[HN Gopher] RIP Microsoft WordPad
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RIP Microsoft WordPad
Author : thunderbong
Score : 48 points
Date : 2024-01-07 12:25 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| kotaKat wrote:
| I mentioned this in a prior HN thread on this:
|
| Rip C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories and back it up
| somewhere. WordPad.exe is standalone. If you're running Win7+
| you'll need the en-us/muis/etc, if you pull from an XP install
| wordpad.exe is all you'll ever need to do.
|
| Bonus points if you just grab a Windows XP iso and deflate
| wordpad.exe from the install image - copy WORDPAD.EX_ from the
| i386 folder and just run "expand wordpad.ex_ wordpad.exe".
| anthk wrote:
| Or just use the ReactOS' Wordpad.exe:
|
| https://github.com/katahiromz/RWordPad/releases
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Just did that, good replacement, thanks for the tip.
| z_open wrote:
| Man people are nostalgic about the most bizarre things sometimes.
| My experience with WordPad was accidently opening something with
| it and having to change the default app for some extension.
| graypegg wrote:
| This article is definitely hamming it up to fill an article
| about a single line in a change log.
|
| I don't know if anyone is emotional about this. At worst maybe
| someone is vaguely annoyed that they will have to change their
| workflow that invariably involves .rtf files for some reason.
| Delfwood wrote:
| The only use case I have ever used Wordpad for was to open text
| files with Linux End-of-Lines on a Windows computer with only
| Wordpad and Notepad (that do not see LF as proper and of lines
| and just displays one line of mess).
| LMMojo wrote:
| Same here. Open a text file in Notepad and the contents
| extend way past the edge of the screen. Open it in WordPad
| and turn on line wrapping.
|
| Oh! Also, needing to open an RTF when Word wasn't installed.
| recursive wrote:
| Why not turn on wrapping in notepad?
| jan_k_ wrote:
| Notepad wouldn't recognize Unix line endings and would
| interpret the whole file as one line. Word wrapping
| doesn't fix that.
| recursive wrote:
| Oh I see. Yes, I remember that.
|
| FYI, notepad can cover this use case now, as it can
| handle more character encodings and line-endings.
| rzzzt wrote:
| There was also some weirdness where you could not have
| the status bar and word wrapping enabled at the same
| time.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I liked WordPad because it was comfortably simple, did more
| than Notepad, but didn't have way more than I needed for
| personal use. It's similar to why I like Apple Notes (even
| though TextEdit is closer to WordPad). Most of the time, I
| don't need pages, margins, footers, a bunch of fancy
| formatting, but the ability to make text bold or italic, add
| hyperlinks, and maybe change the color or font. In which case I
| want all the doodads related to those unused features out of
| the way.
| csdvrx wrote:
| I like WordPad because when I collect screenshots and quick
| notes about what's of them, it's fast and doesn't get in the
| way: Alt+PrintScreen, Alt+Tab to WordPad, Control+V, type
| some text, Alt+Tab again to go back to the application you're
| screenshootting and you can keep going.
|
| Control+S at the end and you have a RTF that can be read
| everywhere.
| jterrys wrote:
| I remember using WordPad as a poor destitute kid forced to
| learn how to type in school and couldn't afford to fork over
| money for Word so my formatting and spacing was all fucked.
|
| And then I learned that sometimes software is freely available
| online if you know where to look.
| joemi wrote:
| I see nothing wrong with being sad that Microsoft is removing
| something from their OS and their suggested (but not included)
| replacement is a paid app which is at least an order of
| magnitude larger and more complex. Sure, WordPad isn't the best
| program of its kind (not the tool you need for every job), but
| still it was nice having the functionality there when you
| needed it without needing to install something (which in turn
| needs an internet connection). It was still an OK tool.
| shaggie76 wrote:
| We used to use RTF for walls text in our game launcher (EULA,
| MOTD etc). We chose RTF because raw Win32 could render it without
| extra work and we wanted to minimize both launcher complexity and
| dependencies.
|
| One thing we noticed was that RTF documents made in WordPad
| instead of Word were much, much smaller and since every byte
| added to our CDN bill we made a point of re-saving all our files
| in WordPad before publishing them. Sometimes simple is good.
| hulitu wrote:
| Word was not able to open correctly RTF file until recently.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| completely false. I saved and opened RTFs with word97 in
| school for macOS compat
| mappu wrote:
| It's still there in e.g. the NSIS MUI_PAGE_LICENSE.
