08 May 2018

It Only Took 33 Years………

Compared to peace in the Middle East, I would figure that fixing Windows Notepad to properly handle text files from other operating systems does not seem a heavy lift, but it appears that small startup software company Microsoft simply could not manage to marshal the resources to fix this for over three decades:
Windows Notepad users, rejoice! Microsoft's text editing app, which has been shipping with Windows since version 1.0 in 1985, has finally been taught how to handle line endings in text files created on Linux, Unix, Mac OS, and macOS devices.

"This has been a major annoyance for developers, IT Pros, administrators, and end users throughout the community," Microsoft acknowledged in a blog post today, without touching on why the issue was allowed to fester for more than three decades.

………
Nonetheless, the app is widely used and does elicit some passion. News of the change at Microsoft's Build developer conference on Tuesday prompted the loudest cheer of any of the announcements.

"We fixed Notepad," declared Kevin Gallo, head of Windows developer platform.

Notepad previously recognized only the Windows End of Line (EOL) characters, specifically Carriage Return (CR, \r, 0x0d) and Line Feed (LF, \n, 0x0a) together.
To paraphrase the great Lily Tomlin, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're Microsoft."

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