You know what’s free (as in beer and speech) and not being enshittified? Notepad++
Fun fact: Most of the features that people liked about the “new” Windows notepad were just stolen from Notepad++ anyway.
So you may as well just use Notepad++ and enjoy a better experience, plus about a zillion other things like numerous plugins, syntax highlighting for just about every programming language under the sun, immensely configurable color schemes, etc., etc., etc.
Hardly “stolen”. Suff like tabs is very basic that n++ didn’t invent.
And even if Notepad++ had invented it, it’s not “stealing” to do the same thing. Notepad++ still has its tabs, nobody stole them. Copied them, maybe. Inspired by them, perhaps. “Stolen” is just a deliberately emotion-baiting term.
Explorer still can’t do it though.
Wait, it does now?! Hell freezes over?
They had that in win10 as well for about a week and then they took it away hoping nobody noticed it so it could be a win11 feature instead.
More likely they are direct ports of things from the highly popular Visual Studio Code as a lot of people used to bound out RAW HTML and other code in notepad for YEARS before Notepad++ was a thing.
I think you mean you discovered vs code years before you found notepad++
Notepad++ has been around since 2003 years and vs code has been around since 2015.
A lot of those features were in visual studio 6, which was released in the late 90s or early 00s. Tabbed files, syntax highlighting for their supported formats (though it was a lot more tightly bound to those languages, like there was a visual basic program and a separate visual c/c++, n++ is the first I remember with arbitrary language syntax highlighting support), pretty sure it had a plugin system, too.
And vs6 was just the first one I used, they might have been present in vs5 or earlier versions.
I suppose we could point to emacs for formatting and syntax highlighting
Yeah, vim also has it today, but I don’t know how far back that goes. Screen splitting, too, I use that all the time in vim and GUI editors.
We didn’t have color terminals at my college so if there was any highlighting I wouldn’t have seen it. Probably shortly after the first dumb terminals came with color text somebody made emacs or vi do highlighting? Screen splitting goes way back. Emacs had that in the late 80s when I was using it.
Plus an electric list is far superior to tabs. Tabs are too usable. I want to have to hit ctrl+X, L before I can change files.
/s just in case.
Visual studio and visual studio code are not the same thing. Visual Studio is a full IDE and is expected to have those features and is clunky because of them. Or was, not sure where it is now. It’d be in the same category as netbeans, eclipsed, and intellij
Vs code is an enhanced lightweight text editor
Notepad++ is the original enhanced lightweight text editor
My point was that Notepad++ came out way before vs code and didn’t copy features from vs code.
Copied from an ide, sure? Not really a good comparison as they are solving two different problems
They were features of the text editor that was a part of the integrated development environment. My point was that even though vs code came after n++, those features were a part of the visual studio line, which vs code is a successor of, so if there was inspiration it was more likely in the direction of vs -> n++, though realistically there was probably transfer in both directions over time.
No I am saying people where coding html in plan old notepad way before notepad +
And separately with MS having popularity with VS code they likely ported the dev functions to ms notepad there is a good chance notepad++ was not the inspiration.
Then those features in VS Code were most likely heavily inspired by Notepad++ as well.
TL;DR: There’s no reason to stick with a shitty Microsoft application for this task since N++ exists and is, was, and probably forever will be superior.
bound out RAW HTML and other code in notepad
You’re someone who likes pain huh?
Was making HTML pages long before Notpad++ was a thing young one.
Not saying I would do it that way now.
This is not enshittification. Here’s where the term came from:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification
In what way is adding an AI assistant to Notepad either “abusing their users” or “abusing their business customers?” It seems like it’s just a useful new feature to me, that’s still in the “be good to your users” phase.
They’re sacrificing the utility of the tool to make it part of their new AI-driven operating system as a service platform. The only thing notepad had going for it was its complete simplicity, reliability, and speed. Nobody wants notepad to try to rope you into this ecosystem, certainly not at the expense of those qualities.
Even with the recent updates, I’m over it. Notepad has crashed on me at least twice. Notepad. Crashed. There is no longer any reason to use it.
