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Show HN: NotepadJs – A cross-platform love letter to Notepad

(github.com)
145 points itkeman | 10 comments | 22 Jan 25 11:59 UTC | HN request time: 1.526s | source | bottom

As a native Windows user who switched to macOS a few years back, one thing I never got over was the simplicity and usefulness of the old school Notepad app. This app aims to recreate that very same experience, cross-platform and easily installable as a PWA.

I've been using this for personal use for around 2 years and I figured it was time to share it with the world. Criticism, issues and PRs are welcome. Thanks!

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JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B ◴[22 Jan 25 12:42 UTC] No.42792182[source]▶
What's wrong with TextEdit on macOS?

It's good that you made an alternative but it's not serious. I need to run Firefox, enable JS, reload the page, there is no "top menu" or install button, the open/save button does nothing, I can't choose my own fonts, and I guess it doesn't work if I don't have an internet connection.

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1. Ghoelian ◴[22 Jan 25 12:55 UTC] No.42792283[source]▶
KDE's KWrite is also available on macOS if you don't like TextEdit, as well as Kate which is more of an alternative to Notepad++, practically an IDE. Kate is my personal favourite text editor.
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2. npteljes ◴[22 Jan 25 14:17 UTC] No.42793075[source]▶
Kate is fantastic. I rarely touch the built-in software out of a bad habit, but this one turned this around. One of the things it's missing from Notepad++ is the ability to just close the editor, open it again, and get back the workflow exactly where it was, but unsaved files as well. Kate can do it via sessions, but I need to create a session, and then after re-opening, tell it to yes, open that one session.
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3. pferde ◴[22 Jan 25 15:02 UTC] No.42793529[source]▶
Can you run it as "kate --session MySession", with different sessions in different shortcuts, as needed?

There is also "Load last session" option in Kate's configuration, if you only ever use one session.

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4. npteljes ◴[22 Jan 25 18:08 UTC] No.42795751{3}[source]▶
Thanks, I'll check that out!
5. nottorp ◴[22 Jan 25 21:48 UTC] No.42797881[source]▶
> the ability to just close the editor, open it again, and get back the workflow exactly where it was, but unsaved files as well

Most text editors I use on MacOS do that, TextEdit included.

I'm only posting because I had come to think that's the normal behaviour, not an extra... haven't been using non mac os desktops too much in the past years.

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6. npteljes ◴[22 Jan 25 22:45 UTC] No.42798324{3}[source]▶
Definitely normal behavior, and also human, natural behavior. Things are where I left them last time.

I understand that in the 90s, disk space was a concern, and that disk operations were a big deal with moving parts, etc. But we really need to move on from this paradigm.

I just tested, and it looks like that "new" software does this on Linux, but "old" software didn't modernize. IntelliJ products, VSCodium does this, QOwnNote does it, Kate does it when I explicitly start a session (bit of a nonsense...), and no other software that I use does it: LibreOffice products, KWrite, Geany, GIMP etc all operate on the paradigm that when closing, it asks if it should save the draft document or no.

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7. nottorp ◴[23 Jan 25 08:35 UTC] No.42801988{4}[source]▶
Hmm incidentally the office-like apple applications seem to want an explicit save. I just started Pages, wrote a sentence in a blank document and it asked me if i want to save or delete it on exit...
8. Ghoelian ◴[23 Jan 25 15:27 UTC] No.42804934{3}[source]▶
TextEdit just asks if you want to save the file when you try to close it. Do you mean it keeps files if it crashes or something?
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9. nottorp ◴[24 Jan 25 08:56 UTC] No.42811581{4}[source]▶
And across machine restarts.
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10. Ghoelian ◴[30 Jan 25 09:16 UTC] No.42876240{5}[source]▶
Ah but I suppose that only works if you keep the "Reopen windows" thing checked? I think shutting down without that is the same as just quitting the app, which asks if you want to save (can't quickly test this out as I have to work on this laptop).

I always keep that disabled, I absolutely hate that kind of behaviour.