Did you look into the preferences and try changing the format that it saves from rich text format to an ascii format (western MacOS I think, sorry not in front of a Mac at the moment)?
Not sure if that will work, but if you haven't given it a shot, it couldn't hurt.
Skimmed through the thread, so maybe someone mentioned this... I think a Carbon version of SimpleText is available in the Developer/Applications/Extras folder once you have Developer Tools installed. Someone could probably post it online for Bluesigns to try out.
*sigh* The level of incompetence in here is rising. \
Some important information for everyone:
1. SimpleText is NOT a plain text editor. It saves files with data and styles in the resource fork. Any other editor other than SimpleText will naturally have problems here. It is a GOOD THING that TextEdit forces a Save As because a simple Save would result in the loss of that information in the resource fork. It would seem you have already discovered this.
2. You *can* save a text documents as *.html and you *can* open them to view the raw code rather than the rendered content. I know this for a fact. I do it almost every day. Look in the Preferences and check "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files".
3. A Carbon version of SimpleText is indeed available. However, it has all the same limitations of the Classic version (such as the 32k size limitation) and uses the ugly QuickDraw text engine.
Oh yeah..I forgot about the Carbon SimpleText. That should fill the needs.
And TextEdit's prefs always fall out of my head! It's like I don't think they exist! I've seen them before, but I forgot to change that option. Oh well..
That's a really constructive post there, bluesigns.
I think TextEdit is fantastic. I use it for writing all of my reports and papers. I use it for code editing. I use it as a scratchpad for ideas (I think Stickies is ugly). The text looks great, it integrates perfectly with all services, drag-and-drop is a godsend, on Panther it reads and writes natively to Microsoft doc format (good for those idiot professors who think everyone owns Office), it's fast, it's lightweight, and best of all it's free.
For slightly heavier jobs where I want syntax-highlighting when editing code, I switch over to the TextEdit-like app SubEthaEdit (formerly Hydra).
Same here, Brad, Same here
I cannot take AppleWorks, mainly because of it is slow and not the best design. It lacks word count (needed for papers and such), so i made a little konfabulator widget that I can use with TextEdit.
For the SimpleText -> TextEdit : TextEdit creates a more cross platform file (the RTF, or if with pictures, RTFD) , SimpleText is old, and I see no reason to keep it around. Also, you can save as plain text in TextEdit, and all should be fine. Sorry, but these are the features that a text editor, not word processor will provide you.
I just tried it to see for myself. It doesn't put html tags in it (unless it's not supposed to). In Appleworks, it does, so I'm thinking that it should in TextEdit too. It wouldn't though.
Yes, this does get your file saved as an html file. But you already need to have it saved. What he wants, I'm thinking, is an option that says "Save as HTML..." and does that for you.
TextEdit is a text editor, and it works great as an HTML editor, too. You just need to type all the HTML into it for it too work. I've edited whole sites in TextEdit, because it's free and what I had on hand. I would have used Hydra, but none of the other people working on the site have a Mac.
Sometimes, I don't bother with HTML, and I just post it to the web in RTF. I only do this for notes and such, but its a quick and dirty way of getting things done.
Yes, I know the stuff in there is boring, but my chem teacher makes us put everything on the internet(at least I was able to talk her into letting me use my iDisk. Normally we have to use Yahoo Briefcase. She's smart enough to find the file on her own).
The best thing about TextEdit is that it's more than just a program, it's a component of the operating system that others can build upon. Take a look at great software like Nisus Writer Express -- a not-quite-there but promising new word processor -- or the invoice functions of iWork. They're extensions of the TextEdit toolset, but their core engine is TextEdit. Which is great, because that gives them access to the universal spell check dictionary, the text looks great, and can be saved in .RTF, and soon .DOC.
TextEdit is great because it's not the end all be all. It's not the end. It's not the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Actually, Kirkland, it's much simpler than that even. There's no such thing as a "TextEdit toolset". TextEdit is just another very simple app that takes advantage of several technologies built into Mac OS X. The spellchecker, for example, is available for free to all Cocoa apps as a service. Mail has it; Safari has it; tons of other apps have it. The great-looking text is simply from Quartz.
All Cocoa apps (such as Nisus Writer) get a lot of things "for free", saving the developers hassles and allowing them to focus on the more important core features. Apple even has a tutorial for Building a Text Editor in 15 Minutes. The actual written code is a mere 29 lines long!
One of the more interesting ways to implement these Cocoa text frameworks is (was) demonstrated in the now-orphaned TIFFany 3. Note the TextEdit toolbar in that sheet, and of course the font panel. The text entered is turned into a marquee that can be stretched, saved, etc. In this case, I already performed an action within the marquee area.
You guys really think it's a stretch to have B U I and a font menu in the toolbar? ? It's GUI sucks, face it.
Well, once you do that you start down the slippery slope to the realm of programs like Word, where toolbars consume half of the document window. Besides, keyboard shortcuts are even faster, and those are already there.
it's not as straight forward as it was in SimpleText but after saving as a non-appended .html and enabling the "ignore rich text commands in HTML files" i was able to both create and reopen .html files.
of course it appears on the desktop as an IE document which i imagine is because IE just happened to be the default browser at the moment i created this test document...but whatever.
thank you.
and thanks to others for suggestions et al.
but my main problem still persists:
how am i to have backward compatibility with the legacy systems on the network that are running OS9 and using SimpleText while both OS9 and OSX systems need access to the documents and need to be able to edit them?
there are literally thousands of SimpleText documents that need to be accessible from OS9 and OSX.
the root of my anger is that backward compatibility with SimpleText should have been a given for whatever default text editor Apple supplied for OSX.
i would venture to say that every mac user in the world uses or has used SimpleText.
this should have been a seamless migration and now it's a document management problem. and that costs me time and time equals...
Sure, a lot of people may have used SimpleText at some point, but with Classic Mac OS having been dead for almost three years now, I would venture that you are one in a very tiny and quickly shrinking minority that has so many "thousands" of SimpleText documents that still need to be read by both Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. A lot of Mac users have probably never even heard of SimpleText.
Regardless, as we've pointed out before, SimpleText is available on Mac OS X. If you so desperately need it, it's there for you. Use it.
On a personal note, I'm curious, in what business are you that has so many SimpleText files floating around?
I consider all software to be blamey unless it is properly configured!
Quote:
Apple comes with a "text editor" which is also an RTF application. As a text editor it is extremely good (a few emacs keystrokes, such as ^k and ^y, are silently included). However, I have to set it to make it most useful.
I change the default format to text, or else it will be a royal pain changing the document type every time a whim suits me to write a paragraph on something (which is often). I check the box "ignore rich text commands in HTML files" in order to open and edit HTML. (Except I use emacs for that, anyway.)
I do not want my spelling to be checked as I type, and so I uncheck that box. I also perform the strategic measure of setting the default plain text encoding for saved documents to Unicode UTF-8. Macintosh users should never curse the Internet with a file generated in Mac Roman, or for that matter, anything else except Unicode.
*sigh* The level of incompetence in here is rising. \
Some important information for everyone:
1. SimpleText is NOT a plain text editor. It saves files with data and styles in the resource fork. Any other editor other than SimpleText will naturally have problems here. It is a GOOD THING that TextEdit forces a Save As because a simple Save would result in the loss of that information in the resource fork. It would seem you have already discovered this.
2. You *can* save a text documents as *.html and you *can* open them to view the raw code rather than the rendered content. I know this for a fact. I do it almost every day. Look in the Preferences and check "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files".
3. A Carbon version of SimpleText is indeed available. However, it has all the same limitations of the Classic version (such as the 32k size limitation) and uses the ugly QuickDraw text engine.
All true. And don't forget Cocoa doesn't really deal with resource forks.
Oh yeah..I forgot about the Carbon SimpleText. That should fill the needs.
And TextEdit's prefs always fall out of my head! It's like I don't think they exist! I've seen them before, but I forgot to change that option. Oh well..
Carbon SimpleText, will nice to have, is not a grat port (like AppleWorks.)
Look at the resizing! It doesn't do it seamlessly like TextEdit (or Finder or iPhoto, etc.) does. Also, it uses the Font menu (not Panel), and being a rough port I doubt it uses the proper OS X text-handeling techniques. It also doesn't use the proper font-smoothing, nor does it support Services. It does selecting text weird compared to TextEdit. Although it uses sheets, it gets it wrong. They're not transparent, they only accept 31 letters, and the close button isn't disabled when they're active. And when quitting with only one document open, it doesn't use a sheet on that document; instead it uses a standard window. And when quitting with multiple documents unsaved, it doesn't let you review the changes indivually; TextEdit does.When dragging and dropping, it uses outlines instead of transparent text. It names it's clippings 'untitled clipping' instead of '[insert DnD'ed text here].' Bad SimpleText! And it still uses resource forks. It has no Window menu. The About box says it demonstrates features of the Carbon high-level stuff. Saying it tells developers how not to port an app is more like it.
I cannot take AppleWorks, mainly because of it is slow and not the best design. It lacks word count (needed for papers and such), so i made a little konfabulator widget that I can use with TextEdit.
For the SimpleText -> TextEdit : TextEdit creates a more cross platform file (the RTF, or if with pictures, RTFD) , SimpleText is old, and I see no reason to keep it around. Also, you can save as plain text in TextEdit, and all should be fine. Sorry, but these are the features that a text editor, not word processor will provide you.
Which app doesn't support Word Count? AppleWorks 6 does (Edit > Writing Tools > Word Count.)
Comments
Not sure if that will work, but if you haven't given it a shot, it couldn't hurt.
Some important information for everyone:
1. SimpleText is NOT a plain text editor. It saves files with data and styles in the resource fork. Any other editor other than SimpleText will naturally have problems here. It is a GOOD THING that TextEdit forces a Save As because a simple Save would result in the loss of that information in the resource fork. It would seem you have already discovered this.
2. You *can* save a text documents as *.html and you *can* open them to view the raw code rather than the rendered content. I know this for a fact. I do it almost every day. Look in the Preferences and check "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files".
3. A Carbon version of SimpleText is indeed available. However, it has all the same limitations of the Classic version (such as the 32k size limitation) and uses the ugly QuickDraw text engine.
And TextEdit's prefs always fall out of my head! It's like I don't think they exist!
Originally posted by Brad
That's a really constructive post there, bluesigns.
I think TextEdit is fantastic.
For slightly heavier jobs where I want syntax-highlighting when editing code, I switch over to the TextEdit-like app SubEthaEdit (formerly Hydra).
Same here, Brad, Same here
I cannot take AppleWorks, mainly because of it is slow and not the best design. It lacks word count (needed for papers and such), so i made a little konfabulator widget that I can use with TextEdit.
For the SimpleText -> TextEdit : TextEdit creates a more cross platform file (the RTF, or if with pictures, RTFD) , SimpleText is old, and I see no reason to keep it around. Also, you can save as plain text in TextEdit, and all should be fine. Sorry, but these are the features that a text editor, not word processor will provide you.
Originally posted by jwill
I just tried it to see for myself. It doesn't put html tags in it (unless it's not supposed to). In Appleworks, it does, so I'm thinking that it should in TextEdit too. It wouldn't though.
Yes, this does get your file saved as an html file. But you already need to have it saved. What he wants, I'm thinking, is an option that says "Save as HTML..." and does that for you.
TextEdit is a text editor, and it works great as an HTML editor, too. You just need to type all the HTML into it for it too work. I've edited whole sites in TextEdit, because it's free and what I had on hand. I would have used Hydra, but none of the other people working on the site have a Mac.
Sometimes, I don't bother with HTML, and I just post it to the web in RTF. I only do this for notes and such, but its a quick and dirty way of getting things done.
An example:
http://homepage.mac.com/ryantann/LabNotes.rtf
Yes, I know the stuff in there is boring, but my chem teacher makes us put everything on the internet(at least I was able to talk her into letting me use my iDisk. Normally we have to use Yahoo Briefcase. She's smart enough to find the file on her own).
TextEdit is great because it's not the end all be all. It's not the end. It's not the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Kirk
All Cocoa apps (such as Nisus Writer) get a lot of things "for free", saving the developers hassles and allowing them to focus on the more important core features. Apple even has a tutorial for Building a Text Editor in 15 Minutes. The actual written code is a mere 29 lines long!
Originally posted by Aquatic
You guys really think it's a stretch to have B U I and a font menu in the toolbar?
Well, once you do that you start down the slippery slope to the realm of programs like Word, where toolbars consume half of the document window. Besides, keyboard shortcuts are even faster, and those are already there.
it's not as straight forward as it was in SimpleText but after saving as a non-appended .html and enabling the "ignore rich text commands in HTML files" i was able to both create and reopen .html files.
of course it appears on the desktop as an IE document which i imagine is because IE just happened to be the default browser at the moment i created this test document...but whatever.
thank you.
and thanks to others for suggestions et al.
but my main problem still persists:
how am i to have backward compatibility with the legacy systems on the network that are running OS9 and using SimpleText while both OS9 and OSX systems need access to the documents and need to be able to edit them?
there are literally thousands of SimpleText documents that need to be accessible from OS9 and OSX.
the root of my anger is that backward compatibility with SimpleText should have been a given for whatever default text editor Apple supplied for OSX.
i would venture to say that every mac user in the world uses or has used SimpleText.
this should have been a seamless migration and now it's a document management problem. and that costs me time and time equals...
