Latest Windows Insider build makes a major upgrade to Notepad | Hacker News Reader

Latest Windows Insider build makes a major upgrade to Notepad

arstechnica.com

43 pointsohjeez42 comments

The examples of what changed seem useful. Default save to UTF8, a "dirty" flag to indicate the file has changed and some new keyboard shortcuts are welcome changes. I don't see current line number in the status bar which I feel is sorely missing.

But other than that I really hope they don't change it too much more. I like the plain vanilla aspect of Notepad. If I need something fancier I have a lot of choices - the system I am using at work has GVim, MS Word, Wordpad and Notepad++ installed.

But if I just want to leave a note on my desktop, make a quick change to a simple text file or print some quick notes for a meeting or something I will always reach for Notepad first.

They "upgraded" calc in Windows 10 and I think it's kind of crap now. The interface is clunky and it's visibly slower than the old one. I hope they don't do the same to Notepad!

> I like the plain vanilla aspect of Notepad.

Not a Windows user (anymore) but didn't they also add support for "Search with Bing.." (a while back?) that was hard-coded to work only with Edge[0]?

I agree that the changes seem useful. The other highlights from the link below: (1) zoom into text (2) extended line ending support and (3) ability to display line and column numbers when word-wrap is enabled (this last one speaks to a point you made)

Notepad was also a usb-friendly portable application (years ago when I used it). I wonder if this has changed...

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17563704/microsoft-window...

The "Search with Bing..." feature will open in whatever the default browser is.

Calc is a metro app now, or whatever that style of program is supposed to be called.

I like when it starts fullscreen, with just a small button pad in the middle and an enormous obscuring border, like 99% of the time we aren't firing it up to so some calculation about an article we're reading on the web...

The best part about notepad is that it's always there. Hop on a Windows box and you know it will have notepad. The same can't be said for Notepad++ or GVim or whatever else, especially if the machine you are on doesn't have Internet access. I'm totally behind modest improvements to Notepad to bring it into this century.

There is also the upgrade to MS Paint to Paint 3D.

I tried to like it ... it isn’t horrible but it hasn’t exactly grown on me either.

Lots of (to me) useless features clogging up the UI. Can’t remember where various functions are, on the rare occasions I need to use it, half the time.

> I don't see current line number in the status bar which I feel is sorely missing.

The status bar line/column display has existed since at least Windows XP.

It's even included in the screenshot[0] from the blog post this Ars article is referencing.

[0]: https://blogs.windows.com/uploads/mswbprod/sites/2/2018/12/4...

Yeah, you are correct. I played around with it last night and it seems I just had the status bar turned off. I can't remember if I did that at some point or if that's the default and I just never noticed.

Anyway, thanks, I stand corrected and will add this to the list of small, useful enhancements I mentioned in my previous post.

It boggles my mind that Microsoft and other companies with a similar reach don't spend more time on core features and tools. Minor improvements such as in this case can improve the productivity of 100s of millions of users.

For the next improvement, hopefully, Microsoft is paying attention to the Ars Technica comments: save unsaved entries to a temp file when the OS reboots. A recent files list would also be an improvement.

Another comment mentions the lack of support for ctrl+backspace (which prints U+007F in the application instead of deleting an entire word).

https://superuser.com/questions/33142/ctrlbackspace-inserts-...

this also happens when renaming files in Explorer. i wonder if they're related

EDIT (i read the article):

> [Notepad] was, by design, little more than a very thin wrapper around a Windows multiline text-editing control.

maybe that's why?

> save unsaved entries to a temp file when the OS reboots.

What Microsoft's executives likely took from that: "Save unsaved entries to a Microsoft account document. Got it!"

> A recent files list would also be an improvement.

"Track users' OS usage behavior and serve ads based on that. Nailed it! What's next? We're on a roll here."

Odd that they don’t; that’s been a feature on macOS’ TextEdit for as long as I can remember, and I have to imagine Microsoft is watching macOS for inspiration (and vice versa).

> Minor improvements such as in this case can improve the productivity

Unfortunately when your sales come from hardware vendors and you have a monopoly those improvements have zero ROI and that's why minor improvements haven't happened until now when Apple has eroded their mind & marketshare.

Note, Apple's business model of selling direct to consumer means these small productivity improvements are noticed by the purchaser, which is why we often see minor improvements on their platform and not MS.

