4 ms·
They’re turning Notepad into what Wordpad was (or was supposed to be). Now everyone looking for the light weightiest *.txt editor must find a new tool...
by Longhanks 7mo ago
They’re turning Notepad into what Wordpad was (or was supposed to be). Now everyone looking for the light weightiest *.txt editor must find a new tool...
- zer0zzz 7mo agoAll we wanted back in the day was Unix line ending support, and they would give even that.
- embedding-shape 7mo agoHow about a CTRL+Z that don't undo the past 11 years of changes you've done, and instead just undos one smaller change?
- somenameforme 7mo agonotepad++ is great, though they have a dubious habit of dumping political messages on releases.
- BuckRogers 7mo agoAnd they were running on such a shoestring deployment that N++ was hacked by the Chinese last year. I'd stick with VS Code.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- reactordev 7mo agoSublime is good too without the political rhetoric. It boggles my mind that windows users refuse the ways of vim.
- vunderba 7mo agoWas hoping to see Sublime mentioned here. Super stable and available for nearly everything (Windows, Linux, Mac).
- throw4re2ef 7mo agoI remember a few years back there was an update where it would actually type the political message when you created a new text document. I abandoned it ever since. The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports.
- zzrrt 7mo ago> The creator is also very selective about the type of politics he supports. Why would someone express political messages without being selective? It’s understandable not wanting overt politics in your software, but this line is odd.
- wk_end 7mo agoI don't have any use for Notepad++, but reading about this makes me wish I did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B#Political_messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad%2B%2B#Political_messag... The possibility of software being a personal, creative, expressive endeavor (which often includes politics), something I believed in back when I was in university twenty years ago, is a feeling that's receded deeply into the past. That might be as much about me as it is about the world, but I miss it.
- bigstrat2003 7mo agoI think that different people want different things. It seems to me like these days the idea of software being a personal expression is in vogue more than not, but there are always going to be those who want that and those who don't. That said, if software is a personal creative expression, one must be prepared for the possibility that some people aren't going to like what one has to say. Often when the politics angle comes up with Notepad++, people will say "it's his software project, he has the right to put in political messages if he wants" as if that somehow compels people to be ok with the political messages. The author certainly has the right to use Notepad++ as a platform for his political opinions, and I would never dream of saying otherwise. I don't want him to go to jail, or get fired by his employer, or anything like that. But I similarly have the right to decide that I don't want to see his political opinions and use another piece of software. You pick up both ends of the stick, as the old saying says.
- pharrington 7mo agoWhere is the place you'd like to see someone say "Declare variables, not war"?
- bigstrat2003 7mo agoOn their blog I guess? Not in my text editor, that's for sure. I'm busy trying to get work done; I neither have time for nor want to hear about the author's opinions on current events.
- 7mo ago
- SamuelAdams 7mo agoFor the absolute lightweight, there is vi, eMacs, nano, etc. For a UI I’ve been using VSCode. It is quite quick when you disable all extensions and most settings.
- tmtvl 7mo ago> absolute lightweight > eMacs I love Emacs, but I don't see how a Lisp platform with a web browser, a Tetris implementation, and 4 terminal emulators (shell, term, ansi-term, eshell) can be considered 'lightweight'.
- SamuelAdams 7mo agoHa, fair. Lightweight in this context is relative to Notepad or any modern Windows application.
- kibibu 7mo agoNotepad.exe used to be <200kB. Emacs is tens of megabytes
- CSm1n 7mo agoNotepad was just a wrapper around some default win32 controls. Judging alone by exe size is not right, although probably a “statically linked” notepad would still be smaller than emacs
- eviks 7mo agoIt is right by definition. Link emacs to those controls, shed some statically linked weight, and it will also become lighter!
- 1bpp 7mo agoTo be fair you can say that of anything with a scripting engine, you could have all that in vim or stripped down emacs
- hypeatei 7mo agoNotepad++ is solid but they had a recent kerfuffle involving their security practices and the response didn't inspire much confidence. But if you turn off auto-updates then it's a good alternative if you're still on Windows.
- voidfunc 7mo agoI love Notepad++ but yea, zero confidence in that dev right now. Its programma non grata on my machines at the moment. Theyre also very political and giving them access to my machine now feels even more risky.
- cogman10 7mo agoIf you'd like a lightweight replacement, here's Kate. It's somewhere around a zed featureset, a little less. A key benefit of it is that it's not an electron app. It's an old C++ app that's still just chuggin' along. https://kate-editor.org/get-it/ https://kate-editor.org/get-it/
- ruszki 7mo agoWhich response are we talking about which was problematic?
- Someone1234 7mo agoThe issue Notepad++ is having, is the same as a lot of open source projects: They don't have a ton of money, don't have a business entity, and are struggling to get/keep a software-signing key in those circumstances. So the people taking pot shots at the developers, I guess, maybe be more specific with what they did wrong and what they should have done instead. Because if you actually understand the history/circumstances (and the fact it was a third-party hosting provider compromised), one would expect more blame on the systemic under-funding of OSS than "developers bad." Are people wanting them to create a business, monetize Notepad++, so that they no longer have issues with hosting/certificates? I'm guessing not.
