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NirSoft Freeware (2008)

nirsoft.net

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Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#101

Post by badsectoracula »

maxxxxx wrote: post #57
arunc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that happens Notepad++ will probably the first explicit GNU GPL product from MS.

It's still hard to understand that they haven't touched Notepad in such a long time. The effort to get a good editor must be tiny compared to a lot of other stuff they are doing. I am pretty sure I could improve Notepad substantially with just a few days of work.

Notepad is just for taking quick notes and viewing text files and for that it is perfectly fine. It is my most used default Windows accessory (i do not include explorer on that of course) and even on Linux i install Leafpad[1] which is basically a Gtk2-based clone of Notepad and i use for pretty much the same reasons (taking quick temporary notes, writing out stuff, viewing text files, etc). I use another text editor for editing code (Notepad++ on Windows, Geany on Linux) that has a more busy and heavyweight UI that i am ok when working for long sessions. Notepad/Leafpad/etc is supposed to be as minimal as it gets, launch instantly, etc.

The only things that i'd like is support for Unix line endings and perhaps autoindentation. But considering that Notepad is really just the `EDIT` window wrapped up in a toplevel window frame and i doubt Microsoft is going to touch `EDIT` anymore (which is sad but that is beyond the point and FWIW much harder than just improving Notepad itself) i'm fine with that.

[1] http://tarot.freeshell.org/leafpad/

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#102

Post by freedomben »

jcalabro wrote: post #42
Polarity wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im really fed up with this argument. most "native" apps use big chunks of the platform "frameworks" and are not platform independent, which was introduced by os companies and politics in the first place. most modern apple native apps are the ones that crash the most while electron are stable as fuck.

> most modern apple native apps are the ones that crash the most while electron are stable as... I'd hesitate to make this generalization. I need to use slack on a macbook for work and it crashes regularly. I tried out VS code and it also would crash on occasion. Worse than that, coworkers of mine have rolled bug-ridden electron apps that we're required to use. There are plenty of non-electron apps that are stable.

Not necessarily your main point, but this triggered me:

> coworkers of mine have rolled bug-ridden electron apps that we're required to use

This is quickly becoming one of those things I can't stand, especially when there are open source/free options out there. No, I don't want to use your homegrown application unless there really isn't a good option out there. And if that's the case, make it a good tool and release it OSS and try to get some traction behind it.

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#103

Post by maxxxxx »

cryptoz wrote: post #98
maxxxxx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was slightly facetious but compared to other changes this should be an easy one. It's probably one of the simplest changes you can make to Windows. I hope we can agree on that.

> It's probably one of the simplest changes you can make to Windows. I hope we can agree on that. I certainly do not agree with that! For example, Notepad has been one of the buggiest and weirdest pieces of software I used on stock Windows. It does weird things when saving files, like moving your cursor to another location, so if you are typing and saving and typing and saving you will end up with text misplaced all…

Well, then make a new editor and give it a different name. Leave the old one in for compatibility. It's not hard.

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#104

Post by tambourine_man »

satysin wrote: post #92
tambourine_man wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking of something along those lines for years. I hope your project gets traction. I'd love to develop with web technologies exclusively, but what we've been doing with Electron is crazy. Imagine loading a whole new Win32 or Carbon/Cocoa for every app you open. I can understand the inconsistencies and lack of feature support that could emerge from using a different browser engine for each OS (Webkit/Edge…

Isn't this basically what PWAs will hopefully solve? Rather than Spotify, Slack, Discord, ... all coming with their own Electron bundle they can be packaged up as a PWA and use the browser as the runtime environment along with all the nice offline stuff, safe OS integration for notifications, sandboxed file system access, ability to still do some work in S0i3 (aka Modern Standy on Windows), etc. Or am I totally wrong…

All good questions and some things will probably be well addressed by PWA or whatever we decide to call JavaScript rich webpages by then.

But some UI issues, like the lack of a proper menu, browser's chrome and address bar will still be a turn off. Besides, having unrestriced access to the user's drive is not something a web page should be able to do and is a must for something like a text editor.