A big issue when you’re the platform is not competing with the developers who write apps for said platform. If MS included a lot of great apps as stock, it would impact a lot of vendors. Just look at how much the anti-virus vendors complained about Windows Defender and the removal of APIs those tools used.

So here's a question: why shouldn't a platform just be a platform?

Because consumers don’t care what a platform is, they want a usable computing device. People are thoroughly frustrated by having to hunt for programs to do stuff that, to them, is an obvious necessity that should have been easy to do from the very start.

System utilities like notepad are a compromise between “giving users what they want” and “not burning too many bridges or attracting antitrust lawsuits”.

> Because consumers don’t care what a platform is

Just once I'd like to have a discussion where someone doesn't drag out the strawman "average user" bullshit.

Every platform vendor who knows what they are doing has a certain set of priorities and they are:

1. The company

2. The customer

3. Third party developers

You forgot "the government", which is really #3. Developers usually sit somewhere between "astronauts" and "things that from distance look like flies".

Which is why Microsoft Windows, the most targeted platform in the world for decades, never bothered to give a damn about developers.

I didn’t say that. But if you think MS will ever put developers’ needs before its own, the customers’ or the government’s, you are sorely deluded. They give a damn about developers only inasmuch as it helps their bottom line, like everyone else out there.

How is that a strawman? You never interact with non-techies that use computers? Those customers are the vast vast majority of the Windows userbase by far.

Because it is always trotted out with the implication that the user is precisely as stupid or uninterested as the poster needs them to be in order to make their case.

I'm afraid that notepad is one of those applications that has gotten updates, but no one notices: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180521-00/?p=... . Similar issue when they revamped the internals of calculator.

I use notepad replacer (https://www.binaryfortress.com/NotepadReplacer/) to make vscode my default editor. I usually have vscode running so there's no noticeable startup time to worry about or garbled text when a file uses non carriage return line endings.

I've used this method with other editors including notepad++, editpad and sublime and have never encountered an issue.

It's undo stack is still limited to one operation, so it is worthless to me for anything other than a one line change.

> The reason for Notepad's rudimentary features over the years is because the application was, by design, little more than a very thin wrapper around a Windows multiline text-editing control.

Supposedly it is also a guinea pig for new features. See: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180521-00/?p=...

I replaced Notepad with Notepad2, very powerful and fast loading with a clean interface. I prefer it over Notepad++ for that reason.

I don’t understand why they don’t just acquire Notepad++ and replace Notepad with it.

Seriously, does the average Windows user even know Notepad exists, much less use it?

Microsoft employee here.

I still regularly see engineers use notepad as the default text editor.

back in 2001, I met a windows kernel engineer who used notepad as his primary source code editor.

I don't really understand it but notepad still gets a lot of use from a wide range of people.

> I met a windows kernel engineer who used notepad as his primary source code editor.

oh man! He is missing out a lot.

Notepad struggles a lot with edit history. Undo\redo is completely messed up. I try not to do with it. Gone through a really bad experience, many times.

Please don't. I like Notepad++ and would rather not see Microsoft UWP-ify it to death.

I would welcome lightweight version of Code (no extension/git integration) as a Notepad replacement.

Definitely better than Candy Crush.

There is no such thing. It is heavy even in the most cut down version compared to even Notepad+...

That makes no sense. I just started Notepad and it uses 180kb of memory. no kind of stripping will ever make VSCode even near that.

The extra tens of mbs of electron (zipped) is just because it is supposed to be easy to add those features and hack on it. Notepad needs nothing of that.

Heck, imagine what you could do in 4mb using only the things included in Windows. How large is notepad++?

edit: the minimal 64bit notepad++ is 5.8mb and the 32bit version is 4.5mb. That's so small compressing binaries or memory doesn't bring much.

If anything, I'd like to see something similar to KDEs Kate editor (especially the vim support). Way more lightweight than vs code, but usable for large projects if desired. They could add support for their text editor protocol for the rest. There would be almost no overhead since the servers won't start unless you use them.

Are they going to add multi-level undo/redo?

Maybe they are saving it for Windows 50th anniversary?

Only if the underlying Windows control gets multi-level undo/redo. Since that information needs to be kept by the OS I assume it's kept simple on purpose.

Finally the famous Notepad IDE is catching up! ;-)

Positive comment: Great! I love that they're working on improving less "shiny" parts of the OS.

Negative comment: This change probably would have come faster if the entire OS was open source.

They probably can't do that because of the 3rd party in the OS they don't have the licenses to.

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