Reading an .ini file with Notepad using Windows 10

A little earlier, I wrote:
Char Jackson wrote:
On 20 Jun 2018 14:46:26 GMT, Frank Slootweg
wrote:

Chris wrote:
[...]

Notepad++ is always the right solution

Notepad[++] is for WIMPs. Real Men (TM) use vi[m](1)!

WIMP - Windows Interface with Mouse Pointer? Windows Interface
Manipulation Program?

:-)

[In the off chance that you really don't know:
Windows Icons Mice Pull-down menus.
(For example https://www.google.com/search?&q=define+WIMP)]

Oops! My bad for taking the first hit - from the Oxford Dictionaries -
seriously.

It looked bad when I wrote it, because in my memory it was not worded
in such an illogical way. And, as nospam also mentioned, the correct
meaning is indeed much more logical:

Windows Icons Menus Pointer

On Wed, 20 Jun 2018 19:21:25 -0400, Nil
wrote:

On 20 Jun 2018, Ken Blake wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

Although I agree with you, I also agree with Mayayana. It's way more
that the vast majority of users of any text editor needs.

I don't think that's what he's saying. He seems to be saying it's
little or no more useful than Windows Notepad.


Yes. My point was that to the vast majority of users of text editors,
he's right.



I think that's silly.

"Paul" wrote

| It won't take too much more than the 900MB file.
| I didn't binary search to get an exact value.
| All I know is, a file twice that size, was rejected
| as "too much".

Only you would want to edit a 1 GB file.

It sounds extremely robust to me, opening 900+
MB and doing a find/replace so fast. That's the nice
thing about MS products. They have their own private
stock of API functions that they don't share with the
riff raff.

The XP Notepad window is of class "Edit", so I
assume that means it's a nothing-special text window.
Windows also has RichEdit, which is extremely fast
and functional. N++ uses an OSS edit control called
Scintilla. It seems to be something like a RichEdit
built from scratch. Interestingly, the docs for Scintilla

https://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html

say it includes all sorts of things, including an built-in
auto-completion popup. But the N++ author hasn't
bothered to fully implement it. If I enable auto-complete
and type I in an html file I get a list of I words that's
mostly nonsense: ID, IMG, IMGBURN, IRFANVIEW....
(I'm not kidding. That's actually what it gave me! Two
HTML tags and a bunch of random words picked up
on my system.)
Then there's no auto-completion where it would make
sense, for HTML attributes.

Scintilla looks like a very interesting product. Like
a RichEdit with extras. The author describes it as
a limited superset of Edit and RichEdit. They've added
things like semi-automatic color syntax highlighting
and dropped some things they consider unncessary.
I wonder how many well known editors are actually
just Scintilla wrappers.

"Ken Blake" wrote

| Yes. My point was that to the vast majority of users of text editors,
| he's right.
|

I'm curious what you use it for. You keep referring
to the "majority of text editor users" who won't
appreciate N++. Do you use it for some kind of
programming code? If so then I'm curious why
you've picked a general purpose editor and not
something more specialized. If not then what are
the small minority of text editor users doing that
they need a specialized editor?

On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 11:50:16 -0700, Franklin wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 13:22:12 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

I'm curious what you (replying to Ken Blake)use it for.


Occasionally for a batch file.

I used to be a programmer, but it's been many years since I last wrote
a program. And most programs I wrote were well before the PC days,

Several years ago, when I started coding web pages in html, I started
with notepad, but it's also been a long time since I created a web
page.



You keep
referring to the "majority of text editor users" who won't
appreciate N++. Do you use it for some kind of programming code?


The majority of text editor users never write programs. Mostly they
use a text editor just to write the occasional batch file, as I do.

Oddly, there are even a fair number of people (people who don't need,
or care about, formatting) who use notepad as a word processor, to do
things like write letters.




If
so then I'm curious why you've picked a general purpose editor and
not something more specialized.


