Re: My couple of missing features from Notepad:
"notepad's brain-damaged line-ending"
It's more broadly Microsoft's line-ending policy, and there is actually some reasoning behind it (believe it or not).
ASCII is originally based on the (7 bit Baudot code) character encoding originally used in teletype machines, which was still used for early line printers (this is why *nix shells are called tty's). A teletype required both a Carriage Return and and a Line Feed in order to move the print head to start typing the next line in the correct place on the paper (CR moves it back to the left, LF moves it down one line).
When computers stopped relying so much on actual teleprinters, they all adopted their own style of new line characters in text files. The *nix's, BeOS, RISC OS etc. went for just a LF. Windows, DOS, DEC, Atari TOS etc. kept the CRLF, whilst others went with a variety of other combinations (see here).
TL/DR Marking a new line in a text file is done in many ways across different OS's, all relating back to teletypes. Microsoft's is no more "brain damaged" than any other (except BBC Micros which used LFCR which is just BACKWARDS and WRONG).