14 DAY TRIAL // Kudaz is a software designed to help users edit text/programming source files. The program can also serve as a web-authoring editor due to its syntax highlighting feature.
This version currently supports 53 languages/scripts among which stand out the following: 68HC11 Assembler, Borland Forms, C++, Cascading Style Sheet, COBOL, CORBA IDL, Fortran, HTML, INI File, Java, JavaScript, Object Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, SQL, Visual Basic,UNIX Shell Script, C#.
The software is a product of Suzuki and it is the second service release. The version is absolutely free and the size is 1.54 megabytes. The installation kit comes archived so you have to extract it first to any folder you wish. The installation procedure runs very smooth and you will have absolutely no problems.
Kudaz runs very well on any Windows 95 or higher operating system. The system requirements are pretty low (at least 16 MB of RAM and at least 2.1 MB of free disk space).
For this version the producer has some advices on overwriting older versions. On overwriting versions older than 2.0.5.3, users will have to reconfigure their existing projects from square one and the project files will be saved in Kudaz installation folder, in ?Project?.
When overwriting versions older than 1.9.6.6 the users should delete the *.fml, *.bin and *.mru files in the Kudaz installation folder. If you are reluctant to taking this advice, the program may crash while running and nobody would want that.
One of my favorite features of the software is the Sniptetxt panel. This feature allows creating, modifying, removing, adding and inserting text snips, as many as you want. The text snips are user-definable and can be categorized in groups so that the user knows exactly where to go for easier finding.
If the user utilizes the same initial source code structures more often, she/he can pre-define templates so that she/he doesn't have to write it all over again.
The Export menu comprises features like converting into HTML document, RTF document or into TeX (converts the selected text into TeX format based on the syntax scheme). The Copy options (as the name suggests) practically copies the text on the Windows Clipboard and then you can paste it into an appropriate document.
The prefix/suffix tool is also an important feature as you can select all the text you want a prefix to, press Ctr+Shift+P, define the prefix and there you go. The same happens with the suffix, the difference standing in the keyboard shortcut combination (Ctr+Shift+P).
It?s a good thing the producer gave keyboard shortcuts a serious thought and assigned every task a shortcut key combination. Of course, the shortcuts are user-definable (in case the user does not totally agree with the default combinations).
The code lines can be sorted in ascending or descending order, case sensitive or not. Some of the other ?gadgets? that make the user's life easier are the auto-correction, auto-completion, advanced MRU manager, auto-indent, HTML color palette, HTML quick table wizard and HTML tag stripping and line spacing.
The Good
The ultimate feature of the program is that it is absolutely free. The program is easy to use and, in my case, did not create any problems at all. The Help menu is very well structured and gives you all the answers you need.
The Bad
I wish the Help menu had a search option, but I had no problem finding my answers very quickly. The bad part of the software is that it does not have a preview option.
The Truth
The software acts very well in script writing and has extremely useful features, but the finishing is kind of a problem. I could not preview my HTML scripts inside the program. I also encountered some problems with exporting my scripts as HTML or RTF documents.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
