

Microsoft Tests Notepad Text Formatting In Windows 11 (betanews.com) 76
BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Microsoft just can't leave well enough alone. The company is now injecting formatting features into Notepad, a program that has long been appreciated for one thing -- its simplicity. You see, starting with version 11.2504.50.0, this update is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels, and it adds bold text, italics, hyperlinks, lists, and even headers. Sadly, this isn't a joke. Notepad is actually being turned into a watered-down word processor, complete with a formatting toolbar and Markdown support. Users can even toggle between styled content and raw Markdown syntax. And while Microsoft is giving you the option to disable formatting or strip it all out, it's clear the direction of the app is changing.
COPY CON (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if COPY CON MSSUCKS.TXT still works at the command prompt?
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I wonder if COPY CON MSSUCKS.TXT still works at the command prompt?
Try it with an emoji.
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Ah, so that's what the poop emoji was made for.
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C:\> COPY CON MSSUCKS.TXT
The system cannot find the file specified.
C:\>
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It doesn't, but given this announcement recently: https://github.com/microsoft/e... [github.com] maybe Microsoft will will re-introduce it. ... programmed in Rust and powered by Copilot.
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apt install edlin
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try copy con\con mssucks.txt
Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, starting with version 11.2504.50.0, this update is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels, and it adds bold text, italics, hyperlinks, lists, and even headers.
Umm... ALL Microsoft needed to do was fix the wonky word-wrap. Did they forget about WordPad?
ClearType . (Score:1)
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Nope, they actively killed it. [microsoft.com]
But I agree, stop messing with Notepad.
Re:Nope. (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh. According to that link they killed WordPad to sell Word.
Question- wouldn't bringing WordPad back be a lot cheaper for MS than fucking up Notepad?
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Huh. According to that link they killed WordPad to sell Word.
Question- wouldn't bringing WordPad back be a lot cheaper for MS than fucking up Notepad?
Here's the thing, you have telemetry disabled don't you. Microsoft has the data, Wordpad was virtually never used. Microsoft started tweaking Notepad long before there was an inkling of depreciating Wordpad. And I have to confess as well as soon as Notepad supported unix line endings I stopped using Wordpad for anything.
They didn't really "kill Wordpad to sell word". The message just points out that you need to use another tool to read RTF files. They are virtually unused these days. I haven't seen one myse
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I'm guessing the features being added won't be up to par with what Wordpad had. It probably won't have page margins or layout features useful for printing.
But they still want to attract people to Notepad - specifically, the kind of people who like talking to Copilot, which will probably want to spit bold text and hyperlinks at you.
They have to add enough features to make it attractive to AIdiots, but not enough to create a nice printed document, which encroaches on Word's market.
It sounds like a cycle (Score:2)
Eventually they will kill Notepad for the same reasons they killed Wordpad, and then re-invent Notepad again for the same reasons people just want plain old Notepad.
Do Not Want! (Score:3)
We already had Wordpad for a watered down word processor.
I want a plain text notepad. I'm not even sure I want or need different character encodings. Just plain ASCII text is all I want or need. I want to be able to paste something into notepad and strip all formatting, hidden features, character substitutions...
But, all is not lost. I recently read that Microsoft is releasing edit.exe, which looks like a reinvention of DOS edlin. So, I'll still have a pure text editor, but it will be less convenient.
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Edit is a full page editor while edlin was a line editor.
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That's what Notepad++ is for
Re: Do Not Want! (Score:2)
I prefer vim
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We already had Wordpad for a watered down word processor.
Had. Past tense. Wordpad doesn't exist anymore.
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No, it still exists, they simply chose to remove it from Win 11. That's what makes the "re-invention" of Wordpad all the more assinine.
Quite frankly, this is the sort of banal stupidity that I expect to see from the OSS community. 'We're throwing everything out and starting over so that it will be more dog shit and lack feature parity.'
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A great washing machine. I hope we don't lose it.
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It still is a plain text editor, it just supports Markdown (which is plain text interpreted by the editor/viewer). It's not a huge deal, many 3rd party Notepad replacements like Notepad++ also support Markdown to some extent, and giving the user basic formatting tools sounds like decent way to make it accessible.
