A Former Microsoft Developer Rewrites Notepad: Introducing TinyRetroPad, an Absurd (and Tiny) Editor

Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft developer with extensive experience dating back to the MS-DOS era, has unveiled TinyRetroPad, a text editor designed to reproduce the experience of the classic Notepad while maintaining extremely small dimensions. The application occupies about 2.5 KB, a value that highlights the optimization work done during development.

Plummer is known for contributing to numerous features of Windows, including the original version of Task Manager. After leaving Microsoft, he continues to share projects and insights through his YouTube channel, where he has also illustrated this new initiative.

TinyRetroPad derives from Dave's Tiny Editor, which is based on the tiny.asm project, created with the goal of making the smallest possible application for Windows. The new editor keeps the same minimalist philosophy, but adds some typical features of traditional Notepad, such as the presence of menus, without sacrificing compactness. All the software was developed using Assembly language.

Additional Details on TinyRetroPad

According to Plummer, TinyRetroPad primarily leverages the RICHEDIT50W control provided by the Windows APIs. Each additional component has been implemented with a focus on minimizing the impact on the overall weight of the program. To further compress the executable file, the Crinkler compression algorithm has been used, resulting in an extremely compact application.

The stated goal is to offer an editor that replicates the look and behavior of Notepad from classic Windows versions, being about a hundred times smaller than the version included today in Windows 11. Plummer noted that during his time at Microsoft, there was a distinct separation between the two historic tools of the operating system: Notepad was intended exclusively for plain text files, while WordPad was used for documents in RTF format.

According to the programmer, this separation should not have been altered. In his view, modern Notepad has become a platform used to experiment with new features, including capabilities based on generative artificial intelligence and even support for image insertion. Not sharing this evolution, he decided to develop TinyRetroPad as an essential alternative.