| ldx1024 wrote:
| Wordpad is usually my go to when opening a unix text file
| (without carriage returns) that Notepad renders into a
| unintelligible mess. Word renders it properly, but then typically
| requires a bunch of subsequent formatting adjustments (font size,
| etc.) for good readability.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Yes, Wordpad occupied an awkward middle ground. But it was
| something you knew Windows users had access to. It was relatively
| small and lightweight. Grandma could write a letter without
| having to deal with Word. There was no upsell. It was limited but
| also generous in a way -- like someone said, "we can't ship
| Windows without at least a basic word processor built in".
|
| To me it's emblematic of a time when software tried to be self-
| contained and to serve the user, when operating systems (Windows
| in particular) had consistent interface conventions between
| programs, and when there was some consensus about what people
| could be expected to have.
|
| Now, you'd probably point Grandma to Google docs. Which would be
| a little heavier, a little laggier, yes more capable, but also
| somewhere _out there_ , a service, a thing available only thanks
| to the largesse of Google, a thing that can be taken away at any
| time, a thing that fosters dependence.
|
| Its removal is consistent with the ongoing enshittification of
| Windows.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| Literally never found an use for WordPad. Neither for Notepad, if
| we're at it.
|
| For text files, Notepad is pretty much useless. For short files
| I'm using Notepad++, I tried using plain Notepad and I can't
| describe exactly why but it's almost unusable in comparison. And
| for large files (MBs to GBs) I'm using less. From git bash.
|
| And if I need any sort of rich text formatting, there's the free
| Libre Office which is usually good enough for the job. In case I
| need the actual MS version suite, I've got a Microsoft Office
| Home and Student retail license on my wife's laptop. The one that
| I actually own, not the SAS crap they're pushing nowadays.
|
| Otherwise I find Libre Office fairly crappy and barely usable but
| for opening and looking in the occasional MS file, it's good
| enough. The "Excel" (Calc) is by some reason horrendously slow in
| drawing charts. Like if I got an 1000 rows CSV, it becomes almost
| unusable. On a machine that could have been used in the 90s to do
| galaxy collision simulations at NASA. Excel, obviously doesn't
| have this problem.
|
| In summary both Notepad and Wordpad are useless to me.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'm indifferent about Wordpad; always surprises me to read
| people don't regularly use Notepad.
|
| I use it as a clipboard scratchpad. It strips RTF when copying
| between programs since Windows itself has no built-in way of
| doing so and you can also use it to clean up whatever you're
| copying. It loads fast and is minimalist.
|
| Some programs on Windows vomit all over themselves when
| receiving RTF information, like Teams for example. I also read
| people use the Address Bar/OMNIBar in browsers, but that may
| transmit to the search provider.
|
| I also use Notepad++ and VSCode. Notepad remains my favorite
| clipboard toy because it is so fast and light-weight. I use
| Notepad++ when I need to use its advanced search/replace and
| visualization tooling (e.g. View -> Show Symbol -> Show All)
| and VSCode when I need actual language colorization/structural
| auto formatting.
|
| PS - Ctrl+Shift+V isn't a Windows feature and never was. It is
| a Microsoft Office shortcut that only 50% of Microsoft Office
| even supports (e.g. try it in Outlook). A couple of third party
| programs support it, but it is incredibly YMMV.
| abhinavk wrote:
| If you have Powertoys installed, it has a utility to directly
| paste as plain text.
| gabesk wrote:
| For small amounts of text, another simple way is to paste it
| into the Run dialog (Winkey-R) and then copy it back out
| again. Works well for turning URLs into plain text and
| removing the editor formatting from function names before
| pasting into a bug report, for example.
| kotaKat wrote:
| That's my go-to for a clipboard clear. Win+R, space,
| Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C/X (I go for X because closer key), ESC, all
| on the left hand.
| piperswe wrote:
| Since I spend a lot of time in the web browser, I use the
| address bar for the same thing. Ctrl+(C then T then V then
| A then C then W) is my muscle memory "copy without
| formatting" shortcut.
| AceyMan wrote:
| Puretext is a free UWP app in the Microsoft Store for format
| stripping. The author is/was a MSFT dev, iirc. With it
| installed, WIN+V does a format_clear() paste.
