Takataka User Guide

Getting Started

Launch Takataka and you are greeted with an empty untitled document ready for editing. The interface consists of:

• Menu bar at the top (File, Edit, Format, View menus, plus Language and About buttons on the right)
• Tab bar below the menu
• Editor area in the center, with an optional document minimap along its right edge
• Status bar at the bottom

Creating & Opening Files

New Document

Menu: File > New   |   Ctrl+N

Creates a new untitled document in a new tab.

Open File

Menu: File > Open   |   Ctrl+O

Opens a file dialog where you can select one or more files to open. Each selected file opens in its own tab.

The dialog includes an Encoding selector. Leave it on Auto-Detect for normal use, or choose a specific encoding to override detection for every file selected in that operation. See Encoding for the available choices and details.

If a file is already open in the same Takataka window, opening it again activates the existing tab instead of creating a duplicate.

Large Files

Before opening a file larger than 256 MB, Takataka displays its size and asks whether you want to continue. Choose Open to proceed or Cancel to leave it closed.

Load Failures

If a document cannot be loaded into the editor, its tab shows the error with Retry and Close buttons. Content-dependent commands such as Save remain unavailable until loading succeeds, preventing an incomplete document from overwriting the file.

Drag and Drop

Drag files from File Explorer onto the Takataka window to open them. Multiple files can be dropped at once and each opens in a separate tab.

Saving Files

Save

Menu: File > Save   |   Ctrl+S

Saves the active document to its current file path. If the document has never been saved (untitled), a Save As dialog opens instead.

Saves are committed as a replacement operation so an interrupted or unsuccessful write preserves the previous file. If saving fails while closing a dirty document, the document remains open and unsaved.

Save As

Menu: File > Save As   |   Ctrl+Shift+S

Opens a save dialog where you can choose a new file name, location, or encoding for the active document. The default Automatic encoding choice keeps the document's current encoding; choosing a named encoding converts the saved file.

Within the same Takataka window, one open document cannot be saved over the path owned by another. Takataka activates the existing document and reports the conflict instead.

Tabbed Interface

Using the tabbed interface, you can:

• Click a tab to switch to that document
• Middle-click a tab to close it
• Drag tabs to reorder them
• Hover over a tab to see its full file path in a tooltip (long paths are center-truncated for readability)

Close Active Tab

Menu: File > Close Active Tab   |   Ctrl+W

Closes the active tab, prompting you to save first if it has unsaved changes.

Tab Context Menu

Right-click any tab to access these commands:

Text Editing

Basic Editing

Type to insert text at the cursor. Standard clipboard operations are available:

These are also available from the Edit menu and the right-click context menu.

Cursor movement, selection, overwrite, and deletion treat a Unicode character outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (such as many emoji) as one character, so editing does not split its underlying surrogate pair.

Insert vs. Overwrite Mode

Press Insert to toggle between insert mode and overwrite mode.

• Insert mode (INS): Typing pushes existing text to the right.
• Overwrite mode (OVR): Typing replaces the character under the cursor. The cursor changes from a thin line to a block.

The current mode is shown in the status bar.

Cursor Movement

Hold Shift with any movement key to extend the selection.

When word wrap is enabled, Up, Down, Home, and End navigate by visual (wrapped) rows rather than logical lines.

Selection

• Click to place the cursor
• Click and drag to select a range of text
• Double-click to select the word under the cursor
• Triple-click to select the entire line
• Shift+click to extend the selection from the cursor to the click position
• Ctrl+A to select all text

Tab and Indentation

• Tab inserts a literal tab character
• Shift+Tab removes a leading tab from the current line
• Pressing Enter auto-indents the new line, inheriting the leading whitespace from the current line

Insert Date/Time

Menu: Edit > Insert Date/Time   |   F5

Inserts the current date and time at the cursor position.

Insert GUID

Menu: Edit > Insert GUID   |   F8

Inserts a randomly generated GUID at the cursor position.

Note: A GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) is a 128-bit identifier that is virtually guaranteed to be unique. GUIDs are commonly used in software development as database keys, component identifiers, and anywhere a unique value is needed. For more information, see Universally unique identifier on Wikipedia.

