Notepad

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For the item of stationery, see notebook.

Notepad

Notepad under Windows
Developer:	Microsoft
Latest release:	--- / ---
OS:	Windows
Use:	Text editor
License:	Proprietary software
Website:	---

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

[edit] Overview

Notepad is one of the most common text-only editors. 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).

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, as well as [ctrl-f] for "search" and similar keyboard shortcuts. In older versions such as those included with Windows 95, 98, ME and 3.1, there is a 64-kilobyte 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 the default font was changed to Lucida Console.

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).

For many uses, Notepad has been superseded by WordPad or any word processor, such as Microsoft Word.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.

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.

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

There are many freeware third-party replacements for Notepad with additional functionality, for example TED Notepad, EditPad Lite, Notepad++ and Notepad2.

[edit] Utility

One of Notepad's most compelling features is that it doesn't support formatting of any kind. If you copy text from a web page and paste it into an application like Word, FrontPage, or Dreamweaver, the formatting comes along with the text, and can be difficult to remove. There can also be "hidden" embedded metadata. On the other hand, if you copy text from a formatted web site, paste it into Notepad, then copy it again from Notepad and paste it into the destination of your choice, you get only the text. Notepad strips all formatting and "hidden data."

[edit] Unicode detection

The Windows NT version of Notepad 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(). ^[1] This function is imperfect, with the side effect that some small, all-lowercase ASCII text is incorrectly identified as UTF-16. ^[2]

On May 18, 2006 it was reported^[3] that, given a file containing a phrase like "this app can break", 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. This can be done with any word, or phrase that fits into that place. The bug was considered to be an easter egg, but is not any longer.