I first ran into the Copilot integration in Notepad a couple of days ago and immediately turned it right the fuck off.
In November, Microsoft began testing an update that allowed users to rewrite or summarize text in Notepad using generative AI. Another preview update today takes it one step further, allowing you to write AI-generated text from scratch with basic instructions (the feature is called Write, to differentiate it from the earlier Rewrite).
Like Rewrite and Summarize, Write requires users to be signed into a Microsoft Account, because using it requires you to use your monthly allotment of Microsoft’s AI credits. Per this support page, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription get 15 credits per month. Subscribers with Personal and Family subscriptions get 60 credits per month instead.
Microsoft notes that all AI features in Notepad can be disabled in the app’s settings, and obviously, they won’t be available if you use a local account instead of a Microsoft Account.
Counterpoint:
In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “perfect text-only editor” to “ai-laden spyware/malware”
Problem: Not enough AI training data. Solution: Start scraping everything people type in Notepad, errors and all.
They don’t need notepad for that. They control your entire OS, and all inputs. All they need to do, is capture all inputs (which they already do and package it all nicely as Recall). They’re using notepad as just a user-facing justification for the spying they do throughout the rest of the OS.
“Barely maintained”
Notepad was a very simple application. Did it even need more effoet put into it? Looks more like they fixed what was not broken.
It was definitely lacking in core areas. Large files, better search, possibly spell check (and why isn’t spell check core Windows functionality?). It also could have used better handling for non-Windows text files. But overall, yes, this wasn’t a program that needed a dedicated team to manage or improve.
This. It needed absolutely nothing added to it. You could write text files, what more did anyone ever need from it? The app was done. It was ready.
This is a concept that is not even in the vocabulary of IT companies these days and I can understand it for complex systems that have dependencies up the wazoo but notepad was just a notepad and that was good enough.
There were a few things that it eventually got but lacked for way too long like support for UNIX line endings.
I like dark mode and tabs. Now I actually use it a lot more. I don’t like adding a gibberish generator…
They should’ve stopped at support for utf-8 encoding and unix line endings.
I’ll stick with notepad++
I use Neovim, BTW.
I shall take a peek. I don’t plan on upgrading to W11 so notepad won’t even be a thing anymore anyways.
KWrite is what you want
Oh wait, if you are not familiar with Vim or Neovim, then this won’t be for you probably. It works completely different compared to a regular text editor and is somewhat complicated and for terminal. There are benefits to it why that is, but just so you know its not a “normal” editor. This is just a warning. :D
In example the keys
h,j,k,lare used to move the cursor in the editor and every key is a special command basically. You have to switch into editing mode to type in text.I tried vi in college and still haven’t been able to exit. (exaggeration, of course, but dear god, that made Notepad seem user friendly) When in Linux, I tend to use Kate and nano.
Yeah, you kinda need to know this before opening it. I was first introduced to vim in a uni course, so it was written out in the assignment text. But with emacs I had to throw the comouter away.
Actually Vi is not Vim. Vim is a lot user friendly with its documentation. The question is, what you expect and if you learn it properly. Its not unser unfriendly, its just different. It’s like saying GIMP is user unfriendly, because you used Photoshop before and GIMP is not exactly the same.
end of my rant :D
I’ve used vim in the past, normally stuck with nano though. It won’t be a big shock with how different it is. My daily driving is current windows so never bothered with much else other than notepad++ but come October I’m formatting all drives in my house to rid myself of anything windows related and starting fresh with some Linux flavor. Most likely ubuntu or mint, haven’t settled yet
I cycled through a number of distros a few years back on my mini HTPC before finally settling on KDE Neon. The amount of customization with panels and such is insane. I started by trying to recreate the Windows experience (which is dead simple) but soon branched out to having multiple panels, which can be autohidden individually. Settings on the left side of the screen, power options on the right (both set to hide), system tray up top, and the task manager at the bottom.
I think there is a pretty big difference between an optional plugin and it being built in by default.
They’re both optional. You can turn it off in Notepad.
There is a difference between opting out of a default feature and having the option to install a plugin.
I can go replace the horn in a car with an air raid siren, but that’s very different than every car coming with an air raid siren you have to turn off.
And how much slower is it to launch and use?
I don’t use it, but I assume the writes for you was to imitate VS Codes GitHub copilot. While it will suggest code in stuff like scripts, you can absolutely ignore it
