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Windows

Notepad On Windows 11 Is Finally Getting a Character Count (theverge.com) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the noteworthy-features dept.
Microsoft's Notepad app on Windows 11 is getting a character count at the bottom of the window. "When text is selected, the status bar shows the character count for both the selected text and the entire document," explains Microsoft's Windows Insider team in a blog post. "If no text is selected, the character count for the entire document is displayed, ensuring you always have a clear view of your document's length." The Verge reports: This is the latest addition in a line of changes to Notepad this year, with the app recently getting a new autosave option that lets you close it without seeing the pop-up save prompt every time. Microsoft has also added tabs to Notepad, a dark mode, and even a virtual fidget spinner.

Alongside the Notepad changes in this latest Windows 11 test build, the widgets section of the OS is also getting some improvements. You'll soon be able to just show widgets and hide the feed of news and articles that appear inside the widgets screen.
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Notepad On Windows 11 Is Finally Getting a Character Count More

Notepad On Windows 11 Is Finally Getting a Character Count

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  • In particular, undo is terrible. The support for multiple text file formats is nice, though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      I'm still on WIndows 10, but if it's still only at one level of undo, yeah, that's terrible. Still, it's notepad and I don't expect a bunch of features. It's not Word or some other word processor, it's a text editor.

    • Re:Can it get working sensibly? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Thursday December 07, 2023 @08:21PM (#64065175) Homepage

      Single Undo is a holdover from Notepad being a simple wrapper over the Win32 text box control. Just like WordPad is a simple wrapper over the Win32 rich edit control, so it gets multiple levels of Undo. Just like MS Paint being a simple wrapper over the functions of GDI.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        I always wondered why Notepad was so shitty and never received any improvement since, what, Win 3.1 ? So that's the reason. Still, it's sheer laziness, they could have improved the text box control a hundredfold instead of spending resources on shit that nobody wants like Cortana or so many other examples.

  • How many characters can it handle before it crashes? Can it handle unix style line endings?

    Notepad is basically worthless.

    • Re:characters (Score:4, Informative)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Thursday December 07, 2023 @08:12PM (#64065159)

      Pretty sure it has handled unix-style line endings since Windows 10. Also supports UTF-8 now.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Pretty sure it has handled unix-style line endings since Windows 10. Also supports UTF-8 now.

        Actually it supports UTF-8, UTF-16 LE/BE and possibly UTF-32.

        And it's done that since Windows XP - that's how all those notepad jokes worked - they played with how Windows could determine the file format through heuristics.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      How many characters can it handle before it crashes?

      It can manipulate multi-megabytes files just fine, and fast too.

      Can it handle unix style line endings?

      Yes

      Notepad is basically worthless.

      It used to be, but it has significantly improved in the last few years. It is still a simple text editor, don't expect fancy stuff like syntax highlighting, but you can edit text with it now.

    • Notepad is basically worthless.

      Yeah, especially when you haven't paid attention in a decade and repeatedly spout woefully outdated and irrelevant assumptions.

      • You mean I should have held on after the first couple decades of uselessness? Why would I assume that anything changed in this all but forgotten tool?

  • Seriously. Is the only time anyone gets Notepad opened, is by double clicking accidentally, or because your customer's Windows servers are so locked down, that it's the only text editor option?

    • I use Windows 11 notepad all day every day. It is adequate except for the terrible undo behavior, where you type and paste and hit undo and it undoes both typing and pasting. I use it literally for taking notes. I tried OneNote (which we have) but I tried to rename something and it crashed, and I said well maybe next year. I use Word all day too, which is also garbage. I touched some innocuous styling control yesterday and every Office application on the system crashed except IIRC Outlook. None of them lost

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      I use notepad all the time, even though I have access to editors with more features. A very simple text editor can be very useful. First, it's going to be much faster than other text editors. It's also not cluttered with sidebars, toolbars, rulers, and other stuff that takes up space on the screen. If you want something small and out-of-the way that you can use to, for example, copy some text that you can't easily copy (text in an image or video, a few values from a table, whatever) then having a small

    • Congrats, I on the other hand use important systems with very strict controls on what is installed so the ability for the OS included software to support more functionality is a godsend. We get it, go back to your Chrome and webbrowser experience, installing whatever you want willy-nilly, but some of us actually have important things to do with our computers.

