Windows XP in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Name

Notepad — \windows\notepad.exe

Synopsis

A rudimentary plain text editor.

To Open

Start → Program → Accessories → Notepad

Command Prompt → notepad

Usage

notepad [/p] [filename]

Description

Notepad is one of the simplest, yet useful tools included with Windows XP. Those familiar with word processors may find Notepad to be laughably limited at first glance, as it has no support for even the simplest formatting. However, the fact that it supports only text in the documents that it creates is an absolute necessity for many of the tasks for which it is used on a daily basis (see Figure 4-66).

Figure 4-66. Use Notepad to edit text files without the bother of a word processor

Among the file types Notepad can edit are .txt files (plain text files), .reg files (see registry patch files in Chapter 8), .bat files (see batch files in Appendix C), .ini files (configuration files), .html files (web pages), and any other ASCII text-based file type.

Notepad is the default application for .txt and .log files and is set up as the Edit context menu action for .bat, .inf, and .reg files, among others. Furthermore, via the /p command-line parameter, Notepad is used to print most text-based file types via the Print context menu action.

Notes

• In some previous versions of Windows, Notepad had a limit as to the size of documents it could open. The Windows XP version of Notepad has no such limit, and can be used ...