Go to Line / Column

Menu: Edit > Go to Line/Column   |   Ctrl+G

Moves the caret directly to a one-based line and optional column. The dialog starts with the current line selected so you can immediately type a destination.

Enter a line by itself, or add a column after a colon or comma:

• 125 — line 125, column 1
• 125:18 — line 125, column 18
• 125,18 — line 125, column 18

Line and column numbers must be positive integers. A destination past the end of the document or line is clamped to the nearest valid position. Going to a position clears existing selections and secondary carets without changing the document.

Multi-line Editing

Takataka supports multi-caret (multi-cursor) editing, allowing simultaneous text editing at multiple positions in a document.

Creating Carets

If a target line is shorter than the caret's column position, the caret is placed at the end of that line.

Editing with Multiple Carets

All editing operations apply to every caret simultaneously:

• Typing — Text is inserted at all caret positions.
• Backspace / Delete — Deletes at all caret positions. A caret already at the start of a line stays at that margin when Backspace is applied while the other carets continue editing.
• Enter — Inserts a newline at all caret positions (with auto-indent).
• Tab / Shift+Tab — Inserts or removes a leading tab at all caret positions.

Navigation

Arrow keys, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down move all carets simultaneously. If two carets land on the same position after navigation, they merge into one.

Clipboard

• Paste — If the clipboard contains the same number of lines as there are carets, each line is distributed to one caret. Otherwise, the full clipboard text is pasted at every caret.

Undo / Redo

Multi-caret edits are recorded as a single undo step. Undoing a multi-caret edit restores all caret positions as they were before the edit. Caret creation itself (Ctrl+Left Click, Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down) does not create undo entries.

Returning to Single Caret

• Escape — Clears all secondary carets, returning to a single caret.
• Click without Ctrl — Places a single caret at the clicked position.
• Double-click or triple-click — Word/line selection with a single caret.
• Ctrl+A (Select All) — Selects the entire document with a single caret.

Move Line Up / Down

Quickly reorder lines by moving the current line up or down through the document.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The caret follows the moved line and its column position is preserved (clamped to line length if needed). Line terminators are preserved correctly.

Undo

Each move is a single undo step — press Ctrl+Z to move the line back.

Limitations

• Has no effect when the caret is on the first line (move up) or last line (move down).
• Disabled during multi-caret editing.

Find & Replace

Opening Find

Menu: Edit > Find   |   Ctrl+F

A search overlay appears at the top-right of the editor. If you have text selected (single line), it pre-fills the search field.

Opening Find and Replace

Menu: Edit > Replace   |   Ctrl+H

The search overlay opens with the replace field visible.

Search Options

Navigating Matches

All matches in the document are highlighted. The current match is highlighted more prominently. A counter shows your position (e.g., "3 of 12"). Search wraps around the document.

Replacing

• Replace button: replaces the current match and moves to the next
• Replace All button: replaces every match in the document at once

If matches overlap, Replace All uses the leftmost non-overlapping matches. For example, replacing aa in aaa performs one replacement rather than deleting overlapping text twice.

Press Escape or click the close button to dismiss the overlay and return focus to the editor.

Format Menu

To Uppercase / To Lowercase

Menu: Format > To Uppercase / To Lowercase   |   Ctrl+U / Ctrl+L

Converts the selected text to uppercase or lowercase. The commands are available only when at least one selection exists, preserve the selection after conversion, and can be reversed as one undo step.

With multiple carets, every selected range is converted; carets without a selection are left unchanged. Overlapping selections are converted only once.

Pretty Print JSON

Menu: Format > Pretty Print JSON

Formats the entire document as indented JSON (2-space indentation). If the document does not contain valid JSON, an error message is shown.

Pretty Print XML

Menu: Format > Pretty Print XML

Formats the entire document as indented XML (2-space indentation). If the document does not contain valid XML, an error message is shown.

Syntax Highlighting

Takataka includes optional syntax highlighting that colorizes text based on the document's language mode. By default, the language is detected automatically from the file name or extension.

Supported Languages

Per-document Language Mode

The language mode button in the status bar shows the active document's current mode. In automatic mode it also shows the detected result, such as Auto: JSON. Click the button to choose:

• Auto Detect — Select a tokenizer from the document's current file name or extension. Untitled and unrecognized files use plain text.
• Plain Text — Disable tokenization for this document.
• A specific language — Use that tokenizer regardless of the document's name or extension.

