Zooming text from 50% to 400% in Jotter by Zaweba

Text that is comfortable at a desk can be too small on a laptop across the room, and too big when you want to see the whole of a file at once. Jotter by Zaweba lets you change the size of the text whenever you like, from 50% up to 400%, without touching the file itself.

There are several ways to do it, so use whichever your hands find first. Hold Ctrl and roll the mouse wheel. Press Ctrl+Plus to zoom in and Ctrl+Minus to zoom out. Press Ctrl+0 to go straight back to 100%. The View menu has the same three commands, Zoom in, Zoom out and Reset zoom, for anyone who prefers to click.

Seeing where you are

The current zoom level is shown in the status bar at the bottom of the window, next to the line and column, the counts and the file's encoding. It is easy to zoom by accident with Ctrl and the wheel, so if the text suddenly looks odd, a glance at the status bar tells you why, and Ctrl+0 puts it right.

Jobs where zoom helps

Reading at a distance is the simplest one. Put a note up on a shared screen or a projector, zoom in to 200% or more, and people at the back can read it. A shopping list or a set of directions on a laptop on the kitchen counter is the same idea on a smaller scale.

Comfort is another. If you spend a lot of the day in a notes tab, a slightly larger size is easier on the eyes, and zoom gets you there without changing any Windows setting.

Zooming out is useful too. At 50%, far more of a file fits in the window, which helps you get a feel for its shape: where the long sections are, where a log suddenly gets busy, where a settings file changes from one block to another. It is no good for reading every word, but it is good for finding your way round.

Zoom and word wrap together

Zoom and word wrap work as a pair. With wrapping on, larger text means lines fold sooner, so a paragraph gets taller rather than wider. With wrapping off, larger text means long lines reach the edge of the window sooner and you scroll sideways more often. If you are reading a wide log with wrapping off, zooming out a step or two can bring whole lines into view. If you are reading prose, zoom in and leave wrapping on.

What zoom doesn't do

Zoom only changes how the text looks on screen. Jotter is a plain text notepad, so there is no font size stored in the file and nothing about the file changes when you zoom. A file you open at 300% and save is byte for byte what it would have been at 100%, apart from your own edits. That is reassuring when the file is a configuration file or a script that another program reads.

It also isn't a way to format text. If you need headings, bold and real font sizes in a document, that is a job for Write by Zaweba. Jotter keeps to plain text on purpose.

Quick habits

Learn Ctrl+0. It is the fastest way out of any accidental zoom and back to normal. And if you find you always zoom in to the same level, that is a sign the text is simply too small for your screen; zooming each time is fine, as Jotter by Zaweba makes it a single keystroke from anywhere in the window.

Zoom is a small feature, but on a notepad you keep open all day, small comforts like readable text add up.