They’re sacrificing the utility of the tool to make it part of their new AI-driven operating system as a service platform.
You don’t know that. You have no idea how this “cowriter” will be integrated. It could be just a little button off on the side, maybe with a setting in the configuration to hide it entirely, and you can ignore it completely.
Any additional functionality added to an already feature-complete program is bloat, no two ways about it. If notepad+AI was a separate program, this would be a different discussion. Even if you can hide it completely, the fact that it’s there at all will affect performance. And even if it’s just a tiny blip in relative performance, it’s still the first step on the road to enshittification.
I think you may be overestimating how much code is required for a program to simply use an AI, as in just calling an AI’s API with a string of text and getting some text back in return. I’ve written code that does this and it’s just a few lines.
The code for whatever UI Notepad wraps around it might be a few hundred more lines, that depends very much on the UI framework and what they want it to look like. But the AI part is trivial. The hard work of actually executing the AI’s code is done on a remote server. Your home computer won’t have to do any of that work.
You’re free to believe that this will not bog down the program at all, and also that this isn’t just the first bad decision they’re making with notepad. I really would like to impress upon you that that is wishful thinking, and not at all the most likely outcome here.
And I think that 90% of the concern people have is arising out of some kind of weird anti-AI hysteria.
Look, even if Microsoft does “ruin” Notepad somehow, it’s a really simple program. Github has a bunch of projects tagged “notepad-clone”, I’m sure there are plenty of free alternatives out there that duplicate the old Notepad as precisely as you may desire. Adding AI is extremely simple on the client side but it’s not so easy to provide the LLM back-end so those replicas probably won’t be able to do what Microsoft is about to do, so I want to see Microsoft try it. I think it’ll be good.
OK.
I like Cory Doctorow. I think his theory of enshittification is useful, but I find his definition flawed.
- Why is it limited to platforms? Can’t enshittification apply to other things like applications?
- Are business customers really required or can that step be skipped?
- The platforms dying thing isn’t what we are seeing. For example, Amazon is absolutely enshittified. They’re not dead. More like undead, continuing to shamble on consuming everything.
I still give credit to Cory for being an acute observer and coming up with a useful theory.
There is no need to coin a new term, when “rent seeking” has done just fine for hundreds of years now.
This is not a new concept.
But… MUH BUZZWORDS!
(I really hate the Reddit-style overuse of that word.)
Ah, the enshittification of enshittification.
Perfection.
That one and “FAFO” in its various incarnations can take a break for a bit, IMO
Shockingly, I don’t know that one! I thought I read FIFO before rereading that.
“Fuck around and find out” for everyone else who didn’t know.
Ahhhh THAT overused phrase. Of course we’d have to acronym/initiaism it.
At least we don’t (yet) have PSGWSP. Ugh it felt gross typing that.
I do too, considering it never needed a new term to begin with. This isn’t a new concept, and we already have a name for it: rent seeking
AI assistants usually need to upload the data to process it. So it’s potential enshitification via adding data upload/harvesting features to a trusted offline text editor. Usually companies have ways to generate revenue streams based on the data from these “free and useful features”. Adverts based on what text files you open might be the long term end goal.
If you’re concerned then don’t use the feature. It’s really simple.
That would be fine, but a lot of these features are added in an update, with complicated setups or mods to turn them off. Start bar local app search now gets sent to bing search by default, thats almost never what people want. Most people wont know how to disable it or care. But I guess thats fine as long as Microsoft gets to increase its bing usage stats and collect more user data.
To be clear, my problem is with these features getting pushed as default enabled.
Adding an AI seems OK but per the article it will do it similar to Paint Co-creator. I can already see those types of “features” will get promoted more and more in updates and take more part of the screen.
Microsoft will want revenue trickling in from Notepad of all places…
Leaks of company secrets will increase.
What about privacy and bloat? Do you really need an integrated big-brother Clippy again? There’s a reason they got rid of that annoying little bugger 20-ish years ago. Even killed Cortana. How many failed experiments more do we need?
