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Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

blogs.windows.com

51–60 of 314 posts

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#53
post #5

I understand it's reasonable to be cynical about Windows, but is it really appropriate here[1] when the changes of note are support for dark mode and multiple undo steps? At least wait for someone to find an actual problem. [1] When I post this, the only other comments are complaints. The ones that are at least complaining about notepad are complaining that MS had the gall to change notepad without pointing to anythi…

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Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#56
> also adding support for multi-level undo

To think that this feature is "new"...

I know notepad is supposed to be as simple as possible, a very fast default and always available text editor. But single undo is for me the single reason I always install notepad++ if I plan to use the computer in the future, or use Wordpad if not.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#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 like the command prompt, but the issues were pretty well understood and WONTFIXed. Single undo, unicode support, unix LF support, etc, etc.

For Notepad a frustrated engineer had produced a change-set to fix all of them, and it had sat there attached to the bug for some time. It would surface on internal mail threads from time to time as a joke or a bitter reflection on bureaucracy, and if I recall a VP once chimed in to say they had looked at it, and sadly none of it could be committed due to backwards compatibility issues.

Of course the compat issues were real (you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break), but I always though they served as a nice justification for whichever investments were being made at the time: certainly not Notepad.

It's nice to see the wind change on that, even if it took a decade or two.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#59
post #48

> We know how important Notepad is to so many of your daily workflows… Perhaps the single funniest line ever penned by Microsoft. Cannot imagine any “Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel” who use, let alone rely on, Notepad for any serious work. EDIT: I stand corrected - mea culpa!

I use it for taking quick notes fairly regularly - it's just a blank text input window and it opens immediately.

Re: Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

#60

Microsoft has not added any functionality to their operating system or applications since 1998–only bloat to keep up with the need to create a need for faster processors. I can’t think of one thing I can do in the Microsoft Office suite I couldn’t do 20 years ago. It’s just slower.

There is a chance that your use case is basic and hasn’t changed in 20 years, but I think there is a higher chance of it’s a case of general hatred for Microsoft.

> only bloat to keep up with the need to create a need for faster processors.

Do people not see what their feelings towards Microsoft turns them into?

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