TextEditor
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Freeware Find: Bean
Departing TUAW blogger Giles Turnbull caught my attention in his recent list of favorite Mac apps. At the top of his list was an application called Bean, which had the unfortunate effect of causing me to think about Rowan Atkinson's comedy character (at right). As soon as the nausea wore off, I took a look at the app and found a lot to like.It's a rich text editor from developer James Hoover that is surprisingly powerful, very lean, and open source. It's the perfect in-between text editor, nestled somewhere east of Microsoft Word and west of TextEdit. It's small, fast, and easy to use.Features of Bean (the app, not the Mr.) include live word count, in-depth statistics, autosaves and dated backups, page layout mode, dictionary, word completion, and in-line graphics. If you feel a need to add some functionality to Bean, the Objective-C source code is readily available. Bean reads and writes .rtf, .rtfd, .txt, .html, and .webarchive formats, and can transparently import and export to and from .doc, .docx, .odt, and .xml formats. It can also export to .html, .pdf, .doc, and .rtf formats (the latter two with images intact).All I can say is that I can see why Giles likes Bean. It rocks!
Diamond, the rich text editor that thinks different
Diamond is a free rich text editor with a difference. Lots of differences, actually, which combine to make it quite appealing. Developer Geoffrey Alexander has recently released Diamond 3, which makes this an excellent time for you to download and give it a try. How is Diamond different? Diamond windows look different. Sometimes they're hardly there. They may or may not have title bars. They may or may not hover above a background (flat color, or photographic, it's up to you) that in turn hovers over everything else on your desktop. Text inside Diamond documents flows in columns. Word and character counts float unobtrusively below the windows, as if hanging in space. If you want them to. Aspects of Diamond's differentness are yours to tweak in the prefs, of course, so you can de-weird things if you feel the need. But that takes all the fun out of it. If I'm not making much sense here, I encourage you to take a look at the Diamond gallery or download the app to try it for yourselves. As Geoffrey himself once said: "Diamond isn't for everyone, and may not even be for anyone." But I rather like it, if only because it takes the mundanity of editing text and adds a bit of life that you don't find in other rich text editors.
SubEthaEdit version 3.0
SubEthaEdit is probably the original collaborative text editor on the Mac allowing multiple folks to work on a document at the same time over a local network or the internet. Now TheCodingMonkeys have released version 3.0 with a new custom file format that "stores collaboration metadata and history with QuickLook support." This means that you can save and resume a collaboration session and keep all the metadata about who did what, etc. There are a variety of other additions and fixes, not least of which is "improved Leopard compatibility."SubEthaEdit is €29 (~$41) and a demo is available (educational pricing also available).[via MacNN]
Smultron: open source tabbed text editor hits version 3.0
It's true, I admit it, I have a bit of a thing for tabbed text editors (I'm seeking counseling). Anyway, I've discovered yet another one. Peter Borg (who is also behind the very cool Lingon launchd utility) has just released version 3 of his Smultron open-source text editor (with vertical tabs). This update improves a lot of things, including project management, application speed, memory usage, and not least of all, the interface (the tabs themselves are not new). Though I won't be dropping TextMate anytime soon, Smultron definitely looks like an interesting entry in the free text editor sweepstakes.Smultron is a free download from sourceforge.
Forgedit: tabbed text editor
We posted a while back about the introduction of tabs into SubEthaEdit. I recently ran across another text editor that offers tabs called ForgEdit, which bills itself as the "programmers text editor for OS X." It seems to be a rather straightforward app with some decent, if not terribly innovative, features, such as customizable key bindings and a file drawer. I don't think it's going to make me give up TextMate, but if you're looking for an editor with tabs it's probably worth a look.ForgEdit is a free download while in beta, but will be $20 once it's released.
TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac
Some people balk at the idea of paying for a text editor. 'Doesn't OS X ship with a pretty good text editor called TextEdit,' they say. That is very true, but if you make your living creating text documents (whether they be code, blog posts, or content of some other kind) TextEdit just won't cut it.Enter TUAW favorite TextMate. This program is the swiss army knife of text processing. It includes a number of features that make coding and writing a breeze. It is a complex application, and as such the learning curve can be a little steep. The Pragmatic Programmers latest effort, 'TextMate Power Editing for the Mac,' hopes to turn you into a TextMate pro. Author James Edward Gray II shows the reader the ins and outs of TextMate, and teaches you how to get the most out of this great app.'TextMate Power Editing for the Mac' is available now. The physical book costs $29.95, the PDF version costs $20, and you can grab both for $37.45.
SubEthaEdit is Now Tabtastic
Quirky, but cool, collaborative text editor SubEthaEdit is out today with version 2.6, which adds everybody's favorite (relatively) new UI item: tabs. Of course the main reason to use SubEthaEdit remains its collaborative features, nonetheless the addition of tabs is definitely a strong secondary reason to consider it over text editors stuck with the older drawer paradigm for multiple documents. Personally, I'd really like to see TextMate follow this trend by divorcing tabs from projects. On a side note, I have to agree with Gruber that ???T should now universally belong to the "New Tab" Command (and not the fonts panel as is the OS X standard respected by SubEthaEdit and other applications).SubEthaEdit is $35 and a demo is available.[Via Daring Fireball]
Montage 1.0 released
Today marks the release of the final version of Montage, which we wrote about when it was but a mere beta. Montage is a professional quality screen writing program which includes a number of things you won't find in traditional text editors. Amongst these features are smart views, Final Draft importing, included industry contacts that you can spam 'contact' with your script, and a full screen mode.A 30 day demo is available and if you like it be prepared to shell out $139.95 for the full version.
SubEthaEdit hits 2.3
SubEthaEdit, the favorite collaborative text editor of many TUAWers, has just been revved to 2.3. The biggest change in this version is that the licensing structure has changed. There are no longer any free license of SubEthaEdit. The Coding Monkeys are trying to earn a living coding cool apps for the Mac, and to do that they... need to make money.Check out this post about SubEthaEdit sales that gives you an insider look into how sales are going, and what the guys behind the program want to accomplish.
Writely - The (free) Web Word Processor
C.K. told me about Writely a while back, and even when DownloadSquad blogged it in September it was available as an invite-only beta. Worse yet, it didn't (and still doesn't) like Safari. None of that matters now, however, as I just noticed that Writely seems to have opened its doors for all to come and play with a public beta. With how surprisingly cool this service is, I'll overlook the Safari incompatibility for now.What is this "Writely," you ask? Well, at face value it is an online, collaborative word processor with a wealth of extra bonus features such as full formatting support, blog publishing, tagging, multiple format exporting and revision checking. I am seriously impressed with all the features that are available and have already bookmarked it for my paper-writing ventures in Spring. Too bad 37signals' Writeboard doesn't have any of these fantastic features (hint hint guys), otherwise I'd be able to keep everything under one Backpack roof.One funny quirk about Writely: they're very open about how beta their service really is; once you sign in, a "Beta Meter" badge is placed on the right side of the toolbar. Nice.
