I get where you're coming from but I think you're overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it'd be a big deal. Now it's rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.

Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.

I'm less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it's products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That's the real problem - not losing WordPad.

At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it's allowed to get away with abusing it's dominant position to force it's products on consumers.

I'd like to normalize the notion that an OS shouldn't include any application software except for a browser you can use to install other things. Let people pick what they want to use and install it themselves.

Yeah, even Apple includes the iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) for free on Macs and iPads, no subscription needed.

Tbh I use Notepad way more than anything for note making.
If it needs to be formatted, OneNote is free to use and can be saved in any cloud (if there is a shortcut like OneDrive or Dropbox in the Windows explorer)
If it needs to be free and not very sophisticated, I'd look around for a markdown based editor.

If all of that fails, I will use Word.
Never used Wordpad in 15 years (of 24 years of existence) except while trying to open word but Windows suggesting Wordpad first.

Advertise and push Foss substitutes like libreoffice.

Google Docs is free and has basically become the standard word processor for the “unsophisticated users” you’re worried about. It essentially comes with your OS because you only need a browser to use it.

I think your kid and his children will survive.

Likely scenario, honestly.
I really don't worry about it, though.
Not to brag, but it doesn't bother me.
Understand, there is a solution.
X marks the spot.

(Yeah, I know, that's kind of stupid. But it seemed funny in my head.)

It’s too bad Linux isn’t more normalized. For those very simple users (and for the more sophisticated) Linux is probably much better than Windows at this point.

No ads, free software, updates can be very simple and stable, less security issues.

Then they ask their grandson or work it dept what they should do and both will answer libre office is free

This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all.

I am in a support group with over 100 senior citizens in it. Getting a file with a *.rtf extension used to be a thing, but it hasn't been a thing in years. I do get *.doc and *.docx files so they're probably getting lured into Office like you said even before Wordpad is removed.

I disagree. I don't think a rich text editor should be part of the OS as it's not there to operate the computer. An OS should be the tools to run applications and manage your computer. There are a bunch of apps which are so small that it makes sense to include them - like a calculator and text editor, but everything else should be optional.

Why in gods name don’t you use libre office. It’s so much better than word and excel for rent

I used it for my damn resume because I didn't have word, didn't need office. I also liked it because when friends asked me to review a document I could open word documents with it, I would do that sometimes even when I had office because WordPad opened faster and I didn't need perfect formatting.

I think it is safe to say that your 11 year old is factually wrong lol. But it is okay that they don't understand how bad this is because the concept of how multiple businesses have switched to subscription based models even in places we wouldn't expect, like a monthly subscription allowing already installed hardware in your car to actually function, cause it's just 11 year Olds don't have a great concept of bills and money at that level yet. I say wait for their first complaint of it as an adult and then put on your carefully choreographed and practiced "I told you so" dance

Okay kidding aside I think it is absolutely wonderful this is something you didn't just have a conversation with your young kid about but that you had to agree to disagree, you sound like a fantastic parent who actually fosters a relationship with their kid. And probably only rarely says I told you so.

Not everyone has the money for a copy of Word. There once was a time when free rich text editors were valuable. But at this point I agree it isn't needed anymore. There are plenty of FOSS alternatives to word that hit that market. Microsoft has probably kept it around this long to prevent people from looking, but now they've put their bet on cloud services.

Not all of us have Word, and Notepad doesn’t have rich text or the ability to open .doc files.

WordPad (or at least uses to) opens much faster than word, but still has rich text. Perfect for some short notes.

Or eg to edit an ini file. They display as readable text in WordPad and not just a massive long string like in notepad.

It's nowhere near as bloated as Word but you have many more options than Notepad when it comes to formatting and presentation. It's actually impressive how much you can do within the limits of RTF.

lightweight notes with margins

Also try editing unix or Mac line endings in notepad

Easy way to distribute rich text documents to users without them having to install anything.

I use notepad super often as a copy edit paste aid. It loads in a millisecond.

@jeffw @dantheclamman Wordpad is better for coding

Ew. I’m annoyed by how correct you likely are.

Upcoming:

Direct image link

Subscription-based, like freaking Solitaire

Notepad is, in fact, under active development. They recently upgraded find and replace so it works 90% of the time instead of 30% and added some annoying restore session by default feature. not to mention tabs

it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update as it’s no longer under active development

It doesn't need "active development" because it is perfect the way it is. Unix/Linux has tons of useful programs that haven't been in active development for 40-50 years.

