Notepad

I’ve used it a fair amount in expert witness gigs, where they give you a Windows laptop with no networking to read the other side’s code.

It’s a pretty good editor, though of course not a patch on my fave, xx.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

make your own :)

Notepad++ used to be nice, now it's a bloated dangerous confusing mess too :(

I'm not apologist for MS, but what about Notepad don't you like? Having several tabbed documents open at once is actually useful.

The original MS Notepad was pathetic. Current one is just about useful. MS Paint is still useless though.

If you don't like Notepad you will hate the extra features of Notepad++

vi 4ever!

Gerhard

I think you can run ancient versions of Notepad.exe, simply by placing the executable in a folder and making suitable links.

V5.0.2140.1 , from W2K is about 50K in size.

It has NO features, which is handy if you want to strip text of any 'clingons'.

RL

I tried Notepad++ but found it too complexicated.

These might be of interest:

"Classic Notepad without AI elements in Windows 11"

"How to Restore Old Classic Notepad in Windows 11"

"Enable the Classic Notepad App & Set as Default in Windows 11"

Disclaimer: My various computers and VM's mostly run on Windoze 10 which use the classic Notepad or various Linux mutations. Since they don't run Windoze 11, I haven't tried the aformentioned apps and tweaks.

I guess I'll use Crimson Editor as my default for text.

I have a few programs that explicitely chain to Notepad to show their results. I guess I can recompile to call Crimson.

Or I could create a new program (or even a batch file?) that intercepts the link to Notepad and redirects to Crimson.

This started when one of my programs generated an output text file and chained to Notepad, but the new Notepad somehow opened an OLD version of the file. Of course Microsoft "upgraded" my Notepad without asking me.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Notepad is fine for what it does (very little). Processing text needs to be qualified by WHY you are processing that text and what you hope to achieve with it.

Notepad wins for just jotting notes that don't need any specific decoration or formatting. The equivalent of writing non-html email.

For writing code, I prefer Brief, EB, emacs and (grudgingly) vi, in that order. Sadly, the first two are hard to find while the last makes the list because it is ubiquitous. Windows-based tools just don't seem compatible with that activity -- the mouse is a liability!

For document prep (which includes things as simple as correspondence) where organization and presentation are significant parts of the finished product, FrameMaker, without a doubt. Possibly Quark if you grew up with hot wax... Contrasted with the above, the GUI and pointing device are *essential*, here!

I prefer separate windows so I can see *both* at the same time. Particularly as the sessions could be hosted on different machines.

They put a fair bit into "dressing up" Paint but didn't do much towards improving its capabilities.

Don Y snipped-for-privacy@foo.invalid wrote: |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"On 8/2/2026 1:56 AM, Martin Brown wrote: | |> I'm not apologist for MS, but what about Notepad don't you like? | | | |Notepad is fine for what it does (very little). [. . .] | |[. . .]" | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Old Notepad is buggy, which is a remarkable achievement for a code which does so little.

|-------------------------------------------------------------------------| |"[. . .] | | | |> The original MS Notepad was pathetic. Current one is just about useful.| |> MS Paint is still useless though." | |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|

MS Paint is not useless, but it does like double a file's kilobytes when cropping it to less than half its original area. (S.

The DOS editor still works under cmd. ;-)

Brian

As long as I'm whining, why does a right-click offer new:text document in some folders but not in others?

If electronic hardware was as bad as software, we'd all be dead.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I use older versions of MSPaint for drawing and editing all the time.

My only complaint is pixel/dimension relationships, which tend to distort attemps at scaled line drawings on iffy displays. . . . . that's the fault of the display.

RL

You can't really "edit" with it as everything is implicitly "flattened"; changing "Hello" to "Goodbye" requires overwriting the imagery created by those glyphs -- fine if it exists on an empty field but if the "Hello" had overwritten some background element, you're stuck with that "litter" even if you can obliterate it with "Goodbye".

As your marks aren't objects in their own right, you can't modify THEM independant of the rest of the document/image.

I mean pixel by pixel, line by line, areas, borders or adding/subtracting test. Real basic stuff.

RL

I forget how long it's been since I first used it. Probably at least 15 years.

Some of the things which led me to it were:

Syntax highlighting and language structure (e.g collapse blocks) handling. Editing vertically as well as horizontally. Spell checking. Line numbering. Ability to record and play back sequences (reminds me of eve/tpu on vax/vms). Easy switching between different encoding formats. Ability to make a file read only when I want to just view but not accidentally edit a file. Easy CR/CR LF line end fixing. Find/Replace/Mark has everything you could want. Easy to remove marked lines. Easy line wrap or no line wrap.

You could pay a lot for a lesser editor such as edt (vax/vms again) on the PC 35 years ago.

It doesn't seem to be on my system, probably for the reason Google AI gave:

"The classic MS-DOS line editor edlin is not natively built into 64-bit Windows 11, but you can run it using an MS-DOS emulator like DOSBox, or use Microsoft's modern command-line tool"

I just want a text editor that's not all tarted up.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Is Paint pixel oriented?

Vector-based programs do better line work; no jaggies. I sometimes use an old version of Visio to draw figures for manuals, and export as EMF files. That does very nice line work in .doc files.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics