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Ex-Microsoft engineer rebuilds Notepad in 2.5KB using nothing but stuff Windows already had
(www.windowslatest.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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Sure. I wasn't thinking of something like .kkreiger. I assumed that a small simple text editor would use a similarly small amount of memory. Shocked it ballooned so big. Sorry can't read the article at the moment.
Simply building without Crinkler compression changes the file size to 11 kiB and RAM usage to 1.7 MB. That's almost double what Microsoft's old Notepad (at a file size of 250-350 kiB, including an uncompressed multi-size RGBA icon of around 100 kiB and localization) uses but not bad, and probably the version most people will prefer for practical use.
It does some of the tricks that .kkreiger uses, including compressing the binary.
And at least according to a few reports, it uses 500MB of ram:
https://github.com/PlummersSoftwareLLC/TinyRetroPad/issues/21
Oh my god thanks for these memories
demoscene & 64K intro