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Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#381

Post by procone »

datenyan wrote: post #310
UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> "adding rich text editing features to a text editor” Yeah, we already had that. In the form of Wordpad. Which was EOL'd. And now we have Notepad with AI features. Notepad was, and always should have been, a simple & lightweight text box for storing and editing text only files. If you wanted to edit something more complicated, you could use the other tool that was built into Windows specifically for that.

Wordpad was horrible! Nobody reasonable misses binary encoded .rtf files. They were a nightmare for any other platform other than windows.

What are these horrible takes?

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#382

Post by eurleif »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #360
eurleif wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're ok with a TUI instead of a GUI, Microsoft's documentation says the `edit` command is still around in Windows 11 (I don't have a Windows 11 machine handy to verify this): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrat...

Huh. I was going to say, last time I saw this was 20+ years ago, and I forgot it exists - but I must be remembering something else. It seems `edit` is a new thing , if I'm to believe https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/edit/ I can confirm it exists on my Windows 11 machine, and I didn't install it specifically, though it's definitely not a base install (upgraded from Windows 10, and plenty of dev tooling instal…

The documentation doesn't make this entirely clear, but I think these are two separate things: the original `edit` command which is built into Windows 11 (and has been built into prior Windows releases), and a replacement written in Rust that can optionally be installed.

Note that my link is dated 2023, whereas Wikipedia says that Microsoft Edit was first released in 2025: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_Editor

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#383

Post by 4k0hz »

procone wrote: post #381
datenyan wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "adding rich text editing features to a text editor” Yeah, we already had that. In the form of Wordpad. Which was EOL'd. And now we have Notepad with AI features. Notepad was, and always should have been, a simple & lightweight text box for storing and editing text only files. If you wanted to edit something more complicated, you could use the other tool that was built into Windows specifically for that.

Wordpad was horrible! Nobody reasonable misses binary encoded .rtf files. They were a nightmare for any other platform other than windows. What are these horrible takes?

The point is that there was basically no reason to totally kill Wordpad in the way that they did. They're different products and the new Notepad is closer to the ideal version of Wordpad than what Notepad is supposed to be, and now there's no Notepad.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#384

Post by nichos »

alansaber wrote: post #274
paxys wrote: post #102

I was about to make a joke about how I'm surprised they haven't shoved Copilot into Notepad yet, but surprise - they have ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enhance-your-wri... )

Thank god notepad is finally useable now

Still no line numbers....

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#385

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

eclipxe wrote: post #332
datenyan wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "adding rich text editing features to a text editor” Yeah, we already had that. In the form of Wordpad. Which was EOL'd. And now we have Notepad with AI features. Notepad was, and always should have been, a simple & lightweight text box for storing and editing text only files. If you wanted to edit something more complicated, you could use the other tool that was built into Windows specifically for that.

I like having something all in one.

Funny comment because this would have been WordPad.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#386

Post by jasomill »

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

While I probably haven't played either in a decade, I bring sol.exe and winmine.exe on general principle, as both had their "Copilot in Notepad" shark-jumping moments all the way back in Windows 8 with the introduction of achievements and in-app purchases.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#387

Post by themafia »

perching_aix wrote: post #273
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 thought it is by introducing an RCE vulnerability that you get an RCE vulnerability. I'm being facetious of course, but this recent rhetorical trend of people confidently vouching for "pet" in "pet vs. cattle" is not a sustainable decision, even if it's admittedly plain practical on the short to medium run, or in given contexts even longer. It's just a dangerous and irresponsible lesson to blindly repeat I think. C…

> Change happens.

The low level tool that has served to rescue more systems than I can count does not need to "change" simply because "it happens, bro."

> while we can mechanistically

You can rule it out with process as well. As in "don't change what isn't broken."

> If they can introduce an RCE to Notepad

Then they clearly feel they have no viable competition. This is table stakes. Getting it wrong should lose you most of your customer base overnight. Companies actually used to _work_ this way.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#388

Post by [deleted] »

wk_end wrote: post #109
somenameforme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

notepad++ is great, though they have a dubious habit of dumping political messages on releases.

I don't have any use for Notepad++, but reading about this makes me wish I did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B#Political_messag... The possibility of software being a personal, creative, expressive endeavor (which often includes politics), something I believed in back when I was in university twenty years ago, is a feeling that's receded deeply into the past. That might be as much about me as it is about…

[deleted]

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#389

Post by d_tr »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #129
pipeline_peak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I’m well aware, I just think this reaction is ridiculous. Just make your own damn notepad if it bothers you lol.

We used to have a perfectly good application that came with the OS. Then Microsoft ruined it. Yes I can make my own Notepad, but I shouldn't have to. If Microsoft really wanted a built-in text editor that had features Notepad didn't, they should've made a second application rather than ruining the minimalist one.

I use Notepad from time to time for quick notes and I have noticed exactly zero friction added to this "workflow". Not sure what you are talking about.

Re: Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown

#390

Post by throwaway290 »

nextaccountic wrote: post #242
bubblewand wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been so weird to watch over the decades as team sizes, budgets, and timelines have exploded even as we've abandoned once-normal things like native GUI applications as too hard in favor of "more efficient" webshit... even as the aforementioned stuff with growing team sizes, budgets, and timelines have happened.

What's weird is that AI is supposed to make development easy enough that native applications are just as fast to build than web apps Somehow in this timeline AI can only be used to make things worse and sloppier

> What's weird is that AI is supposed to make development easy enough that native applications are just as fast to build than web apps

Think one step ahead. They will want you to pay them for some LLM "agent" to use the GUI instead. It's not important that GUI is human usable anymore, actually the opposite.

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