The choice applies only to that open document, does not modify its text or mark it unsaved, and remains in effect if the document is saved under a different extension. Open-document language choices are preserved by session recovery; closing and later reopening a file normally starts again in Auto Detect.

Toggling Syntax Highlighting

Syntax highlighting can be turned on or off globally in the Settings dialog (View > Settings). When disabled, all files display as plain uncolored text regardless of their per-document language mode. The setting is saved across sessions.

Highlighting adapts automatically to the current theme (dark or light mode).

View Options

The View menu contains toggles that control the editor's appearance. Each is a checkbox that can be turned on or off.

All view settings except Always On Top are saved across sessions.

Document Minimap

The minimap is a fixed-scale, schematic view of the active document at the right edge of the editor. A highlighted box shows the portion of the document currently visible in the editor.

• Click in the active minimap content to jump to that part of the document.
• Drag the highlighted viewport box to move quickly through the document.
• If the editor becomes too narrow to show both useful text space and the minimap, the minimap is hidden automatically until more width is available.

Menu: View > Minimap. The minimap is enabled by default, and your preference is saved across sessions.

Middle-click Auto Scroll

Middle-click inside the editor and release to start continuous, browser-style scrolling from a fixed anchor. Move the pointer away from the anchor to choose the direction; scrolling accelerates as the pointer moves farther away.

• Vertical scrolling is available whenever the document is taller than the viewport.
• Horizontal scrolling is also available for wide content when Word Wrap is off.
• The caret and selection do not move when auto scroll starts or when a normal cancellation click is used.

Click again, turn the mouse wheel, or press Escape to stop. Auto scroll does not start over the minimap or when the document already fits within the viewport.

Zoom

Zoom changes the size of all text in the editor. The zoom range is 50% to 300%.

These commands are also available from the View menu. The current zoom percentage is displayed in the status bar, and the zoom level is saved across sessions.

Theme (Dark / Light Mode)

Takataka supports both dark and light themes. There are two ways to switch:

• Status bar: Click the moon/sun icon at the far right of the status bar
• Settings dialog: Open View > Settings and change the Theme dropdown

The theme preference is saved across sessions.

Settings Dialog

Menu: View > Settings

The Settings dialog lets you configure the editor. Changes can be previewed with Apply before committing with OK, or discarded with Cancel.

Encoding

Takataka detects file encoding automatically when opening files. The current encoding is shown as a button in the status bar and is also preserved in session recovery data.

Supported Encodings

Encoding Detection

With Auto-Detect, Takataka first checks for UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32 byte order marks (BOMs). If there is no BOM, it uses byte-level heuristics to distinguish UTF-8 from Windows-1252. A file containing only ASCII bytes is valid UTF-8 and opens as UTF-8.

Choosing an Encoding When Opening

The Open dialog defaults to Auto-Detect. You can instead force UTF-8, UTF-8 BOM, UTF-16 LE, UTF-16 BE, ASCII, or Windows-1252. A forced selection interprets the selected file or files using that encoding even if automatic detection would choose differently.

Choosing an Encoding When Saving

The Save As dialog defaults to Automatic, which keeps the document's current encoding. You can instead select UTF-8, UTF-8 BOM, UTF-16 LE, UTF-16 BE, ASCII, or Windows-1252.

You can also click the encoding button in the status bar and choose Save with Encoding. For a saved document, this converts the current text and immediately writes it back to the same path. For an untitled document, it opens Save As with the chosen encoding as the document's current choice.

Reopening with a Different Encoding

Click the status-bar encoding button and choose Reopen with Encoding to reread an existing file from disk using a specific encoding. This is useful when automatic detection displayed the text incorrectly. The command is unavailable for untitled documents. If the document has unsaved changes, Takataka asks for confirmation before discarding them and reopening the file.

Lossy Conversions

ASCII and Windows-1252 cannot represent every Unicode character. When Save with Encoding from the status bar would lose characters, Takataka warns you and lets you cancel or continue by replacing unsupported characters. The Save As dialog does not perform this preflight warning, so review the document carefully before choosing ASCII or Windows-1252 there.

