“The company now suggests the Microsoft Word app as a replacement for WordPad users”
uh no, libreoffice works great, thanks for the suggestion tho.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Should replace it with a markdown editor
I'm surprised how slow notepad software is at adopting markdown.
Where nearly every browser based text editor has it built-in
Tbh markdown is not that great... there is always some functionality missing, that some editors implement but then it's not following a standard format which sucks...
I feel like we should have something better, not at latex level of course but better than markdown.
Wordpad always felt like a transitional between Notepad and Office, but for the average person, the transitional wasn't needed. If you wanted no frills, notepad was right there. If you needed extras why not just use Office just in case you needed more extras then you thought?
Of course now I use Notepad++ instead of notepad so it fills the Notepad and Wordpad spots.
Well I mean if you wanted something more than notepad and you didn't want to pay, WordPad was right there... Of course you could install something else but this was included.
Back in the day I used wordpad to edit the various configs for Minecraft mods because it handled json and yaml files very well
shrug I think I might have used wordpad maybe once in my entire life. Once Microsoft Office moved to a subscription model I just switched to OpenOffice, then Apache OpenOffice, and then LibreOffice.
Everyday there are more things that fail to separate Windows from its past versions in functionality, but detriment the usability of all the versions to come. Microsoft is changing arbitrary things like this (let's face it, there aren't many people truly effected by not having WordPad) just for the sake of changing, not for any foreseeable benefit.
As a LibreOffice, OpenOffice, MS Office 2000, and unfortunately Google Suite user, I've seen that there are many effective replacements, so I don't see this impacting anyone too severely. It's just stupid.
It actually does make sense. Besides the whole "getting WordPad users to buy Office" thing, there's also the fact that they won't have to continue updating WordPad. It's one less thing to worry about for security and compatibility on their end. The user might not benefit from its removal, but Microsoft does.
Just pointing out that it's not just for the sake of changing things.
@stefenauris So we have to now subscribe to Office! I use Word Pad. Word pad is automatically installed on my laptop.
If you use wordpad just switch over the Libreoffice. It gas far more features and is already compatible with .RTF files.
That kinda blows. I won't pretend I was making heavy use of it when I used to use Windows or anything, but definitely I'd bust it open on occasion when I wanted something with mild enough rich text formatting, but felt LibreOffice Writer felt overkill for whatever I was doing.
notepad++
Notepad++ doesn't have any form of formatting though, so it's like underkill for the few narrow things I'd use WordPad for
what sort of formatting?
Bolding, italicizing, I think lists and headers I recall being a thing too
It does allow rich text formatting, it just isn't enabled by default. And anything it doesn't do by default once you enable those features, there is probably a plugin to add it.
I wonder if someone will package an installer with it like they did for other classic windows apps like minesweeper and chess, maybe it'll even be added to that specific Installer. Guess only time will tell.