Notepad is a common text-only (also referred to as plain text) 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.
One notable feature of Notepad is that it does not support formatting of any kind - if text is copied from a web page and pasted it into a word processor, the formatting and embedded metadata comes along with the text, and can be difficult to remove. However, if text is copied from a formatted web site, pasted into Notepad, then copied again from Notepad before being pasted it into a destination program, Notepad will have stripped all of the formatting.
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.
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WordPad is a simple word processor that is included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 upwards. It is more advanced than Notepad, which is rather a basic text editor, but not at all as advanced as Microsoft Word. It originated in Windows 1.0x as Write.
It has facilities to format and print text, but lacks intermediate features such as a spell checker, thesaurus, support for tables etc. As such, it is suitable for writing letters or short authorships, but underpowered for such tasks as long reports (which usually rely heavily on graphics) or large authorships, such as books or manuscripts.
WordPad natively supports the Rich Text Format and uses Microsoft's RichEdit control, version 4.1 of which ships with Windows XP SP1 and later operating systems,[1] including Windows Vista. Previous versions also supported the "Word for Windows 6.0" format, which is forward compatible with the Microsoft Word format.
WordPad was introduced for the first time in Windows 95, replacing the Windows Write application, which came bundled with all previous versions of Windows (version 3.1 and earlier). The source code to WordPad was also distributed by Microsoft as a Microsoft Foundation Classes example application with MFC 3.2 and later, shortly before
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10:30 AM on August 26, 2008