- reactordev 7mo agoVim is The Way.
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago[flagged]
- soupfordummies 7mo agoPlease show me the few sentence prompt to create a windows 10 level notepad.exe clone that I can quickly open and use by hitting win+r
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago[flagged]
- soupfordummies 7mo agowhile this is cool and I want to play with it myself, it's still sort of discounting the overhead here of installing python, installing tkinter, adding shortcuts to the program within Windows, etc. Of course the barrier to creating bespoke tools is lower but it's also still a decent bit of overhead and not just "hey AI, create me a Notepad clone that works like it used to". Arguably it's still more intensive than googling "notepad clone" and just downloading n++.
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago[flagged]
- javascriptfan69 7mo ago>Are you moving the goalpost? I mean you did originally claim that this was something that was "for the masses" and then posted a solution that only someone technical could actually use. Not that I doubt it couldn't one shot something this simple with a .exe wrapper.
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago
- canistel 7mo agoTextadept is lightweight, and more...
- scoopr 7mo agoWell, at least they brought back edit[0] [0] https://github.com/microsoft/edit https://github.com/microsoft/edit
- tracker1 7mo agoIf this was actually (pre)installed with Windows, I wouldn't mind the changes to notepad nearly as much.
- Someone1234 7mo agoWhile I'd love it installed by default, I still very much mind that they're ruining Notepad. Plus this Markdown preview functionality just caused Notepad to have a Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in it.
- tracker1 7mo agoOh it's still pretty stupid, and I think they should have simply resurrected the Wordpad name for this, and maybe a conversion utility for opening doc/rtf files to markdown in the editor for older file support.
- Someone1234 7mo agoAgreed. Resurrecting Wordpad and making it really cool/useful would make everyone happy. They can add as much AI and Markdown as they want to Wordpad as far as I'm concerned. Just leave my dumb featureless utility alone.
- noinsight 7mo agoIt is preinstalled. Server 2025 (even Core Edition) and Windows 11 24H2 (or 25H2, not sure)...
- jsrcout 7mo agoEdit is unironically one of my favorite text editors these days. It opens incredibly fast compared to everything else I use, it's easy to use, works fine on Linux. It's not going to replace emacs or VS Code, but it's incredibly handy for basic editing chores.
- dmitrygr 7mo agonotepad.txt now joins calc.txt in my list of EXEs i bring from an old WinXPx64 install to all new windows installs
- mkup 7mo agoI also bring in the old paint from Vista. I never liked the new ribbon-based design from later version of Windows.
- accoil 7mo agoProbably better to get the Win 10 version if you can as it eventually got better line ending support (i.e. both LF & CRLF).
- jwrallie 7mo agoI got curious about the Wine version, if it has feature parity it may well be the best supported version of notepad right now ;)
- accoil 7mo agoIf not anything else, I guess it could be added :) Makes me wonder though if that's a limitation of text boxes in Windows (so a translation will need to be made during loading/saving).
- BubbleRings 7mo agoEvery few years I find some need or excuse to install Brief somewhere. I miss that editor.
- blell 7mo ago… .txt? :D
- jasomill 7mo agoWhile I probably haven't played either in a decade, I bring sol.exe and winmine.exe on general principle, as both had their "Copilot in Notepad" shark-jumping moments all the way back in Windows 8 with the introduction of achievements and in-app purchases.
- vee-kay 7mo ago[dead]
- smusamashah 7mo agoYou can just uninstall this modern notepad. It will bring back plain old notepad.
- petee 7mo agoI found when I did that I lost the ability to associate any program with .txt files; like popup errors when trying to assign a default You can make old Notepad be the default cmd line by going to Apps > Advanced app settings > App execution aliases, and disable the Notepad setting
- prmoustache 7mo agoI used to use scite in the early 2000's (scintilla editor), is it still around? EDIT: yes it does and it has actually been updated yesterday. https://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html https://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaHistory.html https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaHistory.html
- petee 7mo agoI like EmEditor, it has a compact ui and some useful features, and 16TB file support -- https://www.emeditor.com/ https://www.emeditor.com/
- al_borland 7mo agoThe whole point of Notepad was its bare bones simplicity. EmEditor looks like it’s loaded full of stuff, and has a subscription fee. Assuming most people don’t need to open 16TB files, they might as well use VS Code.
- petee 7mo agoYou're not wrong, and I could have elaborated. While loaded with stuff, I find the ui can be pared down, and has a similar load time and screen space as notepad. The subscription isn't awesome, but it works fine without it, and doesn't pester alot
- snvzz 7mo agoKDE's kate runs well on Windows. It can be installed easily via chocolatey.
- kuschku 7mo agoIt's also in winget
- roger110 7mo agoThe problem is usually when you're using notepad, it's in some situation where you don't want to install another exe. Like you're using someone else's PC or a random one in a library or something. This needs to be built in.
- eviks 7mo agoSo build it in Wordpad?