      • Replying to you to undo the positive moderation I gave you a earlier because you're a dick.

        • Replying to you to undo the positive moderation I gave you a earlier because you're a dick.

          Congrats. You've just shown that you moderate based on how you think of a person rather than the message they post. You should not have mod points, ever. Come back and join the adults when you are less of an emotional wreck and can separate the concept of hating a person from point they made.

  • With these insightful and powerful enhancements to their product suite.

  • Wow, what a forward-thinking game changing feature: a character count. Be still mah heart!

    I'm kidding; no one uses Notepad unless they literally have no other choice.

    Anything else is better. Even the online "make-a-greeting-card" sites have better editors than Notepad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Which online "make-a-greeting-card" sites are free these days though? :P

    • Anything else is better.

      Including all the non-existent software? Many computers don't give the users the ability to blindly install shit, and if they did those users should be fired. OS level support for more functionality is objectively a good thing regardless of if it doesn't affect you personally.

      • What are you babbling about?

        Notepad is shit, you'd be better off with Edlin.

        • Notepad is shit, you'd be better off with Edlin.

          I can see you've either not used Notepad, or not used Edlin, actually ... probably both.

          • I've used them both, and they both suck.

            Use Metapad or Notepad++ or any of the other 10,000 text editors out there, but if you want to deliberately subject yourself to Notepad, be my guest.

    • I find Notepad to be really useful as a scratchpad. Copy and paste stuff into it as a temp buffer while I'm working on stuff, modify a little, then paste back somewhere. Or make a quick to-do list to remind myself of things. I could use Onenote, or Sticky pads, or whatever, but sometimes Notepad's mono-spaced font is just what's needed for a hour or three. Then when you're done, just close & not save. The equivalent in Linux is an extra xterm & "vi xyz" and use it the same way with a :q! at the end.

  • As white letters on blue background like in WinNT?

    or will the colours be user selectable via config file like in wni3.x and win9x?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      That has always been something you could change, though for a little while that meant a trip to the registry.

  • They're going to tie notepad to the store and break it like they broke the calculator, aren't they?

    I can just feel it.

  • Will it be installed with the OS?
    Maybe it could be be advertising supported.
    I suppose they added the character count so it can popup an ad every 250 characters, including backspaces and delete keys.

    Or will it move to the Microsoft store where you can get a subscription for $5.99 a year?

  • Now that would be an overall improvement.

  • Is not losing the dozens of unsaved notepad windows when a Windows Update (or forced reboot) hits

  • Notepad 11 with character count!
    Why is that a news on /. ?

  • The only reason I reach for notepad is if I want to very quickly take a note of something. I've noticed that even as computers have gotten faster, it takes longer to start notepad on newer versions of windows - especially if I start it from the start menu. It fails compared to notepad++ in so many ways that sometimes I wonder if they are trying to encourage people to seek out options like it instead. If they can just make it take even longer to launch notepad, perhaps they can then abandon development on
  • Very fast, syntax highlighting, loads of other (optional) features.

  • ...well, it's better than a previous year calling, but not by much.

    Still, it's nice to see Notepad become a more usable text editor. I do like all the new features they're bringing to it. I especially like that line and character position now work with "word wrap" enabled. We all use ++, but the workaday consumer is getting some real value out of these efforts.

    Oh, who am I kidding? The workaday user doesn't type anything into a flat text file; they fire up Word or something. Or use a sticky note (the progra

  • It'll be a lot cheaper than other junk they've bought in the past.

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