Microsoft announced today that it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update as it's no longer under active development, though the company did not specify the precise timing of this change.
Tbh markdown is not that great... there is always some functionality missing, that some editors implement but then it's not following a standard format which sucks...
I feel like we should have something better, not at latex level of course but better than markdown.
Wordpad always felt like a transitional between Notepad and Office, but for the average person, the transitional wasn't needed. If you wanted no frills, notepad was right there. If you needed extras why not just use Office just in case you needed more extras then you thought?
Of course now I use Notepad++ instead of notepad so it fills the Notepad and Wordpad spots.
Well I mean if you wanted something more than notepad and you didn't want to pay, WordPad was right there...
Of course you could install something else but this was included.
shrug I think I might have used wordpad maybe once in my entire life. Once Microsoft Office moved to a subscription model I just switched to OpenOffice, then Apache OpenOffice, and then LibreOffice.
Everyday there are more things that fail to separate Windows from its past versions in functionality, but detriment the usability of all the versions to come. Microsoft is changing arbitrary things like this (let's face it, there aren't many people truly effected by not having WordPad) just for the sake of changing, not for any foreseeable benefit.
As a LibreOffice, OpenOffice, MS Office 2000, and unfortunately Google Suite user, I've seen that there are many effective replacements, so I don't see this impacting anyone too severely. It's just stupid.
It actually does make sense. Besides the whole "getting WordPad users to buy Office" thing, there's also the fact that they won't have to continue updating WordPad. It's one less thing to worry about for security and compatibility on their end. The user might not benefit from its removal, but Microsoft does.
Just pointing out that it's not just for the sake of changing things.
That kinda blows. I won't pretend I was making heavy use of it when I used to use Windows or anything, but definitely I'd bust it open on occasion when I wanted something with mild enough rich text formatting, but felt LibreOffice Writer felt overkill for whatever I was doing.
I wonder if someone will package an installer with it like they did for other classic windows apps like minesweeper and chess, maybe it'll even be added to that specific Installer. Guess only time will tell.