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Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#251

Post by perryizgr8 »

prohobo wrote: post #155

It seems to me that the new OS arms race is about tooling, not just base UX, and Windows is starting to play catch up. The modern Mac OS and Linux desktop environments don't just match up to Windows, but surpass it in many respects. I wouldn't be surprised to see many "new" functionalities being introduced to Windows tools in the near future, with the catch that you will lose out on performance for a multitude of rea…

> modern Mac OS and Linux desktop environments don't just match up to Windows, but surpass it in many respects.

What are these "toolings" that are missing in Windows? I have found the opposite to be true. On Macos I need an app to properly snap windows, another app to make my mouse scroll properly, another app to have per-app volume control, another app to do poorly substitute paint.exe. Windows has all that and more, built-in.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#252

Post by tonyedgecombe »

rkagerer wrote: post #213
svieira wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep - read some of the awesome / horrific horror stories from having too large an API surface area from Raymond Chen here: https://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780321440303/samplec... Patching other people's binaries, turning off features if the app making the request is "problematic-app", re-introducing bugs, fixing should-be-impossible-to-happen calls from programs that were written by hand, it's all there!

Wow, amazing how they bent over backwards to keep customers up and running. I wish they cared that deeply about their users today. (Not saying the approach should be the same, just wish the attitude and motivation were as intense and that Win 10+ were less user-hostile.)

It was different when your typical application came on ten floppy disks. Not being able to use it on the next version of Windows might hinder the adoption of Windows.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#253

Post by tonyedgecombe »

hvgk wrote: post #92
MisterTea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break Wait what, external software calls into notepad?

Surprisingly I actually deal with a fairly hefty integration that does some horrible win32 shit I don’t understand after opening notepad to integrate it into their app. There’s so much of that out there it’s unreal.

Microsoft's win32 moat is looking more like an anchor.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#254

Post by iamtedd »

svieira wrote: post #98
MisterTea wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break Wait what, external software calls into notepad?

Yep - read some of the awesome / horrific horror stories from having too large an API surface area from Raymond Chen here: https://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780321440303/samplec... Patching other people's binaries, turning off features if the app making the request is "problematic-app", re-introducing bugs, fixing should-be-impossible-to-happen calls from programs that were written by hand, it's all there!

Going to have to buy this book now. Enjoyed this extract. I wonder what font was used? whatthefont thinks it might be Adobe Jenson Display, and I don't currently have any PDF tools to inspect the document. The 'y' looks so pretty, with it's rightward curve.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#255

Post by tonyedgecombe »

cmckn wrote: post #26
ng-user wrote: post #19

It's crazy to me that Windows 11 has already been released and yet they're still adding what should be core functionality to the OS as an after thought. If they are so set on redesigning Notepad and/or all system apps to use the new design style, why would those not be prioritized and included in the original release from day 1?

I'm not sure a slight refresh of the Notepad UI is core functionality of the OS. I don't like Windows, I actually quite despise it, but I think the rolling release approach is far better than, say, macOS' yearly dump. You end up with features that are half-baked or pushed to the next year. Microsoft is taking a saner approach with Windows releases, IMHO.

I thought Microsoft had announced they are switching to an annual release cycle.

I don't think it makes much difference to the quality, some features are too big to fit in a single cycle anyway. The question is whether they have enough discipline to hold back projects that aren't ready. In this respect neither Apple nor Microsoft seem able to say no.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#256

Post by jeffmill »

pantaloons wrote: post #58

I worked on Windows back in 2014, probably the most surprising thing joining there out of college was looking through the bug database. Every issue that gets complained about online -- and many more -- are in there, and have been for a long time, marked WONTFIX due to a potential compatibility break, lack of priority, or some other policy reason. I don't know if anyone even owned Notepad or any other older inbox apps…

> For Notepad a frustrated engineer had produced a change-set to fix all of them

Hey, that was me (JeffMill). I was a dev lead for the Windows shell team at the time, and I got frustrated with notepad not getting any attention, so I spent a weekend and made the changes you describe and more, and had one of my reports code review it. I checked the changes in, and that week, some of the members of test team (remember those?) had a cow and my lead pulled out all of the changes.

I'm still at MSFT, now as an architect, so it turned out not to be a career limiting move, but I certainly should have discussed my plans more broadly rather than just "cowboying" those changes in.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#257

Post by pjmlp »

userbinator wrote: post #198
xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Microsoft is still pretending that UWP/WinUI isn't a complete mistake. All those issues are inherent to that technology.

The same Microsoft who said UWP was not the future only two years ago, is still continuing to rewrite applications in it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19873198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19883351

Yes, because WinUI is a clusterfuck so they need to keep using what they have.

Currently 2307 issues open, https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues

And this is just one repo, then you can hop into C#/WinRT, AppSDK, C++/WinRT ones as well.

Hence why they keep releasing WinUI 2.x series, although 2.6 was supposed to be the very last one before WinUI 3.0 goes stable.

However if you go to the community meetings everything is rosy and we should all be jumping into WinUI 3.0.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#258

Post by pjmlp »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #170
seritools wrote: post #118

10 minute QA because they don't seem to have done it: - It consistently starts slower than Notepad3 while having substantially fewer features to load (and also slower than the old Notepad of course) - THEY ANIMATED THE SCROLLING OMG PLEASE DONT DO THIS (especially when grabbing the scroll bar handle). Any amount of delay is too much in notepad - the animation runs at 60Hz even on a high refresh rate screen, so it loo…

The problem is that Microsoft is still pretending that UWP/WinUI isn't a complete mistake. All those issues are inherent to that technology.

Tons of politics, and not wanting to lose their face.

I lost count of how many PMs I got to see on comunity meetings since the Windows 8 days.

They also pretend that all the rewrites that keep being requested since WinRT was introduced, and rebooted on the process, aren't a big deal.

When faced with these questions they always ask for us to explain our viewpoint, as if it wasn't clear for them to start with, of course it is clear, but they cannot say it live.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#259

Post by clavicat »

There is something pathologically dysfunctional about a trillion-dollar organization that thinks a few imperceptible improvements to decades-old programs that individual programmers have created far superior versions of for free are worth announcing like it’s a marvel of engineering. We saw the same thing with Windows Terminal—they even made a trailer for it.

Like, these are the kinds of updates that would take one person a weekend to accomplish. Nor would that individual think to brag about implementing rounded corners. But the bureaucracy inside Microsoft is so sclerotic and hostile to excellence that even these changes require heroic allocations of effort.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#260

Post by EMM_386 »

MisterTea wrote: post #88
pantaloons wrote: post #58

I worked on Windows back in 2014, probably the most surprising thing joining there out of college was looking through the bug database. Every issue that gets complained about online -- and many more -- are in there, and have been for a long time, marked WONTFIX due to a potential compatibility break, lack of priority, or some other policy reason. I don't know if anyone even owned Notepad or any other older inbox apps…

> you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break Wait what, external software calls into notepad?

> Wait what, external software calls into notepad?

External software calls into everything. Welcome to Windows development.

It's extremely difficult to implement even "obvious" changes like a dark-mode Notepad when it could potentially break customers who have been depending on specific behavior for decades.

This is why they've had to write shim-specific code for certain vendors. The desire to move forward versus the awful prospect of having to keep those shims in place.

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