Now Windows’ only built-in text editor, there’s more room for Notepad to grow.

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    8 months ago

    The entire point of Notepad was that it didn’t have fancy features, it just edited text files. They got rid of Wordpad, and now they’re gonna turn Notepad into Wordpad.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      The entire reason notepad still exists is that it edits and saves to plain text files. I do not see how an opt-in spellcheck or autocorrect interferes with that – though honestly, I don’t see who the possible customer is for those features either. It’s a waste of time, but it doesn’t undermine the application.

      What reason, honestly, did Wordpad have to exist? Who was clamoring for an RTF editor but thought any of the free the full-featured ODF editors or online service a la Google docs were not up to the task? Seems a lot of people are salty that Wordpad was dropped, but I just don’t get who was using it. This from someone so frustrated and annoyed by pretty much all WYSIWYG doc editors that I’ve lately been doing more stuff in latex despite how irrational I know I am being.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        8 months ago

        I found it useful occasionally for a pretty niche use case. I automated generating documents with a program I wrote, then cleaned it up a bit in Wordpad before sending it on.

        That’s about as niche as you can get, but I wonder if it’s not too uncommon. RTF is easy to generate programmatically, and it’s pretty widely supported across various platforms. I have since moved on, but maybe others haven’t.

      • ares35@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        but I just don’t get who was using it.

        way more than you realize. i’ve been supporting home users and small businesses for thirty years. i run into wordpad users frequently.

      • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        RTF has to be one of the most atrocious document formats. It’s such a jumbled mess, it should be buried and forgotten. You can make it clean but of course Microsoft doesn’t.

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      i think its tasteful to have a couple QOL features like code highlighting, tabs, spellchecking etc.

      i didnt notice this until i went back from gedit to notepad the other day