Notepad being a plain text editor, it always supported markdown. Versions of notepad from the 80s would be able to open and edit markdown, as it’s just plain text.
Apps like classic notepad are useful to have around, when apps that try to parse things like markdown get it wrong and the underlying file needs to be fixed.
Makes me wonder - with Notepad rapidly evolving into WordPad v2, and no default "just render bytes as text" solution in modern Windows to replace it, maybe there's still a way to hack one together on the go, just from pieces laying around in every default installation? I mean, rundll32.exe is a thing.
All I really need is a basic text box with a scroll bar, and a way to feed it with bytes from a file.
To make it a well-defined challenge: the task is to find a way to create a basic notepad - a multi-line textbox that supports scrolling, and can be fed bytes from a file to render as text directly. Additionally, this must be achievable through simple means - simple enough to memorize - and must work on standard Windows 11 installation, with no extra dependencies to procure. Solution can be e.g. something I can type from memory into "Run" (Win+R) box, but could also be a short list of GUI steps (e.g. open some program, click on "Help", drag file to help box).
Dave Plummer vibe coded one on his YouTube channel a couple months ago. Normally I wouldn’t share someone vibe coding something, but since he wrote the Task Manager, Zip Folders, and other such core Windows features back in the day, it hits different.
https://youtu.be/bmBd39OwvWg
Amazing, thanks for sharing! This kind of vibe-coding I'm happy to watch.
If you're ok with a TUI instead of a GUI, Microsoft's documentation says the `edit` command is still around in Windows 11 (I don't have a Windows 11 machine handy to verify this): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administrat...
Huh. I was going to say, last time I saw this was 20+ years ago, and I forgot it exists - but I must be remembering something else. It seems `edit` is a new thing, if I'm to believe https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/edit/
I can confirm it exists on my Windows 11 machine, and I didn't install it specifically, though it's definitely not a base install (upgraded from Windows 10, and plenty of dev tooling installed over the years). Still, it fits the bill (+/- GUI, but I didn't consider TUI at all). Thanks!