I actually have Notepad ++ installed here and occasionally use it
instead of Notepad. But there's no real reason why I do that. For my
slender purposes, they are effectively the same.


If not then what are the small
minority of text editor users doing that they need a specialized
editor?


Writing program code.


Notepad++ is billed as a free source code editor and Notepad
replacement that supports several languages.

You (the generic you) can turn off all the programmer stuff and end up
with a fairly decent text editor.

For my use of a text editor, I need the capability to reformat
paragraphs - lines to a specified column length. One would think that
is a basic text editor function... missing from Notepad++.


Well, you asked. :-)

Ken Blake wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 11:50:16 -0700, Franklin wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 13:22:12 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

I'm curious what you (replying to Ken Blake)use it for.


Occasionally for a batch file.

I used to be a programmer, but it's been many years since I last wrote
a program. And most programs I wrote were well before the PC days,

Several years ago, when I started coding web pages in html, I started
with notepad, but it's also been a long time since I created a web
page.



You keep
referring to the "majority of text editor users" who won't
appreciate N++. Do you use it for some kind of programming code?


The majority of text editor users never write programs. Mostly they
use a text editor just to write the occasional batch file, as I do.

Oddly, there are even a fair number of people (people who don't need,
or care about, formatting) who use notepad as a word processor, to do
things like write letters.

If
so then I'm curious why you've picked a general purpose editor and
not something more specialized.


I actually have Notepad ++ installed here and occasionally use it
instead of Notepad. But there's no real reason why I do that. For my
slender purposes, they are effectively the same.


If not then what are the small
minority of text editor users doing that they need a specialized
editor?


Writing program code.


Notepad++ is billed as a free source code editor and Notepad
replacement that supports several languages.

You (the generic you) can turn off all the programmer stuff and end up
with a fairly decent text editor.

For my use of a text editor, I need the capability to reformat
paragraphs - lines to a specified column length. One would think that
is a basic text editor function... missing from Notepad++.


Well, you asked. :-)

Yep, Notepad is useful for basic text editings. I use it too. If I need
something more fancy or something doesn't work, then I use a better
editor like Word, OpenOffice, Notepad++, etc.
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Frank Slootweg wrote:
Chris wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Chris wrote:
[...]

Notepad++ is always the right solution

Notepad[++] is for WIMPs. Real Men (TM) use vi[m](1)!

In other OSes I agree with you. In windows it just feels like a contortion.

Yeah. For historical (hysterical?) reasons, I mostly use 'Command
Prompt' windows and Cygwin (Linux-like) tools. In that environment,
vi/vim is nice, if you're used to it. But I wouldn't recommend vi/vim to
Windows users who are not used to it.

So also this article is composed in vim and then posted with tin, a
CUI newsreader.

I still use tin too! I could never get into vi and vim. I use pico/nano.
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Quote of the Week: "At high tide the fish eat ants; at low tide the ants eat fish." --Thai Proverb
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/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
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"Ken Blake" wrote

| Oddly, there are even a fair number of people (people who don't need,
| or care about, formatting) who use notepad as a word processor, to do
| things like write letters.
|

I actually do that. When I want to just write, like
an essay or letter or webpage content, I start with
Notepad. I also use it for large emails, writing in
Notepad and then pasting to email. I rarely use a
word processor, except for estimates and contracts
that need to look official. It's just much bigger and
more complex than what I need most of the time.

| If not then what are the small
| minority of text editor users doing that they need a specialized
| editor?
|
| Writing program code.

I'd be surprised. I used to know a Perl fan who
liked Emacs, but I doubt there's much in the way
of specialized functionality for Perl, so that makes
sense. For most coding an IDE of some kind will
provide much better functionality. There are even
free options for most languages.

