Comment on Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows after 28 years

jeffw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• greybeard@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

  source

  • TheEntity@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    There are plenty of FOSS alternatives to word that hit that market.

    Plenty? I know one and its fork. That's about one and a half.

    source

    • sebinspace@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      ScintillaTE is an old-ass one. Most people have never heard of it, and those that have have only heard of its variant, UniSciTE, which came bundled as the default text editor for Unity, something like 15 years ago.

      source
    • thehatfox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think AbiWord is still around, which used to be the FOSS simple, WordPad-like word processor of choice.

      source
    • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I didn’t know Joeoffice had a fork. What’s it called?

      source

      • TheEntity@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Knowing the Internet, it would be Joemom, I presume? :)

        source
  • AmbientChaos@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    microsoft.com/…/free-office-online-for-the-web

    Word is available for free now

    source
• dantheclamman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Honestly I’m not too bummed, especially with open-source solutions like Notepad++, but it’s the end of an era! Also, Word is paid, and so Windows not having a built in free RTF editor is notable

  source

  • yukichigai@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Windows not having a built in free RTF editor is notable

    Yeah, that is a bit odd, but then again when’s the last time you’ve seen something other than a cut-rate eBook in RTF? Everything is either some variant of plain text or a DOC file these days.

    Plus, it’s rare that you ever need to edit RTF files. Read, sure, but that could be handled by Word Reader, which is free.

    source

    • T156@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      A lot of ebooks seem to be more epub or pdf these days. RTF isn’t used quite so much.

      source

      • yukichigai@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        RTF is a rarity these days since basically every phone, tablet, and other handheld device can handle either PDFs or HTML (and ePub is basically just a ZIP file with HTML in a specific naming scheme and structure). Back in the day though you’d find RTFs more often for use in budget/jury-rigged eReader options. It’s much easier to parse, if nothing else.

        source
• SulaymanF@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

  source

  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    LibreOffice is free

    source

    • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And huge. And bloated, if you only need simple functionality.

      source

      • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Abiword is pretty nice and not too bloated from what I remember

        source
    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Except it will nuke .docx formatting. Same in reverse.
      I make templates for my clients and I always tell them not to open and save in any other client other than OpenOffice.
      Even Libre does nuke some parts to some extend…

      source

      • ebits21@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s not that bad and always improving. I inter operate the two every day.

        OpenOffice is a dead project.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
    • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You’re assuming everyone is a power user. There will be thousands of people who won’t have an alternative and think that paying for word is the only option

      source
  • somedaysoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Abiword is FOSS and would be my choice over Word anyway.

    source

    • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It has been literally twenty years since I last heard any mention of Abiword!

      source

      • somedaysoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I probably haven’t thought if it for like 10 years myself but this post reminded me of it. I remember maybe 15 years ago using a portable version of it on a USB drive, and it was amazing.

        source
• Firipu@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

  source
• yukichigai@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

  source
• derek@simulated.town ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  @jeffw @dantheclamman Wordpad is better for coding

  source

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    How do people use Wordpad for coding? I’ve never seen that done. If I ever open code in an editor with a “bold” button, I screwed up and close without saving.

    source
  • ghostpony@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    [deleted]

    source

    • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Idea! A programming language where text formatting has syntactic meaning! Variable declarations must be italicized! Function calls center-justified!

      source

      • TheEntity@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yep, violence it is then.

        source
      • WaltJRimmer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        If Chicken can be a language, that can be a language!

        And I don’t mean the actually useful programming language. I mean the esolang one where the only valid character is Chicken.

        source
  • jeffw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fair enough

    source
• 30mag@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m a little surprised they didn’t kill it sooner.

  source
• blazera@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  lightweight notes with margins

  source
• mvirts@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Also try editing unix or Mac line endings in notepad

  source
• freebee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

  source
• dan1101@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

  source