Notepad is a common text-only (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/rich text is copied from a web page and pasted 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 into a destination program, Notepad will have stripped all of the formatting. An alternative of this use is, however, provided in many word processors through the possibility to paste unformatted text, which may be easier to use with a little initial effort.
As an interesting aside, Notepad does support both left-to-right and right-to-left based languages, and one can alternate between these viewing formats by pressing and releasing the arrow key followed by Ctrl+Shift, using the right or left arrow and shift keys to go to right-to-left format or left-to-right format, respectively.
Notepad can edit files of almost any format; however, it does not treat Unix- or Mac-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 were almost no keyboard 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.
Notepad may be used as a text-based HTML editor for its pure simplicity and more control over WYSIWYG editors. However, because it lacks many features, such as syntax highlighting, web developers may favor more specialized editors for this purpose
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