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#105

Post by freedomben »

badsectoracula wrote: post #101
maxxxxx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still hard to understand that they haven't touched Notepad in such a long time. The effort to get a good editor must be tiny compared to a lot of other stuff they are doing. I am pretty sure I could improve Notepad substantially with just a few days of work.

Notepad is just for taking quick notes and viewing text files and for that it is perfectly fine. It is my most used default Windows accessory (i do not include explorer on that of course) and even on Linux i install Leafpad[1] which is basically a Gtk2-based clone of Notepad and i use for pretty much the same reasons (taking quick temporary notes, writing out stuff, viewing text files, etc). I use another text editor…

Interesting to hear of someone using Geany for coding on Linux. I used it briefly maybe a decade ago when I was still a vim noob. Glad to hear it's still around and used by at least one person :-)

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#106

Post by davidjnelson »

tambourine_man wrote: post #104
satysin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this basically what PWAs will hopefully solve? Rather than Spotify, Slack, Discord, ... all coming with their own Electron bundle they can be packaged up as a PWA and use the browser as the runtime environment along with all the nice offline stuff, safe OS integration for notifications, sandboxed file system access, ability to still do some work in S0i3 (aka Modern Standy on Windows), etc. Or am I totally wrong…

All good questions and some things will probably be well addressed by PWA or whatever we decide to call JavaScript rich webpages by then. But some UI issues, like the lack of a proper menu, browser's chrome and address bar will still be a turn off. Besides, having unrestriced access to the user's drive is not something a web page should be able to do and is a must for something like a text editor.

There is BrowserFS https://github.com/jvilk/BrowserFS

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#107

Post by codezero »

kevindong wrote: post #8

> While many software companies create a bloated installation package with size of 1 - 3 MB, the size of single utility in NirSoft is usually less than 100KB. The early 2000s were a different time. While as modern day electron apps are regularly 100+ MB.

Around 2000, I had a laptop with 5g of harddisk and 64mb of ram, now I'm at ~1tb and 16gb ram. Roughly a 200x increase in raw numbers, though lots of other things since then make the actual increase larger, so it sounds like we're using net-smaller apps :)

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#108

Post by freedomben »

Endy wrote: post #99
maxxxxx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still hard to understand that they haven't touched Notepad in such a long time. The effort to get a good editor must be tiny compared to a lot of other stuff they are doing. I am pretty sure I could improve Notepad substantially with just a few days of work.

I'm sorry for going off topic, but I keep seeing this kind of comment and I want to get an answer - how is Notepad not a good editor? It can take any ASCII/ANSI/UTF file and output it in plaintext. It has line-wrap as an option. It loads fast and can handle files of decent size without lag. Users can set display and print fonts, etc. I'm really lost as to why anyone says Notepad is not a good text editor for basic te…

I agree with you actually. Back in the day I coded almost exclusively in Notepad when writing lots of HTML code and Basic code, for example. For the first year of Java I used it for Java because I wanted to really know the language (and without the help of an IDE, you get really, really good at spotting syntax errors and memorizing APIs). The simplicity was impossible to beat, and its ubiquity made it always available.

Maybe that's why I use vim for everything now. It's like notepad but with much more efficient keybindings :-)

P.S. I do use Intellij for java now when I'm writing Java code, mostly because I have to. That said, the feature set is amazing and for doing Java I'd probably use it even if I didn't have to because I'm spoiled. Still use vim for everything else tho.

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#109

Post by quickthrower2 »

dchest wrote: post #46
kevindong wrote: post #8

> While many software companies create a bloated installation package with size of 1 - 3 MB, the size of single utility in NirSoft is usually less than 100KB. The early 2000s were a different time. While as modern day electron apps are regularly 100+ MB.

Fun fact: the icon for my Objective-C Mac app is larger than the executable binary (517 vs 394 KB).

You really need to shrink that file.

Re: NirSoft Freeware (2008)

#110

Post by tgtweak »

ProAm wrote: post #28
maxxxxx wrote: post #18

Nirsoft and Sysinternals should be part of Windows. Add Notepad++ and you have a decent OS all of a sudden.

I thought Sysinternals was acquired by Microsoft?

I think the former developer of process monitor and process explorer is now CTO of azure if memory serves me correctly.
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