Metapad is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 text editor

Text editor

A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....

 for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 9x/NT/XP, developed by Alexander Davidson since 1999. The aim of Metapad is to provide a near drop-in replacement of Notepad in Windows. Metapad was distributed as freeware

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

 for the first ten years of its existence. On March 20, 2009, the 10th anniversary of its initial release, the Metapad source code was released under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 version 3.

Some of its key features include:

• No file size limit under Windows 9x
• UNIX text file support
• Commit word wrap
  Word wrap
  In text display, line wrap is the feature of continuing on a new line when a line is full, such that each line fits in the viewable window, allowing text to be read from top to bottom without any horizontal scrolling....
  
  
• Tab and newline
  Newline
  In computing, a newline, also known as a line break or end-of-line marker, is a special character or sequence of characters signifying the end of a line of text. The name comes from the fact that the next character after the newline will appear on a new line—that is, on the next line below the...
  
   search
• Hyperlinking support
• Auto-indent mode
• Block indent and unindent
• Language plugin support (though English is British-only)
• Can replace Windows Notepad

Metapad is programmed in pure ANSI C

ANSI C

ANSI C refers to the family of successive standards published by the American National Standards Institute for the C programming language. Software developers writing in C are encouraged to conform to the standards, as doing so aids portability between compilers.-History and outlook:The first...

 with the Win32 API. There are two versions of Metapad: a full and LE (light edition) version. The full version uses the RichEdit control which boasts more features, while the LE version uses the faster Edit control.