I seem to recall articles that wordpad was written because microsoft lost the source code to its precursor "write.exe". But I cannot seem to find any.
RIP Microsoft WordPad
51–60 of 100 posts
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#52This 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.
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Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#53This 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 just use Sublime Text for that. It opens immediately on all OSs
+1. Sublime user on windows and mac. Never failed me last 6 years.
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#54Literally 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…
If you enable clipboard history (Win+V), then you can click on the three dots over clipboard item to reveal additional options, and there will be a button to insert that item as a plain text.
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#55ReactOS has a WordPad.exe
Is there an easy way to just get Wordpad without loading up ReactOS?
From another comment: https://github.com/katahiromz/RWordPad/releases
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#56Literally 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…
> always surprises me to read people don't regularly use Notepad.
There have always been so many free/shareware editors better in every way you wanted, even in launching speed.
It always surprised me to hear people regularly using it
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> 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.
I'm pretty sure it's not Notepad that strips RTF, it only exploits the windows clipboard feature: the clipboard can store data in multiple formats, and it's actually the applications that support storing it in RTF that also store it in normal text (this is actually usually handled by a control that the application is using, such as win32's Rich Edit).
In short, you can do the same by pasting the text in anything that doesn't support rtf (the only caveat is that the application might reencode and mangle the text when it reads it - old versions of Notepad could do it, for example).
There are also utilities that let you paste the clipboard's plain text directly.
To see what's really inside the clipboard you can use e.g. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/inside_clipboard.html , if it still works.
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#57I liked WordPad. It was a nice middle ground. Word is so bloated and feature rich that getting started was a faff. WordPad had enough formatting to be useful.
A bit like the Markdown of it's time.
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#58Although I don't like it, I often use WordPad on Windows machines because there is a bug in Notepad. If you have Notepad open with word-wrap on, it will insert line breaks into newly edited lines where they wrap on the screen. When I have to quickly edit and save a text file on some random Windows machine, I use WordPad to avoid polluting the file with out of place line breaks.
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#59I think the only use I've ever had for it was for reading some rtf licenses and documents, before connecting the computer to internet and installing something better.
Actually as others said, since it's simply a Rich Edit wrapper they could just leave it; at least they could leave a view-only version, although the editing features are in all likelihood equally simple.
Any vulnerability it might have is probably present in the controls themselves rather than its code.
Re: RIP Microsoft WordPad
#60This 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?
because Notes is not a text editor.