Requested File viewer

[Beeblebrox]

There is already a .txt file viewer in IV, so I had thought that perhaps it might be possible to render unrecognized file formats as text. This would allow IV to be used as a vastly superior default file viewer. Of course, non-text characters could be rendered either as #'s or as blanks, whatever your preference. It would actually be better to show non-text characters as blanks, since that would allow the small bits of text in some files to be more easily found/read. It would also allow you to copy unformatted text from a number of file types without the programs that open them.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

IrfanView is a bitmap viewer. What is the use of rendering text files as bitmaps? You won't be able to copy formatted or unformatted plain text.

[Mij]

I agree with Bhikkhu about a general text viewer, but it would be useful to extend the existing feature a bit. IrfanView will display .txt and .ini files but not .lst and .bat
Since those are all types I use in conjunction with IrfanView, I quite often locate them with IV search and would then like to have a quick look to see what is in them. Two I can, two I can't although they are all plain Ascii text files.

Afterthought: .csv would be handy too

[Skippybox]

I agree, all text files like, .lst, .bat, .ion, .csv should be viewable. A file viewer, no.

[Sam_Zen]

In rare occasions it would be handy to save some text as a bitmap. Or crop a region out of it as a screenshot.
I don't know if it is mentioned somewhere in the help that IV renders text files into a bitmap, being in the clipboard.
People should be warned about that, to avoid confusion.

I agree about allowing more plain text types. IV can view .htm(l) too by the way.

If one wants to see if a certain file contains some text strings, the tool "Textscan" by AnalogX is a nice one.

[Beeblebrox]

Oh!

I'm afraid that I did not realize that the .txt view was a bitmap... That clearly makes some of what I was suggesting unfeasible. I would like to see more text formats in the list of displayable files though. Maybe .bat and .ahk (autohotkey) and script files too? Possibly via a user-configurable list of extensions?