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

(github.com)
145 points itkeman | 7 comments | 22 Jan 25 11:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.899s | 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!

1. cutler ◴[22 Jan 25 13:34 UTC] No.42792624[source]▶
I don't get the nostalgia for NotePad - the most featureless piece of software ever invented.
replies(3): >>42792707 #>>42793440 #>>42797111 #
2. setopt ◴[22 Jan 25 13:41 UTC] No.42792707[source]▶
There's something to say for minimalism as a distraction-free mechanism. I've wasted a lot of time during my life reconfiguring Emacs or Vim, switching back and forth between various GUI note-taking apps, or tweaking my LaTeX preambles. The brutal minimalism of something like NotePad leaves you with less distractions.

I think it's the same reason I sometimes decide to leave the computer entirely and grab some pen and paper to really get things done.

replies(2): >>42792812 #>>42793487 #
3. eviks ◴[22 Jan 25 13:52 UTC] No.42792812[source]▶
When you can't even undo properly (while you're used to this in other apps), does this annoyance not distract you from whatever you're doing in the text editor?
replies(1): >>42793810 #
4. qwertox ◴[22 Jan 25 14:53 UTC] No.42793440[source]▶
I feel the same. If a text editor doesn't have at least multiple levels of undo, it's worthless. IDK if it even had redo.

There's been UltraEdit since 1994, SciTE since 1999, Notepad++ since 2003, the browser's address bar to remove formatting or just for holding some text...

5. Levitating ◴[22 Jan 25 14:57 UTC] No.42793487[source]▶
> There's something to say for minimalism as a distraction-free mechanism.

I think there's little credit to be given here. A text widget is part of any gui toolkit and there are hundreds of notepad like text editors. I think basically every DE on Linux has their own...

6. ◴[22 Jan 25 15:28 UTC] No.42793810{3}[source]▶
7. vunderba ◴[22 Jan 25 20:27 UTC] No.42797111[source]▶
Honestly, I also don't know anyone who has any fond remembrance of notepad. The majority of my friends on windows used notepad++ and then later sublime.

Just like how almost everyone I knew used Paint.NET rather than mspaint.