XPost: alt.windows7.general   
   From: V@nguard.LH   
      
   "R.Wieser"  wrote:   
      
   > IOW, it gets a signal someone tried to open a document with the same   
   > name it already has, but than blithely ignores al that information.   
      
   There is no "dirty bit" to identify a file has been changed after it has   
   been loaded in any process with a file handle on it.  When inside an   
   editor when you make a change, yes, there is a dirty bit to let the   
   editor there was a change to prompt you on exit to save changes.  That's   
   inside the editor, not back in the file system to notify every process   
   that has a file handle on the same file that there was a change.   
      
   An editor won't know if some other process has changed the file.  There   
   is no interprocess communication between your program and Wordpad to let   
   Wordpad know your program changed the file.  You want cooperating that   
   doesn't exist.   
      
   Wordpad has the ancient and nasty trait of reusing its buffer if the   
   filespec is the same as before.  28 years ago, Wordpad was not conceived   
   as an MDI (multiple document interface) editor.  Since the target didn't   
   change, it shows you what it already loaded.  Consider how long it would   
   take a new instance of Wordpad to load a changed file that was as large   
   as the maximum file size in NTFS.  Unlike modern editors that load a   
   portion of a huge file into a buffer, let's you view and edit that, and   
   then has to load more of the file into the buffer, Wordpad loads all of   
   the doc into a buffer.  Just because "Word" is in the "Wordpad" product   
   name does not mean Wordpad is as robust as MS Word.  Microsoft has been   
   conflating product titles for a very long time.  At around 16 MB,   
   Wordpad will get very slow to load a file that size.  Even MS Word 2010   
   had an upper limit of 512 MB on RTF files.  Wordpad doesn't have robust   
   error correction: when you open a huge file, corruption or tail-end   
   truncation may happen.  Just because Wordpad eventually gets around to   
   loading a huge document doesn't mean it should.  You can do a lot of   
   work in Wordpad, and lose a lot on a save/exit.  It's a crappy RTF   
   editor.   
      
   If you don't want something huge like MS Word to edit RTF files, and   
   since Wordpad is disappointing, look to something better to handle RTF   
   files.  I use MS Word, have used LibreOffice (LO), but back to MS Word   
   (too many functions missing or workaround in LO).  LO is free.  Some   
   folks like FreeOffice (Softmaker the parent) or WPS Office (the latter   
   had a reputation problem in the past for spying, but they changed).   
   AbiWord, TextMaker, and lots of other free choices.   
      
   You want to do more than Wordpad can do.  That means using something   
   other than Wordpad, or use workarounds.  Several have been mentioned,   
   but you mentioned taskkill at the start, and decided to stick with that.   
      
   > Its not about /automatically/ updating the contents of wordpad when the file   
   > changes, its about showing the contents of the file when the user   
   > double-clicks it (a manual action).   
      
   And that's what I did with Notepad.  I didn't say I saw the current   
   instance of Notepad showing changes in the file.  I said opening a new   
   instance of Notepad after changes were made to the file.   
      
   > As so often, my question is not only aimed at my current situation,   
   > but also at other, similar ones (trying to solve the problem at its   
   > root).   
      
   The root of the problem is Wordpad is 28 years old introduced back in   
   Windows 9x, has no command-line args (other than filespec and /p), and   
   won't do what you want.  Getting it to do what you want requires some   
   wrangling outside of Wordpad.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)