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Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#261

Post by zadikian »

j2kun wrote: post #189
password4321 wrote: post #179

I believe Markdown support is what led to CVE-2026-20841 earlier this month. 20260211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971516 Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (804 points, 516 comments) 20260210 https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20... > "An attacker could trick a user into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad" Other recent Notepad issu…

This is my favorite part of this story. Do you want remote code execution? Because [fixing things that aren't broken] is how you get remote code execution.

Meanwhile TextEdit on Mac always rendered HTML. Which seems useless until you realize it can also edit and save as HTML. So there's casually a wysiwyg web editor built into macOS that idk how many people use.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#262

Post by BubbleRings »

dmitrygr wrote: post #96
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.txt now joins calc.txt in my list of EXEs i bring from an old WinXPx64 install to all new windows installs

Every few years I find some need or excuse to install Brief somewhere. I miss that editor.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#263

Post by derefr »

deafpolygon wrote: post #104
tracker1 wrote: post #93

I still say this is stupid AF, and that notepad should stay as simple as reasonable as a plain text editor and they should have resurrected "WordPad" for this purpose if they wanted it in Windows. I'm mixed on the enhancements to Paint... but this just feels a bit off. Maybe I'd mind it less if they put the new MS Edit in Windows by default, so again, there's a minimal plain text editor in the box.

Wordpad presented a “free” tool that they couldn’t monetize anymore. They want you to use Office. Copilot is shoved into Notepad so they can monetize your data stream.

If you think about it, Wordpad was always just the free "lite" edition of Word for people who didn't buy Office to use. Like Outlook Express was to Outlook.

But in the world we seem to be heading toward, where you can only log into Windows with a Microsoft account, and where your Microsoft 365 subscription state controls which "edition" or "desktop experience" of Windows you get as said logged-in user (regardless of which machine you're logged into)... there'd be no need for Wordpad.

In that world, Word the software package would always be pre-installed. (Why? Because even if you aren't paying for M365, someone who is could always log into your PC as a roaming user; and that person would want Word to work immediately without having to wait for it to download+install.)

And in a world where Word the software package is always preinstalled, then Microsoft could just let anyone launch Word (whether they have an M365 subscription or not); and then, at launch, rather than just putting a paywall in the face of anyone without an M365 subscription, Word could instead use the logged-in user's M365 licensing state to determine whether the spun-up Word process should run the full-fat Word UI, or some kind of degraded unpaid-mode Word UI.

And "Word running with some kind of degraded unpaid-mode UI" could be every bit the "Word lite" offering that Wordpad is. Which makes Wordpad itself redundant.

(The only weird part to me, is that they deprecated/removed Wordpad before pulling the trigger on all of this.)

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#265

Post by p_ing »

miroljub wrote: post #17
p_ing wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just disable Copilot?

Please show us the magic Windows settings that would disable Copilot everywhere.

Are we so uncurious that we can’t even look in notepad settings?

I’d expect better from an HN user.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#266

Post by estimator7292 »

leni536 wrote: post #215
gmueckl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it changed recently, the faster way is to just press ctrl+shift+V for "paste special" in Word, which should open up the paste dialog with "Unformated Text" preselected (IIRC), so immediately pressing Enter should close the dialog and paste the stripped text.

Careful when doing it in Teams. ctrl+shift+V is "paste without formatting", ctrl+shift+C is "call everyone".

I sincerely hope that whoever decided that a) this action needs a shortcut and b) to overload the most common hotkey spends the rest of eternity toiling away at features nobody wants, slowly ruining their company, and never, ever gets that sick promotion they're desperately chasing. I hope their wife leaves them and takes the dog.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#267

Post by p_ing »

Thanemate wrote: post #53
p_ing wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just disable Copilot?

What happened to "just enable X if you need it"? Why are we always okay with every new thing being enabled by default? Is it because the average person isn't as tech savvy as most (if not all) HN readers to know any better, and those companies want the headcount of usage to look high to please stakeholders? Enshittification at its finest stink.

Where have you been for the past umpteenth years of computing where even in the Linux kernel stuff is enabled by default, let alone userland applications.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#268

Post by dataflow »

0xy wrote: post #204
j2kun wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my favorite part of this story. Do you want remote code execution? Because [fixing things that aren't broken] is how you get remote code execution.

I think it's more likely that Microsoft is vibe coding slop garbage to replace their core apps that were literally better. Windows 10 explorer.exe is 100x faster than Windows 11 explorer, it's not even close. It also signals the death knell for Windows native apps. Microsoft can't make them anymore. It won't be long until even Excel is a Electron sloplication.

> Windows 10 explorer.exe is 100x faster than Windows 11 explorer, it's not even close.

I have a hard time believing this. I'm pretty sensitive to performance losses and I haven't noticed any difference between those. It wouldn't make sense either, given they should both host the same shell icon views. Are you sure the difference you're seeing is in explorer.exe? As opposed to something else, like a new shell extension or a new filesystem filter driver on Windows 11?

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#270

Post by CSm1n »

kibibu wrote: post #75
SamuelAdams wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, fair. Lightweight in this context is relative to Notepad or any modern Windows application.

Notepad.exe used to be <200kB. Emacs is tens of megabytes

Notepad was just a wrapper around some default win32 controls. Judging alone by exe size is not right, although probably a “statically linked” notepad would still be smaller than emacs
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