Notepad is just a barebones text editor. I doubt there were any substantial changes since Windows 95, other than ensuring it runs on a 32 and later 64 bit infrastructure, and the menu works with newer releases. That sounds like a 1h per quarter job at most.

I haven't been using Wordpad for 20+ years. Notepad could do everything it does already. Then, you also have Firefox's built-in inspect to tinker with code on the fly.

Yeah it's really strange. I'm not a fan of MS by any means, but I've found myself making so many pro-MS comments on Lemmy just because the userbase leans so heavily pro-Linux and anti-MS.

MS has a history which informs what their fututre actions are likely to be. If you can't believe the comments here perhaps you have not heard that history. If you have then consider that lemmy is free software and so you're more likely to find that way of thinking here.

My goto for distrust of MS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

Apple is a LOT worse than Microsoft these days

Not to mention the amount of people who think this is about notepad.

I mean, not many people are in the loving Microsoft camp. Tolerate maybe.

A broken clock can be right twice a day. Unless someone keeps playing with the dials.

As a former user, and an hardcore fanboy, I loved MS and Windows. They made computers accessible for the general public. The OS and the office suite were great. The sheer amount of available software for it was phenomenal. They even decided to publish games, which meant quality!

Until they decided to break things.

XP was a great OS, Vista wasn't. Then 7 was back to being good just for 8 to be not as good. Then Cortana and Edge and the push for cloud computing.

What worked, worked well and was actually useful was changed, removed, phased out...

GNU/Linux is not without its dramas and difficulties but we can expect a good degree of continuity between each version of a software (I'm looking a you, Gnome!). And if we're that hell bent on having that specific specific piece of software or OS setup, well, we can.

MS by contrast just chucks the good things out and doesn't even let them floating around as something users may add to their system.

Does someone remembers the PowerToys collection?

I'm guessing you're pretty young, then.

I would have never thought so many people would be pissed about Wordpad. Fucking Wordpad! It's terrible! And Ms isn't killing it to get office subscriptions because no one fucking uses it! They're killing it because it isn't worth the effort to maintain. There are so many free alternatives that are better.

"It was perfect"? Windows was always crap.

Wordpad is for looking at and editing rich text, not txt files. It's not a big deal because no one uses rtf.

probably takes a bit of effort to keep windows built-in spell checker from working in it.

It's word pad though, do you really ever use it? I use notepad for a quick temp fix in a pinch, I haven't used word pad in like 15 years.

You... have heard of Microsoft before now, yes?

I'll be editing PDFs with standard Mac software that comes with the OS while Windows charges a fee to edit text files.

Why did you hate office apps?

Wordpad is a rich text editor not a plain text editor.

I can't say I've used Wordpad intentionally - ever -, but they do serve different functions.

You mean Notepad++

The superior text editor

Lol almost the same software since windows 1

N.B. Notepad3 (originally Flo's notepad2) is a great drop-in replacement for notepad.exe (and even has an install option to do exactly that, so everything opens with it even if other programs call it). I install it on every Win system I have to manage. Not as big as Notepad++, but has syntax highlighting, line numbers and supports LF file endings.

EDIT: Disappointingly no screenshots on either site >:| It looks similar to vanilla notepad.exe

Yea even with notepad++ on my machine I found myself using notepad for tons of shit while notepadd++ is better for logs and making scripts

Linux fanboys can't help but tell you they're Linux fanboys.

99% of Windows users, too.

This is my reaction even as a Windows user. In my experience, notepad is used when you just need to read what's in the file and formatting and such doesn't really matter, or you explicitly want as little processing of the data as possible. Like opening files that really aren't text based files.

And then if you actually want formatting, images, fonts, etc to make something look good you get an actual document editor: Word, Libre Office, etc.

The only thing I see WordPad providing is it's pre-installed and does have more functionality than notepad. I have used WordPad a couple of times when I've been on a new computer that doesn't yet have everything installed and I don't want to take the time to install an actual editor for whatever I'm doing. It's pretty damn rare though.

Not trying to defend Microsoft, but making it available to the fraction of a fraction that would actually download it is probably not worth it because you still would have to maintain it, making sure it's compatible with new windows versions and providing security updates.

It's a lot easier to just kill it outright, and those that do actually really really want it can find some third party who has uploaded a version of the exe file somewhere.

I wouldn't be upset if they just put it on the Windows store.

Or LibreOffice or Only office or....

Wow, that looks simple and nice.