Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#51

Post by unforeseen9991 » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

hyperpl wrote: post #39

I use Linux and BSD primarily but at my job where we use Windows I actually quite like wordpad.exe/write.exe (same thing?) for dissecting prod logs complete with highlights, formatting, etc.. Once you turn off line spacing and margins, it's quite good and generally pretty fast at wrangling a bunch of text that you may end up emailing via Outlook.

Notepad++ is much much better for log and config parsing. Also has lots of plugins, like the diff plugin which I rely on a lot when comparing dev/prod config files and such.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#52

Post by niutech » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

Andrex wrote: post #49

pacifika wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Html with contenteditable I guess?

You just gave me the idea for an HTML file format that writes changes to contenteditable back to the file. Has anyone tried this before? I'm likely ignorant. But it would be a pretty exciting document publishing format.

There are already multiple WYSIWYG HTML editors such as BlueGriffon.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#53

Post by Tsiklon » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #42

Off topic, but I'm loving the Mac equivalent, TextEdit. After trying every kind of fancy task management and note taking system from org-mode to Obsidian to Logseq, I now use a .rtfd (.rtf + images) on iCloud to act as a note-taking system / todo-list. I would have used pen and paper but I need to paste screenshots and URLs. There's an iOS app called RTF Write for 99c. Now I always have my notes, tasks, and shopping,…

As a tangential aside Textedit I believe used to be provided as sample source code with Xcode. So even if it was removed it may never die.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

niutech wrote: post #46

Which free/open source alfernatives to WordPad for Windows do you recommend then? LibreOffice is huge and slow, MS Office Online requires Internet. How to edit simple RTF/DOC documents offline on Windows without downloading >300MB full LibreOffice suite? Only Abiword comes to my mind.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#55

Post by theanonymousone » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:34 PM UTC

That's the sad fate of fifth wheels. Or when you are neither Word nor Notepad.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#56

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

richard_todd wrote: post #29

Too bad they can’t open-source it and see if there is any community interest in keeping it going.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#57

Post by GuB-42 » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #19

bombcar wrote: post #3

Word pad was basically Word for Windows 6 and was quite usable for basic needs. Really only finally out to pasture by the free Google Docs, I’m sure wordpad killed a decent ecosystem of editors that may one day have competed with Word.

Everything MS does is for the business case. Wordpad, windows, etc exist only in a capitalist context and need a financial justification to exist. It was there exactly for the reasons you state, to kill the word processor market in Windows. Previously you had all these other players but Win95 came with Wordpad for free which had a lot of functionality. For pros, you could buy Word. I don't think we appreciate how man…

I don't think Notepad is going to be anything more than a basic text editor. It certainly gets new features from time to time, but it is more about making it usable in the modern world than adding advanced features like Notepad++ has.

It does compete with Notepad++ in a sense that now, Notepad can actually edit text files, and if you want advanced features, there is VSCode. And I must admit that I don't have any use for a middle ground text editor like Notepad++ or PSPad anymore, so maybe their strategy is working.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#58

Post by pacifika » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:45 PM UTC

niutech wrote: post #52

Andrex wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just gave me the idea for an HTML file format that writes changes to contenteditable back to the file. Has anyone tried this before? I'm likely ignorant. But it would be a pretty exciting document publishing format.

There are already multiple WYSIWYG HTML editors such as BlueGriffon.

Are any of them writing tools instead of publishing tools?

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#59

Post by niutech » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

hypercube33 wrote: post #17

jaclaz wrote: post #12

Cannot say if Notepad does it in recent versions, but on older Windows systems Wordpad was useful to quickly open texts made on Linux (with just LF instead of CR+LF) which in Notepad would show as uninterrupted.

I think it's killed by Word Online (free-ish) and VSCode over at the Seattle company.

Word Online requires sending docs to MS cloud and VSCode doesn't provide text formatting, so they are different things.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#60

Post by throwanem » Sat, Sep 02, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

Andrex wrote: post #49

pacifika wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Html with contenteditable I guess?

You just gave me the idea for an HTML file format that writes changes to contenteditable back to the file. Has anyone tried this before? I'm likely ignorant. But it would be a pretty exciting document publishing format.

With a little server-side support it wasn't all that rare an approach back in the early-mid 2000s days of web dev, when none of us had any idea what we were doing and couldn't wait to find out.

"Exciting" is certainly a word I would use to describe the results, especially in the common case where no VCS was in use.