It would be nice if we could get Markdown adopted for email, instead of HTML. I've given up on hoping that plain text email comes back, but Markdown at least isn't nearly as bad as HTML, and usually
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And? Your point is?
Are you trying to say that I should write my own text editor rather than Microsoft leaving well enough alone?
Insane (Score:2, Informative)
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They can't get people to use their products based on merit, so they force them to do so based on legacy and removing choice.
I already uninstalled the new Notepad for its idiotic tabs feature and opening all the crap I had open last time, which I don't want.
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Have they lost track of what a text editor is?
They just released one called "Edit". https://github.com/microsoft/e... [github.com]
Luckily notepad++ exists (Score:4, Insightful)
So there is no need to use the normal notepad app. Every time I have accidentally opened the stock app, it has seemed worse than what I remembered.
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Oddly enough I still use notepad.exe a lot even though I've got notepad++ installed.
Re: Luckily notepad++ exists (Score:1)
Notepad is a nice alternative for truly "ephemeral" editing.
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I do hate these kinds of gotchas. In reality a sizable number of people who use Windows are using a corporate computer and have to go through many levels of bureaucracy to get the tools they want installed, and have to make a case to a boss who may or may not be technically inclined.
There's also the "My computer is broken can you help me fix it" "Sure, oh, looks like this Ini file needs changing, let me edit it" scenario. Sure, you can probably use some of these alternatives from a USB stick but...
The reali
Microsoft just can't leave well enough alone. (Score:2)
Man, if that ain't the thesis of the last 30 years....
And next week (Score:2)
they'll rename it Wordpad.
You know, the basic word processing program that used to come with Windows, but they killed it?
I guess they're taking lessons from Google now.
Re:And next week (Score:5, Funny)
Markdown render (Score:2)
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It's microsoft. There's already AI in notepad, and now formatting. The *sole* point of notepad was that it was fast and didn't do jack to the content.
And, again, it's microsoft. I'm sure they'll find a way to have "their" markdown be yet slightly different from *every other flavors*, because that's just what they do.
What about email (Score:3)
Isn't there a trope that the late stage of any app is that is can do email?
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This is a demonstration that you can have a software with email and actually also AI (sort of) but at the same time having the base functionalities untampered.
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It's call Zawinski's Law: https://softwareengineering.st... [stackexchange.com]
it is a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
They need to do this with wordpad (Score:2)
notepad is already unusable because it saves over edits that were not supposed to be saved.
They need to bring back wordpad and do all the hacking they want with wordpad. Notepad is supposed to be simple.
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Microsoft keeps reinventing then uninventing, then reinventing again. Hold still, ya flea-bitten' varmint!
Movie-Maker, WordPad, Paint, PhotoViewer, and others I forgot about.
Org mode for GNU Emacs (Score:2)
“A GNU Emacs major mode for keeping notes, authoring documents, computational notebooks, literate programming, maintaining to-do lists, planning projects, and more — in a fast and effective plain text system.”
Then why did they kill Wordpad? (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft spent years developing Wordpad, killed Wordpad, and is now adding Wordpad features to Notepad. The stupidity never stops in Windows world.
Re:oh for fuck's sake (Score:4, Insightful)
I really don't know how the Windows team got so many retards on it.
Quite simple.
Many of the older (intelligent) devs retired or were made redundant and replaced with cheap H1B's.
The problem with H1B-types and the younger gen is they only care about making everything using JavaScript or bloated .net. For them, everything is coded wrong and needs to be rewritten from scratch. They have no wisdom or care or appreciation for the countless hours gone into fixing intricate bugs and adding various business logic which they will never comprehend. For them, it's all about the latest toy, and the latest and greatest, no matter how inefficient.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com... [joelonsoftware.com]
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While I partially agree and it was a generalisation on my part, the tech you mentioned (Flash, Java, ActiveX) all came at a time to fill a gaping hole and they solved many problems of their respective time, yes, even ActiveX.
- Flash came at a time when the web was primitive, there was no other way of doing funky animations or creating web-based games.
- Java - not sure why this was mentioned, as it's (arguably) still a success - came at a time to be able to write code to run on multiple different platforms w
Did they forget about (Score:2)
Wordpad? It's probably some Microsoft PHB that can't find wordpad and wanted to add those features to notepad
Ah yes Microsoft (Score:2)
At least there is npp (Score:2)
The only thing I had wanted "fixed" in notepad is for selection and (shift) tab to change indent level rather than delete the selection.
You would think there would at least be something they wouldn't bother to fuck up... I mean who used notepad anyway? There was always wordpad to do this shit to. Now I hear notepad is full of AI shit. Wouldn't surprise me if there are some nasty excuses baked in to justify uploading everything to Microsoft.
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I mean who used notepad anyway?
I do. The only time I ever need a text editor on my PC is to save product keys and to edit the occasional .ini or .cfg file for an old game. It also makes for a useful scratchpad for Klingon translations but that's because - unlike TextEdit.app - it's monospace by default.
The only thing I had wanted "fixed" in notepad is for selection and (shift) tab to change indent level rather than delete the selection.
It's supposed to be plaintext editor, not a coding tool; overwriting the selected text with a tab character is exactly what I'd expect it to do. Frankly I'm more annoyed that they even added fonts to it, much less a "Send Feedback" option
Probably theonly thing they can still touch (Score:2)
Without the whole house of cards they have built comming crashing down.
As someone that collects text editors... (Score:2)
Any time I provision a new windows machine for myself, I install maybe a half dozen text editors as part of the process because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Even though I have text editors that pamper me, I still use notepad more often than anything else. Certainly not for anything major, but it was never intended for that. It's right there in the name, and that's perhaps what they're getting at with this change. It's *notepad* not *simple text file editor*. I think I'm okay with them makin
Notepad appreciated? (Score:2)
I'm wondering how many people use Notepad. I've been using Notepad++ for a long while, and haven't touched Notepad.
Personally I like the idea of markdown support. A lightweight word processor that saves results as raw text would be quite appealing over saving as RTF or DOCX or another such format.
Not as bad as it sounds (Score:2)
TFS had me scared, but I read TFA and it's just Markdown and something you can disable/enable from the menu at will. (I actually don't mind other editors that do something similar -- it's kind of nice if you are using Markdown, IMHO, but again, it's nothing that can't be turned off here).
Stick a form in them - Microsoft is done (Score:2)
Microsoft lays off about 3% of its workforce a little over 2 weeks ago. Yet, presumably spent time designing, approving, and implement some dumb ass feature.
I suspect letting go of 50% of upper management and 15% of middle management would have solved Microsoft's workforce problem, remove a similar cost in compensation packages, and improved every business unit's over all productivity.
why reinvent wordpad? (Score:2)
They already have wordpad, Why reinvent it? Really do not make sense
Need notepad to strip formatting (Score:2)
I use notepad all the time for the purpose of removing all formatting and tags from text I'm copying.
It is reliable and helps me avoid leaving any unintended extra information with the text.
And no, I cannot install other editing software to strip the formatting as the computer I'm using I do not have admin privileges. I need this on my work computer.
Re: (Score:2)
This should just be a function like me it’s in Word ‘Paste as plain text’
Markdown (Score:2)
If it saves files as txt files formatted as Markdown, and only this, then fine.
If they allow for saving any other filetype than txt, them they broken the primary use of that editor
Granted I think most power users who need a text editor use Notepad++ anyway, so it's likely a moot point.
Why? (Score:2)
Why did they kill Wordpad, just to add the features to notepad now?
What's Notepad? (Score:3)
I switched to Notepad++ years ago and never looked back.
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Windows User Since 3.0 - Had Enough! (Score:2)
Microsft is committing Greedicide (Score:2)
I'm going to go against the flow (Score:2)
Rip WordPad and now Notepad... (Score:1)
They are turning it another MS Wordpad. (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
So Windows 11 does have substantial improvements over Windows 10.
I wish I'd known earlier, I wouldn't have switched to Mac
Strippers (Score:1)