Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 367 posts

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#261

Post by hulitu »

zamadatix wrote: post #65
jaclaz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, though now I cannot anymore honestly state that MS did not introduce any new meaningful feature in Windows 10 ;).

I know you're being sarcastic but it also introduced the virtual desktop switcher, (full) DX12, made significant improvements to the console, added real ARM support for the desktop OS, replaced IE, implemented proper DPI support (all the way to per-monitor true fractional), added openssh, actual HDR support, and many more things that can be surprisingly hard to go without if you revert to a previous release. There is…

> I know you're being sarcastic but it also introduced the virtual desktop switcher

Which is a PITA to use, so useless.

> , (full) DX12, made significant improvements to the console

Cmd.exe is still the same

> , added real ARM support for the desktop OS,

Not relevant

> replaced IE,

Not fully. They still have it as a menu item in Edge

> implemented proper DPI support (all the way to per-monitor true fractional),

YMMV. This one is hit or miss.

> added openssh, actual HDR support, and many more things that can be surprisingly hard to go without if you revert to a previous release.

You cannot revert to a previous release in Windows.

> There is always plenty wrong with each new release but the comments and jokes about ${"LATEST_RELEASE"} of ${"SOFTWARE"} being unilaterally worse just make me think the person can't deal with something changing instead of the software actually being bad.

When SW changes just for the sake of change (see calc.exe), something is wrong.

> Comments and jokes about how they could have an entire new release worth of features just bringing back what they've removed or reverse-improved over the years however... that I agree with ;).

Also agree.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#262

Post by almostnormal »

hulitu wrote: post #243
j16sdiz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notepad.exe have lots of improvement in past 10 years. A major revamp in 2022 It is no longer a "thin wrapper".

I noticed that it needs more than 3 seconds to start on my work laptop. Truly an improvement. /s

Searching in notepad no longer opens a separate window but squeezes the search input in between text lines, and while creating space breaks the display. Searching highlights but doesn't move the cursor, losing the location found when closing search.

It's unusuable now.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#263

Post by dagaci »

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…

Yes, Notepad, WordPad, Paint existed to have a baseline of utility and especially when selling a complete PC setup to customers in the 1990s:

At a time when there was no internet! The PC sales guy could demo the customer fancy text-editing with fonts and colours, draw pictures and even print to dot matrix! right in the store.

Today people like these minimal OS apps because they are simple, avoid bloat and feature creep, especially notepad and paint. Its probably an error on MS part to get rid of WordPad..

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#264

Post by Bluecobra »

notatoad wrote: post #182
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #63

>There’s no reason to be outraged by this decision Actually, I have a reason to be outraged by this decision. I like using WordPad, and it will take me time and effort to find an adequate replacement for a simple note-taking application.

so keep using it? ending development doesn't mean the executable stops working. the good news for you is this is essentially a promise that wordpad will never change.

Also to this point it’s usually pretty easy to copy built in Windows applications over. For example, I like the older Win10 snipping tool better and I just needed to copy the executable and maybe a DLL file.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#265

Post by hulitu »

Clamchop wrote: post #96
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the era you mentioned, most new PCs came bundled with Microsoft Works. A basic word processor feels like a sensible inclusion in any OS that is useful to consumers out of the box, it was Works that was more problematic for the competition. The floor has fallen out since then and there are so many free or cheap office productivity options. Works stopped being a thing eons ago and I would guess WordPad is rarely cho…

> Works stopped being a thing eons ago

Well, some people would say that Microsoft Works is a contradiction in terms. /s

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#266

Post by hulitu »

dryanau wrote: post #200
thordenmark wrote: post #193

WordPad was the only thing worse than MS Word. So good riddance. But Windows still desperately needs an ultralight word processor that can do more than Notepad. I dread Word even opening.

The ribbon and the dreaded save panel make me anxious just thinking about them. WHY is saving a so many clicks?!?

Because they want your documents in their cloud.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#267

Post by hulitu »

kjellsbells wrote: post #24

Implicit in this is a recognition, or at least a claim, that regular windows users don't have any need to inspect or manipulate anything other than a few file types. Plain text or Office formats, PDF, thats it. That might well be true for 99% of people, but it isn't true for me. I'd like to have an editor built into windows that was way lighter than an IDE but could handle things like JSON, XML, and CSV without sweat…

> Implicit in this is a recognition, or at least a claim, that regular windows users don't have any need to inspect or manipulate anything other than a few file types

Regular windows users are mostly corporate and there are (management excepted, of course) a lot of file types to be manipulated. (CAD, MS Office, etc)

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#268

Post by mhitza »

Tao3300 wrote: post #45
goalieca wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a million and one offline open source solutions that are higher quality than wordpad.

Which do you suggest? If it doesn't have rich text support, isn't lighter than anything in the OpenOffice family, and is as unstable as AbiWord, don't bother saying it.

I've recently switched to OnlyOffice ("desktop version" - probably Electron) since online reviews seem to suggest it has better support for docx than LibreOffice. You might give it a try, as it supports rtf as a document format, but not sure how well that works.

https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop.aspx

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#269

Post by hulitu »

Aachen wrote: post #256
taubek wrote: post #69

This is a shame. I still use is to open RTF and DOCX files.

Wait, it opens files made with Microsoft Office? I thought it refused that and only did rtf and text files like html, txt, etc. Is this perhaps new or do I just misremember?

AFAIK Wordpad can only open Word 6 files.

Re: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows

#270

Post by forgotmypw17 »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #63

>There’s no reason to be outraged by this decision Actually, I have a reason to be outraged by this decision. I like using WordPad, and it will take me time and effort to find an adequate replacement for a simple note-taking application.

I want to add to this, to address all the "just ..." suggestions posted in reply.

This change constituties a NON-CONSENSUAL CHANGE to my computing environment.

My workflow is broken, and I have to fix it.

This is one of the million paper cuts by which my relationship with Windows was broken.

This is why CONSENT is important in computing.

It is absolutely fucked up, and I won't tolerate it.

Post reply on HN