| elvis70 wrote:
| Related: Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37359310 from September 2023
| (356 comments)
| anthk wrote:
| ReactOS has a WordPad.exe
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Is there an easy way to just get Wordpad without loading up
| ReactOS?
| lotsofpizza wrote:
| This is slightly off topic but might be helpful to some people
| who use both Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on Mac but are tired
| of the open document screen that starts by default when opening
| TextEdit. For example, I take calls while at my Windows based
| workstation. When I'm starting a phone call, I instinctively open
| notepad and jot down notes while on the phone. I don't usually
| save the file but I will complete the task I wrote down and/or
| document the call in another program after the fact. However,
| when I'm on my Mac I can't just quickly open TextEdit and jot
| down notes. When opening TextEdit I'm prompted to open a file or
| click the new document button. This throws me off my workflow
| since I'm used to NotePad immediately opening a new document
| buffer to write in. I found a workaround on the Apple support
| forums here:
|
| 1) Quit TextEdit 2) In the Terminal, type the following command:
| defaults write com.apple.TextEdit
| NSShowAppCentricOpenPanelInsteadOfUntitledFile -bool false 3)
| Open TextEdit and presto!
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253444981?sortBy=best
| phreack wrote:
| I just use Sublime Text for that. It opens immediately on all
| OSs
| nntwozz wrote:
| Nice find, you can also do it like this:
|
| System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive ( Options ) >
| uncheck TextEdit.
|
| Starting with macOS Ventura, it is System Settings > Internet
| Accounts > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Options > uncheck TextEdit.
|
| https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/61406/how-to-make-...
| safeimp wrote:
| I was a longtime Windows user and used Notepad similarly. When
| I eventually transitioned to Apple I shifted to Notes, curious
| why you'd not use this in lieu of TextEdit?
| kyriakos wrote:
| I use notepad++ on windows and have open all the time. Any more
| I want to write down I open a new tab. Notepad++ keeps the tabs
| even if not saved and automatically reopens them next time you
| start it. Combined with search in open files feature it makes
| it extremely useful.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| I love notepad++ and use it a lot when I need raw text.
|
| I do like WordPad since it will do fonts, embedded pictures,
| etc. I really hate that MS is moving things to the cloud. I'm
| often in places that don't have wifi/cell coverage so getting
| to the cloud is impossible.
| knaik94 wrote:
| I use the autosave and take notes plugin in notepad++ which
| makes it perfect for this use case. I have it set to autosave
| when the window loses focus. And the take notes plugin lets
| me set a default filename with timestamp and save directory,
| which I set to my dropbox. The plugin also has an option to
| delete all empty text files when notepad++ is closed.
|
| It feels as friction free as writing on a physical notepad
| with a paper and pencil.
| mgerdts wrote:
| If memory serves, the big advantage of wordpad back in the day
| was that it had line wrap, which was missing from notepad. But
| it's been a while since I used windows 95...
|
| Edit: confirmed notepad behavior. Wordpad crashes in the
| emulator, then causes windows to lock up.
|
| https://archive.org/details/win95_in_dosbox
| lewiscollard wrote:
| From memory, WordPad's other advantage in Windows 95 days was
| that it could handle files larger than 64 kilobytes. Notepad
| could not; it would prompt you to open files in WordPad instead
| if you tried.
|
| I always liked WordPad better than Word back then. It was
| faster and did all of the things I needed it to do. AbiWord
| occupied a similar sweet spot for me for some time after I went
| to Linux in the early 2000s.
| anthk wrote:
| ReactOS' standalone WordPad.exe for Windows and Wine users:
|
| https://github.com/katahiromz/RWordPad/releases
| thunderbong wrote:
| I've been using Jarte for years. It's a beautiful, clean and
| efficient WordPad alternative compared to all the others.
|
| https://www.jarte.com/
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Discussion 4 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37359310
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37359310 - Sept 2023 (354
| comments)
| BarbaryCoast wrote:
| Wordpad was essentially just the Text Edit control, wrapped in
| some GUI cheese. Unless they plan to remove that control, it's
| trivial to re-constitute the program. When I took a Windows
| programming course, this was actually one of the homework
| assignments.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It's also a OLE/COM testing application.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Reminds me, I need to buy a permantent license of acrobat pro
| 2020. I will never ever buy a cloud license of acrobat of 365.
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