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Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

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Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#141

Post by mostlylurks »

Dalewyn wrote: post #129
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens, but there's a way out: forking. With proprietary software, the option of forking does not exist.

ffmpeg had a schism just over a decade ago and the splinter group forked off into libav. One of the splinter group members happened to be the now-former ffmpeg maintainer in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories and switched them from ffmpeg to libav. Yes, this was done purely for ideological reasons.[1] So this bullshit happens in the open source world just like in the closed source world. In a way, I would argue it's…

The crucial difference is that with FOSS, unless a piece of software has some particularly gnarly and/or finicky dependencies, you can easily bypass whatever is in your package manager's repositories and just use the version you want (by compiling it from source, or by using a ready-to-use version provided directly by the maintainers of the software itself, which is often, if not always, a possibility), regardless of what the maintainers of the aforementioned repositories do. With proprietary software, you simply do not have this option.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#142

Post by capableweb »

Dalewyn wrote: post #129
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens, but there's a way out: forking. With proprietary software, the option of forking does not exist.

ffmpeg had a schism just over a decade ago and the splinter group forked off into libav. One of the splinter group members happened to be the now-former ffmpeg maintainer in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories and switched them from ffmpeg to libav. Yes, this was done purely for ideological reasons.[1] So this bullshit happens in the open source world just like in the closed source world. In a way, I would argue it's…

> So this bullshit happens in the open source world just like in the closed source world.

The detail is what happens after this happens. In a closed source world, most of the cases, that's it. No more builds for any reason, it's dead. You want to change it? Then first reverse engineer it.

But if it's open source, I can if I must, pull down the source code myself and build it. It can continue to live, if someone wants.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#143

Post by lemper »

smackeyacky wrote: post #110
not_your_vase wrote: post #78

I'm always sad to see applications go (especially if the recommended alternative is a paid software), but did that thing ever work properly? In the past decade I used Windows only when someone held a gun to my head, but before that I remember that WordPad always messed up all documents I have ever opened: weird page and line breaks, picture and textbox formatting all over the place, and saving a document was a good w…

I always figured this was by design. Microsoft needed a GUI word processor that was free to stifle competition in the new "windows software" market, but not good enough to upset their Word business. Good job WordPad - one of the flag bearers of Microsofts anti-competitive business practices.

correct. wordpad is one of peak microsoft's assholery and its death should be celebrated. too bad, it won't help libreoffice's adoption.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#144

Post by wvenable »

smackeyacky wrote: post #110
not_your_vase wrote: post #78

I'm always sad to see applications go (especially if the recommended alternative is a paid software), but did that thing ever work properly? In the past decade I used Windows only when someone held a gun to my head, but before that I remember that WordPad always messed up all documents I have ever opened: weird page and line breaks, picture and textbox formatting all over the place, and saving a document was a good w…

I always figured this was by design. Microsoft needed a GUI word processor that was free to stifle competition in the new "windows software" market, but not good enough to upset their Word business. Good job WordPad - one of the flag bearers of Microsofts anti-competitive business practices.

Wordpad was basically just a tech demo for the Rich text control in Windows.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#145

Post by canucker2016 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #110
not_your_vase wrote: post #78

I'm always sad to see applications go (especially if the recommended alternative is a paid software), but did that thing ever work properly? In the past decade I used Windows only when someone held a gun to my head, but before that I remember that WordPad always messed up all documents I have ever opened: weird page and line breaks, picture and textbox formatting all over the place, and saving a document was a good w…

I always figured this was by design. Microsoft needed a GUI word processor that was free to stifle competition in the new "windows software" market, but not good enough to upset their Word business. Good job WordPad - one of the flag bearers of Microsofts anti-competitive business practices.

Microsoft Write (which supported RTF) was included in Windows 1.0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Write

For Win95, the new included-in-the-box email client required a text editor which supported multiple fonts, colours, font styles, et al. But Microsoft Write code was not written to be modular and cross-platform (much of the Win95 email client code would also run on the Macintosh, for Mac OS System 7.x).

So the RichEdit windows control was created.

Wordpad.exe is a thin wrapper around the RichEdit control, like Notepad.exe is a thin wrapper around the text edit control.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#146

Post by xnx »

cesarb wrote: post #140
sjkna wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cool exe's don't change

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#147

Post by no_wizard »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #50
jzb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many arguments for FOSS. This isn’t one of them. Plenty of open source apps are abandoned. The maintainers get tired, too busy, or whatever. Few users, if any, are depending on this app that hasn’t been getting attention for years. There’s plenty of replacement apps as good or better, including FOSS ones. If it was open source, the odds are no one would care to take over maintenance (though they could) sinc…

On the contrary, the difference is precisely that an abandoned FOSS program can be picked up by someone else; that this ability is not always used is beside the point.

Not always is a misnomer.

It rarely if ever is.

Anyone remember PhantomJS? It took years before a replacement emerged and nobody was willing to take in the project, and this was a critical piece of tech at the time

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#148

Post by canucker2016 »

lockhouse wrote: post #116
profile53 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a pre built widget because Microsoft wrote it for WordPad though.

It’s actually likely to be the opposite. WordPad could be a test application for the RichTextEdit widget.

No. The RichText control was written for the Win95/Exchange email client.

Since there was now a RichText control that supported RTF in Windows, the Windows group could write a thin wrapper around the RichText control and replace Microsoft Write with Microsoft WordPad.

Support for Microsoft Word file formats came later once the Word group took over responsibility for the RichText control code.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#149

Post by w-ll »

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.)

can i do something in regedit so that "paint" loads up "paint.net" and not og paint?

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#150

Post by 13of40 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #110
not_your_vase wrote: post #78

I'm always sad to see applications go (especially if the recommended alternative is a paid software), but did that thing ever work properly? In the past decade I used Windows only when someone held a gun to my head, but before that I remember that WordPad always messed up all documents I have ever opened: weird page and line breaks, picture and textbox formatting all over the place, and saving a document was a good w…

I always figured this was by design. Microsoft needed a GUI word processor that was free to stifle competition in the new "windows software" market, but not good enough to upset their Word business. Good job WordPad - one of the flag bearers of Microsofts anti-competitive business practices.

Seems like there were three options:

1. Ship Word with Windows and not get paid for it, even though they had hundreds of engineers working on it.

2. Ship no word processor with Windows, and make the end user find one on their own.

3. Ship a basic one and let the user upgrade to Word if they needed something more.

At the time with option 2, it's not like you're going to hit google and download some FOSS solution - you would need to go to the computer store and pay $200 for something in a box off the shelf.

I'm thinking option 3 was a good middle ground, and a win-win for MS and the customer.

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