If you need AI writing, you have it in Edge or on the ChatGPT site. Will they add AI to settings to help you turn on all the bloat and tracking for you?
Like just give me my damn control panel which has a working search feature (unlike, say, Settings)
Do you really need an integrated big-brother Clippy again?
You’re making some pretty big assumptions about what this feature will be like.
Unfff pump my veins full of Notepad++. I wanna feel the autosaving tabs course through me. I need that tabbed indenting experience. AAAAAAAAAAA
It does contain random political statements however which is sometimes concerning.
I haven’t noticed any of this. Where are you seeing them?
So far the author seems to have been on the right side of history. You can see some of them in the N++ update news:
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/
They seem to be pro-Ukraine (or at least anti-Russian invasion) and anti-Chinese authoritarianism. I can’t bring myself to have any beef with either of those positions, really.
At one point they also sold a thong.
Damn, I just missed on the thong
No you didn’t, the links at the bottom still work - you can get it in both old and new logo.
Go ahead, live the dream!
They had some messages regarding a free Ukraine a few updates back. It’s a free app so if he wants to include that in his update message that’s fine to me.
Every few updates the read me, description or something contains some kind of statement on various world issues going on.
Search the hit hub issues for notepad++ for the word political. People complain each time.
I don’t care if he is on the rights side of the issue or note, just don’t like it popping up in software.
I thought my installer was infected the one time by to giant wall of default text when I opened it.
It’s because apparently being anti Russia, anti authoritarian and pro Ukraine is…pOliTiCaL
It is. The sentence “I’m pro Ukraine/Russia” is most definitely a political statement
And it’s great that it exists, but the average Windows user has no idea that exists and probably no idea how to download and install it because the average Windows user, like the average computer user, is only nominally computer literate.
Those are the people Microsoft constantly fucks over, not people here who tend to know what they’re doing. A large percentage of people here don’t even use Windows except maybe through an emulator.
LiteXL is also pretty good.
And Metapad (was named before Facebook became Meta) and Notepad 2/3 and and and.
SublimeText is a much better alternative
Not open source
I know it’s dumb but I was always a bit disappointed that Microsoft overhauled Paint in Windows 11 with layers and polish. To me, paint is always that terrible pre-packaged program that makes bad art. There was a community around making things in paint, which was noticeably impressive because making decent art in paint is a nightmare.
Now that it’s actually fairly good… I don’t know, it’s lost its charm.
Its not actually good, and many actually good art programs far outshine it.
So its lost what made it unique, by being comedically bad, and become the death knell of most things in a capital focused system; mundane.
My primary use case for MS Paint is its almost non-existent system usage, to quickly crop screenshots or strip metadata from files. Paint.net handles almost every other use. Same rationale for Notepad and stripping formatting from copied text. Bloat the program with ‘value added USP features’ to compete with actual image editing software, and I’m out.
Microsoft saw how the Apple ecosystem lock-in has benefited them long term, and made big pushes to ‘improve’ their first party software and close the ecosystem to the Microsoft store. Vanilla Windows fresh off an install throws all kind of “You sure? Like for real sure?” UAC warnings popups at any executable, while seamlessly processing their App Store use. Zero-low literacy users want that kind of UI/UX and Microsoft sees money to be made funneling them towards first-party and ‘partner’ software
there’s an easier tool to crop screenshots and strip them of metadata. Snipping tool! As barebones as notepad and paint, and extremely useful. I genuinely use it daily to the point that I just added it to my taskbar.
Opens in split second, lets you create a screenshot of any size and wherever you’d like, then immediately copies that image to your clipboard so you don’t even need to save it if you’re sending it somewhere online. If you so desire you can draw a bit on the image, handy for underlines, arrows, and basic censoring. And if a pesky dropdown menu only shows up when you hover over it you can set it to delay triggering and can get your mouse over there in time for a screenshot.
