecimal mode to text mode also resets the cursor to the start or end of the file.