> 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...