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WordPad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WordPad | |
 |
|
 A screenshot of WordPad in Windows Vista. |
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| Developer: | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Latest release: | 6.0.6000.16386 / November 8, 2006 |
| OS: | Microsoft Windows |
| Use: | Word processor |
| License: | Freeware |
| Website: | Microsoft Windows |
WordPad is a simple word processor that is included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 upwards. It is more advanced than Notepad, which is rather a basic text editor, but not at all as advanced as Microsoft Word. It originated in Windows 1.0x as Write.
It has facilities to format and print text, but lacks intermediate features such as a spell checker, thesaurus, support for tables etc. As such, it is suitable for writing letters or short authorships, but underpowered for such tasks as long reports (which usually rely heavily on graphics) or large authorships, such as books or manuscripts.
WordPad natively supports the Rich Text Format and uses Microsoft's RichEdit control, version 4.1 of which ships with Windows XP SP1 and later operating systems [1],including Windows Vista. Older versions also supported the "Word for Windows 6.0" format, which is forward compatible with the Microsoft Word format.
WordPad was introduced for the first time in Windows 95, replacing the Windows Write application, which came bundled with all previous versions of Windows (version 3.1 and earlier). The source code to WordPad was also distributed by Microsoft as a Microsoft Foundation Classes example application with MFC 3.2 and later, shortly before the release of Windows 95. It is still available for download from the MSDN Web site today.
To date, WordPad is the only officially supported Microsoft application (apart from Microsoft Word) that can read (or import) the WRI files produced by Windows Write. However, it cannot save files in the WRI format.
WordPad for Windows XP added multilingual text editing. It can open Microsoft Word (versions 6.0-2003) files, although sometimes with incorrect formatting. However, it cannot save files in the .doc format (only .txt or .rtf), unlike WordPad for earlier Windows versions. Windows XP Service Pack 2 disabled the legacy support for viewing .wri files (produced by the early version of WordPad, called Windows Write) for security purposes. In Windows Vista, support for reading Word files was removed because of the incorrect rendering and formatting problems. However, it supports speech recognition and the Text Services Framework (TSF). For viewing legacy (97-2003) as well as newer (Open XML) Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft has released the free Word Viewer.