this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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It's still bare-bones by most standards, but Notepad has evolved a lot recently.

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[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 60 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

Microsoft:

Gets rid of Wordpad.
Turns Notepad into Wordpad.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wordpad was getting no usage. They offer Word for free as a web app and PWA if you want it.

It’s ok to retire a product that has no reason to exist and focus on a single app like notepad.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 5 points 4 months ago

Notepad was getting usage, even if Word was installed, specifically because Notepad doesn't have all the bullshit needed for a word processor. It is a text editor. It is for editing text files. Text files that probably contain machine-readable program configuration data with arguments that are now going to be flagged by spellcheck, and probably changed by autocorrect from the term the program is expecting to something that it can't understand.

The people who use notepad need it to not have these "features". These "features" make wordpad less useful for the people who use it.

[–] seven_phone@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Reminds me what Microsoft once was, Word often would be bundled free at source with Windows because people need a word processor. Notepad was provided as a very light way to get down notes and edit, and then additionally Wordpad was a place between them. I have used Notepad more than any other application, you could even use it as a cheap and cheerful hex editor. Now Word is a subscription, Wordpad is being removed from Windows - even that sentence looks wrong, and Notepad is to be bloated into probable redundancy. I have no real idea why Microsoft is squandering it's legacy, we grew up with these things.

I think maybe it is a switch in emphasis, Microsoft of old built things people needed and took money for that. Modern Microsoft is trying to get money from people and building things to do that.

[–] Peffse@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I can't recall a single computer I sold or had anyone buy having Word bundled with the computer, but Microsoft Works Word Processor was bundled everywhere, before they started doing the Office trial junk. I always ended up using WordPad in rtf format anyway because all the file format differences made moving docs so hard.

And yeah, ads in calc.exe, the death of WordPad, the bloating of Notepad... all pretty normal stuff now. There must be a mandate from the higher ups that anything untouched for x amount of days has to be removed or monetized.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

... ads in calc.exe? what the actual fuck

[–] Peffse@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yup, back when it transitioned to UWP. I don't know if they removed them because I immediately extracted the old version from a previous Windows and have been towing along that import baggage every setup since.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 4 points 4 months ago

I already migrated the Win7 calc.exe because I don't like how poorly the Win10 one handles keyboard input, thanks for letting me know I need to make sure to save it for when Win11 becomes inevitable, too.

[–] seven_phone@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Maybe it's local, I am in the UK and every computer I bought with Windows installed up until about 8 years ago came with standalone Word bundled. Works was there too but unused.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Inb4 they release "textpad" as the new notepad analogue once notepad becomes too bloated. Then the cycle will continue.