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Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

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Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#131

Post by housemusicfan »

paradox460 wrote: post #67
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,…

TextEdit dates all the way back to NeXT

Correct. The Macintosh lineage was SimpleText IIRC.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#132

Post by system2 »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #113
niutech wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Obsidian.

Thank you for the suggestion, but Obsidian does not meet my needs. It is a completely different class of application. I just want a basic rich-text editor that opens quickly and lets me quickly jot something down and save it as a file. wordpad.exe is less than 3MB, while just the installer for Obsidian weighs in at 72MB.

Well, the new notepad in win11 is very nice. Obsidian has many amazing plugins make it super easy to use and you don't need to worry about unsaved files crashing and disappearing.

Notepad++ is standard for code editing and extremely fast. I use all these 3 alternatives for different reasons but my #1 is still notepad.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#133

Post by system2 »

BookhouseGames wrote: post #95

Shame. Notepad++ should now be the go to, right?

I personally don't know anyone who doesn't have OpenOffice, Libre, or Office (local non cloud most of the time). I do not know anyone using WordPad for any reason while they have notepad for opening simple no-formatting documents (php etc.), obsidian, or notepad++. Seriously, nobody uses WordPad.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#135

Post by icehawk »

housemusicfan wrote: post #131
paradox460 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TextEdit dates all the way back to NeXT

Correct. The Macintosh lineage was SimpleText IIRC.

Yeah TeachText, then SimpleText.

You'd make the Read Me documents on classic Mac OS by changing the type of the file from 'ttxt' to 'ttro'

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#136

Post by system2 »

gigel82 wrote: post #2

I'm calling it now: Word with ads will ship inbox with future versions of Windows :) Maybe the whole Office suite; if you want a PowerPivot in Excel you'll have to watch a 2 minute unskippable ad for hair loss medication. Totally "private" though, scout's honor.

Or something with cloud-login-is-a-must Word Lite. Then make you feel very restricted while showing you "amazing" things with an obnoxious popup about Office 365 every time you open Word Lite (I made up don't look up).

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#137

Post by isxek »

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.

Something I've used time and again when I was still primarily using Windows: Jarte (https://www.jarte.com/). It's small, portable, and works well with RTF files.

Apparently, it can also work with .DOC and .DOCX files (https://www.jarte.com/features.html), but I've never tried it myself.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#138

Post by sys_64738 »

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,…

I remember reading that the TextEdit.app is very simple as the basic widget the OS provides is fully featured with all the functionality.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#139

Post by altintx »

ZeroClickOk wrote: post #109
afandian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t you describing Frontpage Express? I think it was bundled with Windows 98?

no so complex.. just everything that a online wyswyg editor like tinymce can do, saving as a single HTML file instead

Frontpage Express was an IE activeX control with contentEditable set to true. There was plenty of functionality around building or whatever but comparing it to TinyMCE is absolutely right. Just 6 years before FckEditor was a thing.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#140

Post by cesarb »

sjkna wrote: post #127
llimos wrote: post #86

Fun fact: Before WordPad there was Microsoft Write. Typing 'write' in the Run dialog still opens WordPad today. They kept the alias for 28 years.

pbrush also opens Microsoft Paint. (It used to be called Paintbrush.)

> > Typing 'write' in the Run dialog still opens WordPad today

> pbrush also opens Microsoft Paint.

And in both cases, the reason was most probably backwards compatibility, so that programs which directly called WRITE.EXE or PBRUSH.EXE to open a file would keep working. Most of these are going to be 16-bit Windows programs (which AFAIK no longer work, unless you're still running a 32-bit build of Windows), or 32-bit Windows programs directly ported from 16-bit Windows programs (Microsoft designed the 32-bit Windows API to make it easy to have a single source code building both 16-bit and 32-bit versions of the same program, and to make it easy to adapt the source code from a 16-bit Windows program into a 32-bit Windows program; it was not unusual back then to offer both 16-bit and 32-bit builds of the same program, built from the same source code).

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