"Franklin" wrote

| For my use of a text editor, I need the capability to reformat
| paragraphs - lines to a specified column length. One would think that
| is a basic text editor function... missing from Notepad++.
|

That's an interesting point. I don't know of any
super duper plain text editors. N++ has a lot of
functions, at first glance, but it turns out most
of them are silly things like "Move up current line".
Converting case is useful once in awhile....

The only thing I see that I might really want as
a unique function is fixing carriage returns, to do
things like change a Linux text file to Windows
format, with Chr(13) Chr(10) returns.
But I have a drag-drop VBScript for that on my
desktop, which is much easier than having to
open things in an editor.

On 21 Jun 2018, Frank Slootweg wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

Mayayana wrote:
[...]
No. The cultists go nuts. People don't just say
they like N++ or command line. They get worked
up about it. See Frank's post. I rest my case.
He might be joking, partially.

Rest assured that I was joking, fully!

I thought it was obvious, but apparently not. I guess the twinkle in
your eye doesn't come thorough in straight text.

On 21 Jun 2018, Frank Slootweg wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

Yeah. For historical (hysterical?) reasons, I mostly use 'Command
Prompt' windows and Cygwin (Linux-like) tools. In that
environment, vi/vim is nice, if you're used to it. But I wouldn't
recommend vi/vim to Windows users who are not used to it.

VIM is the fastest text editor to use on my Windows systems. If I
were to use it consisitently enough to remember more keystroke
commands I'd use it more, but it's my first choice for for certain
things that I remember how to do.

I keep several text editors around. Each has its strengths and each
gets used where most appropriate. One size does not fit all.

Notepad++ gets the most use around here. That's obviously because I'm
trying to prove myself to be mas macho. ;^)

One of my other favorites is an obscure Win32 console editor called
Aurora. It does things that no other editors can easily do.
Unfortunately, the author abandoned it a long time ago, but I still use
it often. It still works in Windows 10!

"Nil" wrote

| Notepad++ gets the most use around here. That's obviously because I'm
| trying to prove myself to be mas macho. ;^)
|

I don't know if you were thinking of this, but your
comment reminded me of a weird, old Laurie Anderson
song. It was so offbeat as to be hilarious.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/laurie+..._20081583.html


"Que es mas macho -- lightbulb o schoolbus?"

On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 11:50:16 -0700, Franklin wrote:

[snip]

For my use of a text editor, I need the capability to reformat
paragraphs - lines to a specified column length. One would think that
is a basic text editor function... missing from Notepad++.

Well, no, it is not. It is a word processor function.

In fact, if such an reorganisation of some text happened to a
text file of mine, I might well be rather irritated.

When I have a natural language document to work with, I might
well appreciate such a function. I definitely want the modes to be
separated, as they were with early WordStar.

Well, you asked. :-)

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On 21 Jun 2018, "Mayayana" wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

I don't know if you were thinking of this, but your
comment reminded me of a weird, old Laurie Anderson
song. It was so offbeat as to be hilarious.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/laurie+..._20081583.html

"Que es mas macho -- lightbulb o schoolbus?"

Language is a virus, you know.

Franklin wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 13:22:12 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

I'm curious what you (replying to Ken Blake)use it for. You keep
referring to the "majority of text editor users" who won't
appreciate N++. Do you use it for some kind of programming code? If
so then I'm curious why you've picked a general purpose editor and
not something more specialized. If not then what are the small
minority of text editor users doing that they need a specialized
editor?


Notepad++ is billed as a free source code editor and Notepad
replacement that supports several languages.

You (the generic you) can turn off all the programmer stuff and end up
with a fairly decent text editor.

For my use of a text editor, I need the capability to reformat
paragraphs - lines to a specified column length. One would think that
is a basic text editor function... missing from Notepad++.

You're confusing it with a word processor. Although text editors can
function like word processors, that's not their main focus. Spell checking,
formatting, styles and fonts are superfluous to text editors and the domain
of WYSIWYG word processors or limited to markup languages like HTML or
markdown or latex. Text editors are perfect for markup languages.


Well, you asked. :-)