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RIP Microsoft WordPad

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Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#31

Post by joemi »

z_open wrote: post #3

Man people are nostalgic about the most bizarre things sometimes. My experience with WordPad was accidently opening something with it and having to change the default app for some extension.

I see nothing wrong with being sad that Microsoft is removing something from their OS and their suggested (but not included) replacement is a paid app which is at least an order of magnitude larger and more complex. Sure, WordPad isn't the best program of its kind (not the tool you need for every job), but still it was nice having the functionality there when you needed it without needing to install something (which in turn needs an internet connection). It was still an OK tool.

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#32

Post by safeimp »

lotsofpizza wrote: post #18

This is slightly off topic but might be helpful to some people who use both Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on Mac but are tired of the open document screen that starts by default when opening TextEdit. For example, I take calls while at my Windows based workstation. When I'm starting a phone call, I instinctively open notepad and jot down notes while on the phone. I don't usually save the file but I will complete th…

I was a longtime Windows user and used Notepad similarly. When I eventually transitioned to Apple I shifted to Notes, curious why you’d not use this in lieu of TextEdit?

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#33

Post by dmitrygr »

hulitu wrote: post #6
shaggie76 wrote: post #4

We used to use RTF for walls text in our game launcher (EULA, MOTD etc). We chose RTF because raw Win32 could render it without extra work and we wanted to minimize both launcher complexity and dependencies. One thing we noticed was that RTF documents made in WordPad instead of Word were much, much smaller and since every byte added to our CDN bill we made a point of re-saving all our files in WordPad before publishi…

Word was not able to open correctly RTF file until recently.

completely false. I saved and opened RTFs with word97 in school for macOS compat

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#34

Post by csdvrx »

ravenstine wrote: post #12
z_open wrote: post #3

Man people are nostalgic about the most bizarre things sometimes. My experience with WordPad was accidently opening something with it and having to change the default app for some extension.

I liked WordPad because it was comfortably simple, did more than Notepad, but didn't have way more than I needed for personal use. It's similar to why I like Apple Notes (even though TextEdit is closer to WordPad). Most of the time, I don't need pages, margins, footers, a bunch of fancy formatting, but the ability to make text bold or italic, add hyperlinks, and maybe change the color or font. In which case I want al…

I like WordPad because when I collect screenshots and quick notes about what's of them, it's fast and doesn't get in the way: Alt+PrintScreen, Alt+Tab to WordPad, Control+V, type some text, Alt+Tab again to go back to the application you're screenshootting and you can keep going.

Control+S at the end and you have a RTF that can be read everywhere.

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#36

Post by kyriakos »

lotsofpizza wrote: post #18

This is slightly off topic but might be helpful to some people who use both Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on Mac but are tired of the open document screen that starts by default when opening TextEdit. For example, I take calls while at my Windows based workstation. When I'm starting a phone call, I instinctively open notepad and jot down notes while on the phone. I don't usually save the file but I will complete th…

I use notepad++ on windows and have open all the time. Any more I want to write down I open a new tab. Notepad++ keeps the tabs even if not saved and automatically reopens them next time you start it. Combined with search in open files feature it makes it extremely useful.

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#37

Post by lewiscollard »

mgerdts wrote: post #24

If memory serves, the big advantage of wordpad back in the day was that it had line wrap, which was missing from notepad. But it’s been a while since I used windows 95… Edit: confirmed notepad behavior. Wordpad crashes in the emulator, then causes windows to lock up. https://archive.org/details/win95_in_dosbox

From memory, WordPad's other advantage in Windows 95 days was that it could handle files larger than 64 kilobytes. Notepad could not; it would prompt you to open files in WordPad instead if you tried.

I always liked WordPad better than Word back then. It was faster and did all of the things I needed it to do. AbiWord occupied a similar sweet spot for me for some time after I went to Linux in the early 2000s.

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#38

Post by AceyMan »

Someone1234 wrote: post #15
MichaelRo wrote: post #13

Literally never found an use for WordPad. Neither for Notepad, if we're at it. For text files, Notepad is pretty much useless. For short files I'm using Notepad++, I tried using plain Notepad and I can't describe exactly why but it's almost unusable in comparison. And for large files (MBs to GBs) I'm using less. From git bash. And if I need any sort of rich text formatting, there's the free Libre Office which is usua…

I'm indifferent about Wordpad; always surprises me to read people don't regularly use Notepad. I use it as a clipboard scratchpad. It strips RTF when copying between programs since Windows itself has no built-in way of doing so and you can also use it to clean up whatever you're copying. It loads fast and is minimalist. Some programs on Windows vomit all over themselves when receiving RTF information, like Teams for…

Puretext is a free UWP app in the Microsoft Store for format stripping. The author is/was a MSFT dev, iirc. With it installed, WIN+V does a format_clear() paste.

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#39

Post by AstroJetson »

kyriakos wrote: post #36
lotsofpizza wrote: post #18

This is slightly off topic but might be helpful to some people who use both Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on Mac but are tired of the open document screen that starts by default when opening TextEdit. For example, I take calls while at my Windows based workstation. When I'm starting a phone call, I instinctively open notepad and jot down notes while on the phone. I don't usually save the file but I will complete th…

I use notepad++ on windows and have open all the time. Any more I want to write down I open a new tab. Notepad++ keeps the tabs even if not saved and automatically reopens them next time you start it. Combined with search in open files feature it makes it extremely useful.

I love notepad++ and use it a lot when I need raw text.

I do like WordPad since it will do fonts, embedded pictures, etc. I really hate that MS is moving things to the cloud. I'm often in places that don't have wifi/cell coverage so getting to the cloud is impossible.

Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad

#40

Post by AstroJetson »

anthk wrote: post #27
kotaKat wrote: post #2

I mentioned this in a prior HN thread on this: Rip C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories and back it up somewhere. WordPad.exe is standalone. If you're running Win7+ you'll need the en-us/muis/etc, if you pull from an XP install wordpad.exe is all you'll ever need to do. Bonus points if you just grab a Windows XP iso and deflate wordpad.exe from the install image - copy WORDPAD.EX_ from the i386 folder and just run…

Or just use the ReactOS' Wordpad.exe: https://github.com/katahiromz/RWordPad/releases

Just did that, good replacement, thanks for the tip.
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