TextEdit (in OPENSTEP/Rhapsody/Mac OS X)

[RacerX]

As some people may already know, I happen to think TextEdit is a great application and I've posted pages on my sites (Mac OS X version and Rhapsody version) discussing it's usage and features.

I had noticed the other day that someone who had linked to the Mac OS X version page had pointed out that it was dated (that page covers the 10.2 version). Plus Apple has added a bunch of new features in the 10.3 and 10.4 versions, so I decided to put up yet another TextEdit page (here).

So, what is different about this page from my previous pages?

I decided that TextEdit deserved a complete review of all it's versions... starting by looking at Edit in NEXTSTEP 3.3 and the first version of TextEdit in OPENSTEP (it is a demo app in the NextDeveloper directory). I then look at the Rhapsody version, followed by the Mac OS X Developer Preview (4) version, and then the 10.0/10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 versions.

I finished the page off by putting a ton of links to different resources I have found valuable in using TextEdit in all it's incarnations. These are at the bottom of the page.

It always seems like people dismiss TextEdit because it looks too basic and simple. Hopefully this page can provide a more complete reference on things that can be done with TextEdit and show what the app really has the ability to do.

[Mikuro]

Interesting. I have to admit, I never knew TextEdit was so powerful. So many of its features are buried a little, and I guess I never really looked at it with each new version of OS X. I never knew you could make tables. Heck, it took me a while to figure out how even after reading your page!

Maybe Apple really doesn't desperately need to update AppleWorks. No, we still need drawing, painting and spreadsheet.

Now if only I could figure out how to get a font menu! I've hated the font panel since I first used it. It just seems so backwards to me. All I want is a font menu and a size menu. Am I missing something? I hope so.

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by Mikuro

Now if only I could figure out how to get a font menu! I've hated the font panel since I first used it. It just seems so backwards to me. All I want is a font menu and a size menu. Am I missing something? I hope so.

There is a keyboard command for increasing and decreasing the font sizes.

As for a font menu, I use FontSight.

[Cat]

Now if it only had support for footnotes, I could actually use it ...

[simbalala]

Originally Posted by Cat

Now if it only had support for footnotes, I could actually use it ...

Yeah, then it could become be a fully bloated word processor and they'd have to come up with a new, quick, general purpose text editor.

Same old, same old.

The new features in the 10.4 version are nice and useful but there comes a point where it's time to stop the bloat.

[Cat]

Let me tell you a funny story about footnotes. Recently I had to convert a LaTeX document into something readable by MS Word. Now there are several ways to do that, depending on your necessities. The problematic point are footnotes. If you convert LaTeX to XHTML, all footnotes will become pseudo-endnote anchors and links, but there is a mystic way for the acolytes to convert it through OpenOffice. First you convert LaTeX to XML suitable for OO and then you can try to export it from OO to something Word likes. Smaller matters of formatting aside, footnotes tend not to get through, because they become (weirdly formatted) pseudo-footnotes with internal anchors, which are very unwieldy and lead to a host of problems and unintended consequences. For the absolute die-hard, you could also *gasp* export your OO document to Word 2003 XML, _which Word 2004 for the Mac does not support_ (!). Now the funny story is, and here we get back to the main topic, TextEdit _does_ support Word 2003 XML pretty well *except* for the frigging footnotes.

Morale: Word 2003 XML functionality is not supported by microsoft on the Mac, but is provided by OpenOffice. TextEdit can open any Word document I have throuwn at it, even when encoded in Word 2003 XML, except for footnotes. Crazy world isn't it? If TextEdit would support footnotes in all their bloaty glory, I could probably erase both OpenOffice and MS Office from my system, saving ~1GB of bloat. All I need is LaTeX to RTF with reliable footnote support. The LaTeX2RTF utility, while generating footnotes just fine, screws up almost all other aspects of conversion, such as bibliographic data and unicode. Sorry for the rant.

Praise to TextEdit for supporting Word 2003 XML, shame for still not doing footnotes.

[fryke]

I'd put the shame on _anything_ but TextEdit here, though, Cat. ... While I'd basically expect OOo, MS Office and LaTeX to find away of doing this, I'm perfectly un-surprised that TextEdit still doesn't handle footnotes.

[Cat]

I'm disappointed because TextEdit seems capable of doing so much (bloated) stuff, except the one dealbreaking thing that I need. It claims:

You can open and edit existing documents, even if they were originally created by a different application, such as Microsoft Word.

Except that it doesn't support all features of the format. It doesn't even try to generate some pseudo-footnotes, they simply *poof* disappear.

So, while it appears perfectly able to do almost anything that Pages can do with respect to embedding images and using fancy fonts, for me it is well nigh useless, as it doesn't support a very simple and basic feature like footnotes. I'm honestly impressed what it can do, for an app that you get free with the OS. I just wanted to point out something that might seem a minor flaw to others but is a major problem for me. The longer rant was just to illustrate the point.

Of course the latex conversion problem itself is not TextEdit's fault! But if it did support footnotes, I would have an easier time getting the job done. And seeing how it claims to support doc and rtf I was kinda hoping that it would indeed do that ...

Is footnotes _really_ such an advanced function? I don't think so ... especially when you're trying to be so active in the academic/education market it is quite essential.

Sorry for the long post. I'm just frustrated and disappointed.