This one is particularly interesting to me because I’m working out how or whether I can do the same with my .NETpad applications.

“The new Windows 11 Notepad uses RichEdit,” Microsoft principal software engineer Murray Sargent writes. “In addition to a Windows 11 look with rounded corners and a dark-theme option, the new Notepad includes several standard RichEdit editing enhancements, such as Alt+x for entering Unicode characters, Ctrl+} for toggling between matching brackets/parentheses, multilevel undo, drag & drop, color emoji, and autoURL detection.”

Sargent also explains how the refreshed Notepad emulates the drop-down Find/Replace dialog used by Visual Studio, and that the RichEdit control isn’t the one that comes with Windows but is rather the version that ships with Office, because that version has “the latest RichEdit improvements.”

“Imagine things that can be added given the power of RichEdit,” he adds. “RichEdit plain-text controls have only one paragraph format, but they can have considerable character formatting. It would be possible to offer program code syntax highlighting used, for example, in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Another option could be to display HTML, XML, JSON, and RTF files with indentation and toggle between XML/HTML start and end tags like Ctrl+} does for bracketed expressions, e.g., in JSON and RTF files.”

Or maybe just leave it the heck alone.

Thanks to Simon F. for the tip!