Windows Notepad’s midlife renaissance continues with spellcheck and autocorrect
Windows Notepad’s midlife renaissance continues with spellcheck and autocorrect
Now Windows' only built-in text editor, there's more room for Notepad to grow.
Now Windows' only built-in text editor, there's more room for Notepad to grow.
The entire point of Notepad was that it didn’t have fancy features, it just edited text files. They got rid of Wordpad, and now they’re gonna turn Notepad into Wordpad.
The entire reason notepad still exists is that it edits and saves to plain text files. I do not see how an opt-in spellcheck or autocorrect interferes with that -- though honestly, I don't see who the possible customer is for those features either. It's a waste of time, but it doesn't undermine the application.
What reason, honestly, did Wordpad have to exist? Who was clamoring for an RTF editor but thought any of the free the full-featured ODF editors or online service a la Google docs were not up to the task? Seems a lot of people are salty that Wordpad was dropped, but I just don't get who was using it. This from someone so frustrated and annoyed by pretty much all WYSIWYG doc editors that I've lately been doing more stuff in latex despite how irrational I know I am being.
I found it useful occasionally for a pretty niche use case. I automated generating documents with a program I wrote, then cleaned it up a bit in Wordpad before sending it on.
That's about as niche as you can get, but I wonder if it's not too uncommon. RTF is easy to generate programmatically, and it's pretty widely supported across various platforms. I have since moved on, but maybe others haven't.
RTF has to be one of the most atrocious document formats. It's such a jumbled mess, it should be buried and forgotten. You can make it clean but of course Microsoft doesn't.
but I just don't get who was using it.
way more than you realize. i've been supporting home users and small businesses for thirty years. i run into wordpad users frequently.
I like my basic-ass notepad. I didn't even like when they added tabs..
i think its tasteful to have a couple QOL features like code highlighting, tabs, spellchecking etc.
i didnt notice this until i went back from gedit to notepad the other day
wordpad gets kicked to the curb because microsoft thinks they can sell a few more office subscriptions if the most basic of word processors wasn't included with windows.
meanwhile. notepad, the basic text editor that lacks even the basic formatting features found in wordpad, gets the spellchecker users have wanted in wordpad since windows write for windows 1.0
I suspect it was more likely that nobody used wordpad because, well, why would you? So supporting it is more pain than it's worth.
I don't think the wordpad to office pipeline represents quite the cashflow you're implying
wordpad has always been gimped to keep it from taking any sales away from word. if microsoft wasn't worried about wordpad, they would have tossed a spellchecker into it back in the 1990s (when wordpad replaced write) and it would, ya know.. still exist (in upcoming versions of windows).
What is going on at Microsoft? Did anyone ask for this? How about they make search work again and not use 4 Gb just turn turn on the computer?
Now do support for Notepad++ plugins and language linting 😁😎😂
VsNotepad
The circle of life. I started in notepad and by god that's how I'll end.
Doesn't that just become np++ then?
I actually like the new Notepad
You'll never be the Kate Text Editor! MS just likes to copy others.
you know what microsoft? just turn notepad into an editplus like environment and id be happy
For anyone wondering why their notepad doesn't have this, it's only available for windows 11
Protip: Cudatext is open source, portable, and cross-platform
That also fits for Linux, and Linux often comes with much more capable text editors. If you want an awesome text editor, Linux is your friend.
That said, if you just want a basic text editor (which I'm guessing is 99% of people), Notepad works.
Also, there has to be an actual use case for the need of a plain text editor.
In nearly any code-specific use case, something on the spectrum from n++/vim to an IDE is going to save a lot of headache for nearly anyone.
If you're actually doing text-y stuff, some markdown editor or an application like Obsidian is almost certainly what you actually should be using.
If it's just for, say, viewing a log file, an app specifically designed for that or a feature in an IDE is still what you want.
Windows doesn't really have a lot of config files you are expected to be editing, but if some software requires it notepad is still there.
VSCode is jumping up and down shouting "chose me chose me" for pretty much all of these use cases, too, and in spite of being written in javascript it loads pretty fast (at least until things like rust-analyzer need to also load up).
TIL there is vim for Windows.
...and neovim. For a more IDE-like environment there's also LunarVim.
scoop install vim
scoop install nano
I've used it. Just use vim in WSL instead...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Whatever else you can say about Windows 11—and whatever you think about its pushy tendencies and the Copilot feature that has been rolled out to pretty much everyone despite being labeled a "preview"—the operating system has ushered in a bit of a renaissance for decades-old built-in apps like Paint and Notepad.
An updated version of Notepad currently rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels is adding two more modern features to the old app: spellcheck and autocorrect.
Per usual, spellcheck in Notepad highlights misspellings with red squiggly underlines, and right-clicking the word or pressing Shift + F10 will pop up a short menu of suggested fixes.
If you're upgrading from the Windows 10 version of Notepad, the spellcheck and autocorrect features join the tabbed interface, redesigned Settings screen, an auto-resume feature, and a handful of other tricks that the app has learned throughout Windows 11's development.
Unlike Notepad, WordPad had been mostly left alone since a Windows 7-era refresh that added a user interface ribbon like the one in the (then-current) Office 2007 update.
Updates to Notepad and other apps could roll out before then, though, in keeping with Microsoft's "release them when they're ready" approach to feature additions in the Windows 11 era.
The original article contains 458 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!