And say that every Mac user has used SimpleText is going a bit far. What about all the switchers to the Mac? They probably have never used OS9.
Sure, a lot of people may have used SimpleText at some point, but with Classic Mac OS having been dead for almost three years now, I would venture that you are one in a very tiny and quickly shrinking minority that has so many "thousands" of SimpleText documents that still need to be read by both Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. A lot of Mac users have probably never even heard of SimpleText.
Regardless, as we've pointed out before, SimpleText is available on Mac OS X. If you so desperately need it, it's there for you. Use it.
On a personal note, I'm curious, in what business are you that has so many SimpleText files floating around?
Originally posted by Aquatic
You guys really think it's a stretch to have B U I and a font menu in the toolbar?
So follow the tutorial that Brad linked to and build it yourself. It's not too hard.
Originally posted by bluesigns
why does TextEdit suck so much?
Hey, did you even configure it?
http://www.myersdaily.org/joseph/notes/configure.html
I consider all software to be blamey unless it is properly configured!
Apple comes with a "text editor" which is also an RTF application. As a text editor it is extremely good (a few emacs keystrokes, such as ^k and ^y, are silently included). However, I have to set it to make it most useful.
I change the default format to text, or else it will be a royal pain changing the document type every time a whim suits me to write a paragraph on something (which is often). I check the box "ignore rich text commands in HTML files" in order to open and edit HTML. (Except I use emacs for that, anyway.)
I do not want my spelling to be checked as I type, and so I uncheck that box. I also perform the strategic measure of setting the default plain text encoding for saved documents to Unicode UTF-8. Macintosh users should never curse the Internet with a file generated in Mac Roman, or for that matter, anything else except Unicode.
Originally posted by Brad
*sigh* The level of incompetence in here is rising.
Some important information for everyone:
1. SimpleText is NOT a plain text editor. It saves files with data and styles in the resource fork. Any other editor other than SimpleText will naturally have problems here. It is a GOOD THING that TextEdit forces a Save As because a simple Save would result in the loss of that information in the resource fork. It would seem you have already discovered this.
2. You *can* save a text documents as *.html and you *can* open them to view the raw code rather than the rendered content. I know this for a fact. I do it almost every day. Look in the Preferences and check "Ignore rich text commands in HTML files".
3. A Carbon version of SimpleText is indeed available. However, it has all the same limitations of the Classic version (such as the 32k size limitation) and uses the ugly QuickDraw text engine.
All true. And don't forget Cocoa doesn't really deal with resource forks.
Originally posted by jwill
Oh yeah..I forgot about the Carbon SimpleText. That should fill the needs.
And TextEdit's prefs always fall out of my head! It's like I don't think they exist!
Carbon SimpleText, will nice to have, is not a grat port (like AppleWorks.)
Look at the resizing! It doesn't do it seamlessly like TextEdit (or Finder or iPhoto, etc.) does. Also, it uses the Font menu (not Panel), and being a rough port I doubt it uses the proper OS X text-handeling techniques. It also doesn't use the proper font-smoothing, nor does it support Services. It does selecting text weird compared to TextEdit. Although it uses sheets, it gets it wrong. They're not transparent, they only accept 31 letters, and the close button isn't disabled when they're active. And when quitting with only one document open, it doesn't use a sheet on that document; instead it uses a standard window. And when quitting with multiple documents unsaved, it doesn't let you review the changes indivually; TextEdit does.When dragging and dropping, it uses outlines instead of transparent text. It names it's clippings 'untitled clipping' instead of '[insert DnD'ed text here].' Bad SimpleText! And it still uses resource forks. It has no Window menu. The About box says it demonstrates features of the Carbon high-level stuff. Saying it tells developers how not to port an app is more like it.
Originally posted by Nebagakid
Same here, Brad, Same here
I cannot take AppleWorks, mainly because of it is slow and not the best design. It lacks word count (needed for papers and such), so i made a little konfabulator widget that I can use with TextEdit.
For the SimpleText -> TextEdit : TextEdit creates a more cross platform file (the RTF, or if with pictures, RTFD) , SimpleText is old, and I see no reason to keep it around. Also, you can save as plain text in TextEdit, and all should be fine. Sorry, but these are the features that a text editor, not word processor will provide you.
Which app doesn't support Word Count? AppleWorks 6 does (Edit > Writing Tools > Word Count.)
Originally posted by ryaxnb
Which app doesn't support Word Count? AppleWorks 6 does (Edit > Writing Tools > Word Count.)
sorry, i had written post a tad incorrectly,
I wanted to say TextEdit doesn't, unlike AppleWorks which does