Line Endings

Takataka supports three line ending styles:

When opening a file, Takataka detects the line ending style from the file's contents. Click the line ending indicator in the status bar (e.g., "CRLF") to open a dropdown and change the style. All line endings are normalized to the selected style immediately, but the file on disk will not change until you save.

Printing

Print

Menu: File > Print   |   Ctrl+P

Opens the Windows print dialog. You can select a printer, page range, and number of copies. The printout uses the current editor font. If word wrap is enabled, printed text wraps at page margins.

Page Setup

Menu: File > Page Setup

Opens the Page Setup dialog where you can configure margins, paper size, and orientation (portrait or landscape).

Language / Localization

Takataka is available in 15 languages:

Changing the Language

Click the Language button (labeled "A|文") at the top-right of the menu bar. A dialog opens showing all available languages with their native names. Select one and click OK. The main window reloads to apply the new language.

On first launch, Takataka auto-detects your Windows display language. If your language is not supported, it defaults to English. Script-aware fallback keeps Traditional Chinese locales such as Hong Kong and Taiwan on the Traditional Chinese translation instead of falling back to Simplified Chinese.

Recent Files

Menu: File > Recent Files

A submenu listing the most recently opened files (up to 10). Click any entry to open that file. The most recently opened file appears at the top.

Clear Recent Files

Menu: File > Clear Recent Files

Removes all entries from the recent files list.

Disabling Recent Files

In the Settings dialog, uncheck Remember Recent Files to disable tracking and hide the Recent Files submenu entirely. Non-existent files are automatically pruned from the list on startup.

Session Recovery

Takataka automatically saves a snapshot of all open documents every 30 seconds and when you close the application. The next time you launch it, your previous session is restored — including:

• All open tabs with their file paths
• Unsaved/untitled documents (full text content preserved)
• Cursor position (line and column) per document
• Encoding and line ending settings per document
• Selected syntax-highlighting language mode per document
• Insert/overwrite mode per document

Clean file-backed documents are reopened from disk and remain clean. If a saved file referenced by the session no longer exists, Takataka skips it and reports the missing file. If a snapshot contains documents from multiple windows, their tabs are consolidated into one window in saved order.

Crash Recovery

If Takataka exits unexpectedly (crash, power loss, force-quit via Task Manager), the periodic snapshots ensure your work is not lost. On the next launch, Takataka detects the ungraceful shutdown and:

• Restores all documents from the last snapshot
• Marks documents restored from recovery-content snapshots as unsaved (dirty) so you can review and save them
• Leaves clean file-backed documents clean when they can be reopened normally from disk
• Shows a “Session Recovered” dialog listing the documents restored from recovery content

Under normal storage conditions, the periodic snapshot limits the amount of work at risk after an unexpected exit to roughly 30 seconds.

Recovery Save Failures During Exit

If Takataka cannot save settings or recovery data while the window is closing, it does not silently exit. You can Retry, Cancel the close, or choose Close Without Recovery after reviewing the error.

External File Monitoring

When a file you have open is modified or deleted by another program, Takataka detects the change and notifies you:

• File modified externally: A prompt asks whether you want to reload the file from disk or keep your current version
• File deleted externally: The tab remains open as an unsaved document so you don't lose your work

File monitoring is temporarily paused during save operations to avoid false notifications.

Drag and Drop

Drag one or more files from File Explorer onto the Takataka window to open them. Each file opens in a new tab. Folders are ignored.

Status Bar

The status bar at the bottom of the window shows (from left to right):

The status bar can be hidden via View > Status Bar.

About Dialog

You can click the About button (?) at the top-right of the menu bar to get some info about Takataka. Click the Help! button to get quick access to this handy reference page.

Shell Integration

If you installed Takataka using the 540 Installer, you have the option to add an “Edit with Takataka” entry to the Windows File Explorer right-click context menu.

• Right-click any file in File Explorer and select Edit with Takataka to open it directly.
• This option can be enabled or disabled during installation.

Keyboard Shortcut Reference

File

Edit

Format

Multi-line

Move Line

Find and Replace

View and Zoom

Navigation

Editing Keys

Hold Shift with any navigation key to extend the selection.

Mouse Reference