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Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#83

Post by MoonWalk »

So the markup dialect that's widely used but suffers from a near-total lack of viewers will now finally be rendered as intended, at least on Windows?

Markdown presents a chicken-&-egg scenario that has dragged on for decades: tons of Markdown documents, but almost nothing with which to simply view (not edit) them as intended. Mystifying.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#84

Post by akgoel »

CivBase wrote: post #7

Is the value add for Notepad not that it is litterally the most bare bones graphical text editor available in Windows? Microsoft has already positioned VS Code as its code editor and OneNote as its notetaking app. Why should Notepad compete with these offerings?

In a Copilot world, Notepad is now meant to render Copilot output, which LLMs do a good job of spitting out Markdown.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#85

Post by 5o1ecist »

soupfordummies wrote: post #76
5o1ecist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

while this is cool and I want to play with it myself, it's still sort of discounting the overhead here of installing python, installing tkinter, adding shortcuts to the program within Windows, etc. Of course the barrier to creating bespoke tools is lower but it's also still a decent bit of overhead and not just "hey AI, create me a Notepad clone that works like it used to". Arguably it's still more intensive than goo…

[flagged]

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#86

Post by Terr_ »

java-man wrote: post #63
TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Markdown support isn't a bad idea, actually, as long as they don't break the most important (IMO) property of Notepad: binary WYSIWYG . I.e. if I type in some plain text and then open the file with anything else (including after moving to another machine/platform, or even viewing raw data stream in transit or on drive), I can trust to see that text, as is, and nothing else . In particular, if I restrict myself to low…

Remember this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_hid_the_facts

I think the Real Bug™ here comes from product-management: Nobody should be taking this kind of stochastic guess process and then just... 100% trusting the outcome with no feedback to the user and no way for the user to correct bad guesses.

For example, a prompt when opening the file like: "It's unclear what kind of data this is, here are a few options with a preview, pick which one you'd like me to use."

Annoying, but them's the breaks when you're making software and aren't willing to put in hard requirements about what it is expected to (not) operate on.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#88

Post by 1bpp »

tmtvl wrote: post #48
SamuelAdams wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the absolute lightweight, there is vi, eMacs, nano, etc. For a UI I’ve been using VSCode. It is quite quick when you disable all extensions and most settings.

> absolute lightweight > eMacs I love Emacs, but I don't see how a Lisp platform with a web browser, a Tetris implementation, and 4 terminal emulators (shell, term, ansi-term, eshell) can be considered 'lightweight'.

To be fair you can say that of anything with a scripting engine, you could have all that in vim or stripped down emacs

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#89

Post by voidfunc »

hypeatei wrote: post #34
Longhanks wrote: post #4

They’re turning Notepad into what Wordpad was (or was supposed to be). Now everyone looking for the light weightiest *.txt editor must find a new tool...

Notepad++ is solid but they had a recent kerfuffle involving their security practices and the response didn't inspire much confidence. But if you turn off auto-updates then it's a good alternative if you're still on Windows.

I love Notepad++ but yea, zero confidence in that dev right now. Its programma non grata on my machines at the moment.

Theyre also very political and giving them access to my machine now feels even more risky.

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