After 33 Years, Notepad Finally Displays All Text Files Properly

Notepad has been around equally long as Windows, originally shipping with Windows 1.0 style back in 1985. However, it's taken Microsoft 33 years to fix i of Notepad's nearly annoying problems: it can't brandish all text files correctly.

While that may sound ridiculous, it has been a frustration for anyone attempting to open up a text file in Notepad that was created on a Unix, Linux, or macOS organization. The text output is garbled, and information technology's all because of line endings.

As Microsoft explains on its developer web log, until now Notepad supported text documents containing iii types of line catastrophe characters. They are Windows End of Line (EOL) characters, Railroad vehicle Return (CR), and Line Feed (LF). If the text document uses those, the output in Notepad will be perfectly formatted.

Text documents created in Unix, Linux, or macOS use different line catastrophe characters. When you effort and open them in Notepad y'all come across a garbled mess of text like that shown above.

The latest Windows x Insider build contains the updated version of Notepad complete with boosted line endings back up. The text editor can at present handle Unix/Linux line endings (LF), Macintosh line endings (CR), and Windows line endings (CRLF), so all bases are covered. The status bar will even show you which line endings the file uses.

If for some reason supporting more than line endings isn't desirable, Microsoft allows you to disable information technology in the Windows Registry. Simply navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad] and set fWindowsOnlyEOL to 1. After that, non-Windows text files will go on to be displayed in garbled form.