Discover

'Notepad' is a simple text editor included with all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 in 1985.

Contents

Overview

Unicode detection

Competing software

See also

References

External links

Overview

''Notepad'' is a common text-only editor. The resulting files – typically saved with the .txt extension – have no format tags or styles, making the program suitable for editing system files that are to be used in a DOS environment.
Notepad can edit files of almost any format; however, it does not treat Unix-style text files correctly (''see newline''). (Wordpad however does.)
Early versions of ''Notepad'' offered only the most basic functions, such as finding text. Newer versions of Windows include an updated version of ''Notepad'' with a search and replace function (Ctrl + ''H''), as well as Ctrl + ''F'' for search and similar keyboard shortcuts. In older versions such as those included with Windows 95 Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows 3.1, there is a 64k limit on the size of the file being edited, an operating system limit of the ''EDIT'' class.
Up to Windows 95, Fixedsys was the only available font for ''Notepad''. Windows NT 4.0 and 98 introduced the ability to change this font. In Windows 2000 and XP the default font was changed to Lucida Console.
Up to Windows Me, there was almost no shortcuts and no line-counting feature. Starting with Windows 2000, shortcuts for common tasks like new, open and save were added, as well as a status-bar with a line counter (available only when word-wrap is disabled).
In the Windows NT-based versions of Windows, ''Notepad'' can edit traditional 8-bit text files as well as Unicode text files (both UTF-8 and UTF-16, and in case of UTF-16, both little-endian and big-endian; see Endianness.)
''Notepad'' makes use of a built-in window class named "EDIT".
''Notepad'' also has a built-in simple logging function, which simply inserts a new timestamp each time the file is opened. To activate this feature, the first line of the text file must be ".LOG", without the quotes.^[1]
''Notepad'' was, until recently, a Windows-only application, but can now be run natively in the open source ReactOS operating system. The program included with ReactOS is derived from WINE and is open source itself under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Unicode detection

The Windows NT version of ''Notepad'', installed by default on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, has the ability to detect Unicode files that are missing a byte order mark. It does this by using a Windows API function called IsTextUnicode(). ^[2] This function is imperfect, with the side effect that some small, all-lowercase ASCII text is incorrectly identified as UTF-16. ^[3]
On May 18, 2006 it was reported^[4] that, given a file containing a phrase like "this app can break" (or even a simple string such as
"aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa"), ''Notepad'' will interpret the file as two-byte Unicode and attempt to display it as such. If the correct Chinese font is installed, Chinese characters will be displayed. The bug is caused by a specific string of characters, divided by spaces. This string is four letters, space, three letters, space, three letters, space, five letters, and no terminating newline. It also works for four letters, space, five letters, space, five letters, space, five letters (as in "this thing might break"), also without terminating newline. This can be done with most words or phrases that fit into that specific pattern. At the time, a few people thought the issue was an easter egg, but that was not the case. Others at the time correctly attributed it to the Unicode detection algorithm.
This issue has been resolved in Windows Vista version of Notepad.

Competing software

For many uses, Notepad has been superseded by WordPad or any word processor, such as Microsoft Word. However, ''Notepad'' does not require a lock on the file it opens, so it can open files already opened by other processes, users or computers, whereas ''WordPad'' cannot. Also, ''Notepad'' is much faster and easier to use than ''WordPad'' or ''Microsoft Word'', even though it lacks the advanced formatting tools of those respective applications. The DOS EDIT text editor, especially as updated in Windows 95, where it became an MDI application, also provides many features never offered by ''Notepad''.
There are many third-party replacements for ''Notepad'' with additional functionality, including both free software (i.e. Notepad++ and Notepad2) and freeware (i.e. TED Notepad and EditPad Lite).

See also

★ List of text editors

★ Comparison of text editors

References

1. Features of LOG and Time/Date Command in Notepad
2. IsTextUnicode() at Microsoft.com URL last accessed July 3, 2006.
3. "this api can break." URL last accessed August 2, 2006.
4. "Funny: How to Break Windows Notepad." URL last accessed July 3, 2006.

External links

★ Notepad in Microsoft's online documentation