Halfway between the plain text editor and the word processor, or in other words, between Windows Notepad and Microsoft Office Word is WordPad, an application that has always been there, but that will leave if so, as it is becoming known. The reason? It has become obsolete…, although it is worth wondering if it has never been obsolete.
For more information, WordPad is a text editor that, like Windows Notepad, not only allows you to edit plain text files (.txt and even .markdown, although without the usual syntax coloring); It also does the same with documents with rich formatting, including support for RTF (Rich Text Format) and .doc.
In fact, that was the beauty of an application between two worlds like WordPad: it went beyond the simple text note, providing formatting options such as bold, italics, alignment, and even insertion of images, but little else. Those who only needed to make a quick note had Notepad and those who needed more features had Word. That’s why, perhaps, Microsoft got rid of it.
« WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future version of Windows. “We recommend using Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents such as .txt,” explains Microsoft’s briefing note.
It is worth mentioning that WordPad, despite continuing to be one of the pre-installed tools on every Windows system, has been optional for a long time. But even more important is, or so it can be understood, given that WordPad’s position in no man’s land comes from afar, the evolution that both Notepad and Word have had in recent years.
First of all, Notepad, the Windows Notepad, has maintained its essence of simplicity, although it has improved in details and in what are not details, such as the tabs function. On the other hand, the once “inaccessible” (yes, naughty, that’s why I put it in quotes) Microsoft Office is today available to anyone completely free via a web application. It is a shortened version of the Office suite, but more than enough for most users.
As it is, WordPad is redundant. Microsoft has stopped supporting it and, consequently, will remove it from the media without a specific date at the moment, but everything seems to indicate that it will be sooner rather than later. Do you remember WordPad? When was the last time you used it?