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Seeing the replies to your comment, I have to ask: Notepad++ persists your unsaved notes, has dark mode and themes, is fast and lightweight... why insist on for

Seeing the replies to your comment, I have to ask: Notepad++ persists your unsaved notes, has dark mode and themes, is fast and lightweight... why insist on forcing text-editor-like behavior on the browser? It feels like a solution in need of a problem.

jwells89 2y ago
Sublime Text fits the “nameless notes” niche for me for similar reasons. It’s super speedy, has plenty of customizability, and has rock solid auto save+restore for unsaved text.
- eviks 2y ago
  Can you restore a closed tab of unsaved text?
  - voltaireodactyl 2y ago
    Not out of the box I believe, but I use a package from their directory to do just that.
robobro 2y ago
you mean emacs/?
justsomehnguy 2y ago
> persists your unsaved notes Except when you brainfart on the OS shutdown and choose the wrong answer. But yes, I even do the culling every couple of months.
- oefrha 2y ago
  You should pick a text editor that doesn’t throw up a dialog when quitting then. I use CotEditor on macOS specifically for random notes, everything’s unsaved and some notes have survived dozens of reboots over a number of years.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    > doesn’t throw up a dialog when quitting then It doesn't! At least when I Alt+F4 it. > everything’s unsaved and some notes have survived dozens of reboots Yep, this is exactly how I use it. But somehow that one time (note: it was on the shutdown) something went terribly wrong.
    - ASalazarMX 2y ago
      I wonder if your notes were borked out of session.xml, but the files were still available at AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\backup. I've changed machines where the user profile was in a different location, copied my AppData, and replacing the old location in Notepad++'s session.xml was enough to restore my unsaved notes.
      - justsomehnguy 2y ago
        Nah. Of course I tried everything (except looking in the shadow copy? Don't remember), but in the essence the shutdown triggered Save All workflow (somehow) and I responded with 'No'. *weep*
Dalewyn 2y ago
>why insist on forcing text-editor-like behavior on the browser? It feels like a solution in need of a problem. Because the browser is the operating system. I might be only half joking.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  I hear people say it a lot and I know what they mean but I just can't agree... to me an OS runs on hardware. (or virtualized hardware) Browsers run on an OS. If you have "boot to browser" the OS is still the kernel. Browsers are userspace. It's like that saying "The difference between a boat and a ship is that a ship can carry a boat, but a boat can't carry a ship." And I know there is jslinux but at that point we're in a Turing tarpit where you can say that the Lua VM or wasm is "an OS" and the term is just a five-dollar word for "abstraction layer". Is a function call an OS? Come on.
scubbo 2y ago
(For myself) because 99% of my time is spent in an IDE or a browser, and there's less mental overhead for me to open a new tab and start typing than for me to open a new app and do so.
- qalmakka 2y ago
  The IDE is literally a text editor. Why not hit file -> new file and write stuff in there?
  - cess11 2y ago
    For me it's the risk of littering in a project repo. So I use Zim wiki instead: https://zim-wiki.org/ https://zim-wiki.org/
    - qalmakka 2y ago
      AFAIK all editors and IDEs I've ever used can open a random file in a new tab, even if it is outside of the repository.
  - scubbo 2y ago
    Because "random human-language notes" are conceptually different from source code for me.
nunodonato 2y ago
Right? I use the gnome default editor for this. Also persists unsaved notes, its always available and has some few basic features that sometimes come in handy (regex match, etc)

jwells89 2y ago

Sublime Text fits the “nameless notes” niche for me for similar reasons. It’s super speedy, has plenty of customizability, and has rock solid auto save+restore for unsaved text.

eviks 2y ago
Can you restore a closed tab of unsaved text?
- voltaireodactyl 2y ago
  Not out of the box I believe, but I use a package from their directory to do just that.

robobro 2y ago

you mean emacs/?

justsomehnguy 2y ago

> persists your unsaved notes Except when you brainfart on the OS shutdown and choose the wrong answer. But yes, I even do the culling every couple of months.

oefrha 2y ago
You should pick a text editor that doesn’t throw up a dialog when quitting then. I use CotEditor on macOS specifically for random notes, everything’s unsaved and some notes have survived dozens of reboots over a number of years.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > doesn’t throw up a dialog when quitting then It doesn't! At least when I Alt+F4 it. > everything’s unsaved and some notes have survived dozens of reboots Yep, this is exactly how I use it. But somehow that one time (note: it was on the shutdown) something went terribly wrong.
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    I wonder if your notes were borked out of session.xml, but the files were still available at AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\backup. I've changed machines where the user profile was in a different location, copied my AppData, and replacing the old location in Notepad++'s session.xml was enough to restore my unsaved notes.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      Nah. Of course I tried everything (except looking in the shadow copy? Don't remember), but in the essence the shutdown triggered Save All workflow (somehow) and I responded with 'No'. *weep*

Dalewyn 2y ago

>why insist on forcing text-editor-like behavior on the browser? It feels like a solution in need of a problem. Because the browser is the operating system. I might be only half joking.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
I hear people say it a lot and I know what they mean but I just can't agree... to me an OS runs on hardware. (or virtualized hardware) Browsers run on an OS. If you have "boot to browser" the OS is still the kernel. Browsers are userspace. It's like that saying "The difference between a boat and a ship is that a ship can carry a boat, but a boat can't carry a ship." And I know there is jslinux but at that point we're in a Turing tarpit where you can say that the Lua VM or wasm is "an OS" and the term is just a five-dollar word for "abstraction layer". Is a function call an OS? Come on.

scubbo 2y ago

(For myself) because 99% of my time is spent in an IDE or a browser, and there's less mental overhead for me to open a new tab and start typing than for me to open a new app and do so.

qalmakka 2y ago
The IDE is literally a text editor. Why not hit file -> new file and write stuff in there?
- cess11 2y ago
  For me it's the risk of littering in a project repo. So I use Zim wiki instead: https://zim-wiki.org/ https://zim-wiki.org/
  - qalmakka 2y ago
    AFAIK all editors and IDEs I've ever used can open a random file in a new tab, even if it is outside of the repository.
- scubbo 2y ago
  Because "random human-language notes" are conceptually different from source code for me.

nunodonato 2y ago

Right? I use the gnome default editor for this. Also persists unsaved notes, its always available and has some few basic features that sometimes come in handy (regex match, etc)