And that’s it, I’m pretty sure I described every single feature of the Snipping tool.
honestly it’s not even that bad, it’s notepad picture edition - I sometimes use it when I want to draw something fast to get my point across, small graphs that are easier to show than explain in text, objects I’m trying to describe but failing etc.
Together with notepad, paint gives you the “pen and a napkin” experience of the digital world.
I can understand and get behind this sentiment. At an old job we had iMacs and I would use Apple’s numbers program to make pixel art in the tables by coloring each cell.
I think it tries to be paint.net to some extent, I am absolutely fine with that, although it will never beat its clean, simple design.
I love Paint because when shit started hitting the fan in windows, Microsoft’s neglect actually elevated Paint to the best stock program on there. It’s the only image viewer I use on windows because it opens instantly and takes practically zero resources. Even large images can be opened faster than the crappy calculator, which is still the same calculator from Windows 8 by the way. I hope they never touch paint again.
Watch them adding AI to paint at some point.
They already have…
Notepad++, GET YOUR FOSS ON PEOPLE!
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
If you’re not using it, then you’re going to be extremely happy when you switch!
I liked the tab support being added and use notepad for a bunch of basic bitch shiz, but notepad++ is going full time if they start bogging it down with crap.
People should use Vim. It’s tons better and very user friendly.
https://github.com/jdhao/nvim-config#features
Highly recommend this.
A modern Neovim configuration with full battery for Python, Lua, C++, Markdown, LaTeX, and more…
This is enough to get the intellisense and linters up and running. Only takes ~5 minutes to configure by installing prerequisites, it’s worth it though.
But how do you exit?
Simple: You pull the plug on your PC.
VIM is for people who need crutches - Vi is where it’s at. Or maybe LaTex I don’t know.
But I do heartily endorse Notepad++.
There’s KDE Kate as well, but I only use that for scripting purpose.
SublimeText is a much superior alternative. Notepad++ is like being stuck in the 2000s
Sublime is not FOSS
It’s free and is functional. What more could you want
I always thought that my local use of a plain text editor should use a lot of CPU power (and electricity) in a huge data center.
Your owners gotta know what you’re doing at all times eh. Can’t leave notepad out of the
trackingeco system
deleted by creator
I paste blocks of text or data into it, then copy it out again so I dont infect document B with document A’s weird formatting
Ctrl+Shift+V pastes without formatting.
It doesn’t fix artificial line break issues though. Simple text editors are perfect for stopping some text from looking unnecessarily like poetry.
incredibly pro tip, I use this all the time
I am 46 how am I just learning this now?!
i use it constantly because it’s the only text editor that comes with windows 10
Easily replaced.
No, its not easily replaced in a locked-down enterprise setting. That’s naive.
Portable App, “open with”, “always use this app”.
edit: right, locked down, executable whitelist?
That’s not at all practical in a large corporate IT setting.
On a large scale, you’re the guy having the rights setting things up. Obviously the Portable Apps hack is for personal use.
I suppose one might believe things were that simple if they lacked actual experience in enterprise IT.
Or perhaps you’re just not arguing in good-faith because you only care about being “right” and not about actually understanding the use case.
Funny enough, I use it like a notepad. Oh s***, I need to write this down real quick. I need to grab an exerpt off a website, our store serial number or make a quick list. It’s literally scrap paper in digital form for me.
It has such a distinct lack of any features whatsoever, that it makes it a perfect tool for practicing written assignments for language exams.
I use it all the time for quick notes at work, with its very simple interface, and the tabs feature was a game changer. Especially useful for phone calls in my case, although my typing speed far exceeds my writing speed so maybe I’m the exception because of that.
I don’t use it to program though, usually that’s delegated to Visual Studio.
I only use it to strip HTML text down to plain text. As long as it can do that, I’ll probably keep using it unless something better comes around.
I use it as a cache for chunks of text I want to move around. I use Textpad a lot for code and config files where I don’t need all the lookup and predictive stuff.
I prefer having a bare-bones text editor over anything with formatting. Most of the time, I don’t want the formatting to carry over, I want it stripped down to just the content, just the text. Word can get annoying sometimes when you’re trying to copy and paste and it does something stupid like carrying over weird frames or tables or whatever the hell. That said, I’ll still use a “fancy” text editor like Notepad++ or Sublime Text.
I used to use it for taking quick notes when I had a slow computer. I didn’t want to wait for Word to load, so I’d just use Notepad. Now I use Post Its or just don’t write stuff down as much.
Fuck Notepad. All my homies use Kate.
Kate is freaking awesome. So many nice features for coding short of using a full IDE.
Is it as fast ro start up as N++?
Yes
It is in KDE, in my experience.
What are the advantages over notepad++?
Native to Linux I’d say. Probably a few more but I’m more of a mousepad guy myself.
Bring back clippy. “I see you want a barebones, simple text editor. Let me ruin that for you.”
Been a Windows user for a really long time. A few times I tried to switch over to Linux, but it just wasn’t doable for a myriad of reasons. Windows 11, I have words with it. Many bad ones, but thankfully there are many users like me that for one reason or another did not switch and put time in to beat the badness out of it via mods.
Windows 12… I’m not so sure if I’ll even “upgrade” to it. It really depends on how much Microsoft decides to wire up the OS to their servers. Look, I wouldn’t mind at all if I could have “smart” tools with AI assistance, but the problem for me is the lack of choice. Currently, if you don’t use their crap software, what mostly travels over the wire is telemetry, and if you go offline no harm done. But make no mistake, useful AI models are too fat to run on most computers. Heck I built mine with AI in mind, but will Microsoft even give me the choice of using my own AIs? (Here’s a hint, it starts with N, has a V and ends with an R)
But what if the OS starts requiring it to be online only because of their AI features? Maybe we’ll have to start paying for Windows again in subscriptions to pay for the obligatory AI? Or what about scrubbing options away from the settings so you can’t “misuse” your own device and have to ask nicely to their AI to do it for you?
There is a road here, and I do not like it. Thank goodness Linux is better than it has ever been.
PS: As for the notepad thing, I’m completely in agreement that it should remain without AI. Such a simple tool for scribbling down notes should be kept lean, simple and fast. Things that Microsoft and their engineers have long forgotten how to do.
Notepad is the Internet Explorer of text editors. People use it because it comes with your computer, it’s the default, and sometimes it’s all you need for a task.
LEAVE NOTEPAD ALONE!
seriously though. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather have be more basic than notepad. It’s entire literal existence is to open, edit and save basic text files. There’s zero need for additional features or updates.
I mean, I don’t even see their precious AI in office yet, and they’re getting hard over adding it to fucking notepad? I expected an AI powered clippy to return to office before this shit.
Throws table
I like the typical plaintext editors you get with any Linux distro, which can do stuff like syntax highlighting but are still light and fast.
I use notepad++ on Windows it’s great.
Microsoft is not a creative company!
Imma keep using Wordpad
Removed by mod
Now do paint. Or even more useless: calculator.
No need to “fix” notepad. It does what it has to. If you’re a power user, you can download something else. But I’ll bet it won’t have Ai in it.
Why the fuck would I ever want AI in my calculators? Even Algebra never required AI in the past
You don’t want reasonably written, believable, factually dubious answers from your calculator?
Because now it can be done on the cloud with AI for triple the time, also subscriptions.
It bills you each time you make a spelling error.
I wouldn’t mind a bit of wolfram alpha
They already did both of those. Paint has layers now and calculator got worse because they decided to split everything up into different modes which is a pain when you want to do hex conversions but also do non-truncated division, especially because it resets the history and storage when switching modes.
It seems to me like these apps are being redesigned by people who don’t use the features, or maybe with the primary design goal of reducing support calls from people who have no clue what they are doing.
They sure fucked up SwiftKey
Well, MS has been supporting paint.net for a while now. It’s kinda like MS Paint but not completely terrible.
I don’t use Windows since 2018 but…
(Psst: get as far away from microsoft as you can, and don’t look back!)
