Welcome to Tex-Edit Plus, my scriptable, styled text editor that fills the gap between Apple’s bare-bones SimpleText and a full-featured word processor! It is particularly useful for formatting text that is transmitted over the Internet. Tex-Edit Plus is small, fast, easy-to-use and requires little memory. Tex-Edit Plus is Shareware ($10).
With Tex-Edit Plus you can:
• Quickly create, edit and print styled text documents of any size (limited by RAM).
• View and print TeachText or SimpleText read-only (“ReadMe”) documents.
• Easily create TeachText/SimpleText read-only documents, including embedded pictures.
• View and print color PICT files, such as those produced by draw programs or
Apple’s built-in screen snapshot utility.
• Copy a selection from a PICT file, cropping the image for use in the company newsletter.
• View, edit and print text documents created by virtually any word processor or computer.
• Reformat downloaded e-mail or text, correcting word-wrap problems and removing
extraneous, non-Mac characters.
• Prepare text for upload to the Internet, so that people with Wintel or UNIX systems can
view the document as it was intended to be viewed.
• Instantly quote a brief passage from received e-mail, allowing the sender to remember
their original message.
• Explore the power of AppleScript.
• Read any text document aloud, if you have Apple’s Speech Manager extension. (Listen
to a SimpleText read-only file, for example, as the text and pictures scroll by!)
• Quickly optimize a document for printing, replacing generic, typewriter-era characters
with professional-looking typographically correct text.
• Create simple hypertext documents.
• Insert attention-getting sound annotations to spice up ordinary inter-office mail.
• And more…
Tex-Edit Plus is a MUT 1996 Shareware Awards winner. For further information, please check out: <http://members.aol.com/macutility/mut_awards.html>
Tex-Edit Plus is a winner of the MacUser 1995 Shareware Awards. For further information, check out: <http://www.zdnet.com/macuser/mu_1095/shareware_awards.html>
Tex-Edit Plus is a MacWorld Editor’s Choice recipient (Best Utilities, October 1997). For further information, check out: <http://www.macworld.com>
[To print this document, please turn off “font substitution” in the Page Setup dialog.]
Contents:
Drag & Drop spoken here…
Do you appreciate the ease with which the Finder allows you to shuffle application, document and folder icons? Have you mastered the System 7 trick of dropping a document onto an application icon, forcing that application to open the document? Do you like being able to drag text selections around in Microsoft Word? How would you like to be able to select any data in any program window and move it to any other program window as easily as you drag Word 6 to the trash? No cutting, no copying, no pasting, no program switching, no messing with data translations…
Apple’s wonderful Drag Manager technology takes the popular Drag & Drop functionality of the Finder and extends it to its logical conclusion. Drag & Drop is more intuitive, easier to learn and much faster than the clipboard. The Drag Manager allows data streaming, delayed delivery of data, and simultaneous transfer of multiple items (each of which can have a different data type). The Drag Manager also integrates with Macintosh Easy Open, providing automatic data type translation. The new Finder can even keep track of separate “clipping” files, providing the functionality of a multi-layer clipboard.
Drag & Drop is easily demonstrated using Tex-Edit Plus. First open or create a few short Tex-Edit documents and arrange the windows so they don’t totally hide one another. (See Figure 1.) Select (hilite) a word, then move the cursor over the selection. Notice how the I-beam turns into an arrow when over a selected block of text. This signifies that the selection is “draggable.” Now click and drag the selection. A gray outline of the selection will follow your cursor as it moves over the window. A blinking vertical “insertion marker” is visible at the tip of the arrow, indicating the target location. Release the button while still in the same window. Instantly, the original selection disappears and then reappears at its new location. Notice how inter-word spacing is preserved at the origin and destination sites (similar to “smart” cut and paste).
Figure 1. A “gray” selection outline follows the cursor. Note the flashing insertion point.
Since the dragged text is still selected, try dragging it to another Tex-Edit Plus window. When the cursor enters the new window, notice how the text area of the window “lights up.” (See Figure 2.) This signifies that the window is capable of receiving all of the items being dragged. Release the mouse button. An exact copy of the text now appears in the new window at the point it was dropped. Although the recipient window does not become active (come to the front), you can still tell where the text went, because background text selections are outlined.
Figure 2. The destination window “lights up” if it can accept the dragged items.
As a matter of fact, you can now click on the outlined text in the inactive window and drag it to one of the other windows, copying the selection without having to activate either window! (Try it.) Now go back to the front-most (active) window and drag the text selection within the same window while holding down the option key. Notice that this results in a copy operation instead of a move (just like in the Finder). Drag the text selection to the top or bottom of the active window and notice that it will “auto-scroll” to reveal the rest of the document.
The real fun starts for System 7.5 (and System 7 Pro) users when the text selection is dragged to the desktop. A text “clipping” will appear at the drop point. (See Figure 3.) Double click the clipping file to see its contents. Drag it back into any drag-savvy application window when you wish to use it. You can even drag multiple clippings simultaneously. (They are inserted into the text in the order in which they were selected in the Finder.) I keep a “return address” clipping on the desktop and drag it to the top of all my correspondence. It’s much faster than the scrapbook!
Figure 3. Drag a selection to the desktop to create a “clipping” file for later use.
Now sit back and experiment to your heart’s content. Try to figure out how and why windows become active during all this moving and copying. (It really is quite logical.) Try dragging a selection onto the menubar. If you happen to drop data on an area that cannot accept that particular data (such as this read-only document window), notice how the selection “zooms” back to its starting point. Try clicking in the middle of a selection. Try dragging a text document from the desktop to an open Tex-Edit window. Guess what happens when you drag a selection onto the Trash. If you have System 7.5.x (not 7.5.1) and want a real surprise, select these three words: secret about box and drag the selection to the desktop!
By now you’re probably thinking, “Golly this is neat. I just wish I could drag pictures around that easily!” Well, wish no more. Tex-Edit Plus allows you to drag pictures and sounds as easily as text. In fact, you can even drag combinations of various items. Life is good.
Drag & Drop is a wonderful technology that Apple has seamlessly integrated into System 7.5 and later. It is also available to the users of 7.0, 7.1, 7.1.1 (Pro) and 7.1.2 through the magic of the Macintosh Drag and Drop extension file. System 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 users can use the Clipping extension to allow the Finder to create clipping files. Inter-application dragging on System 7.1 requires an additional extension (the Dragging Enabler file).
Unfortunately, not all programs use the Drag Manager. Undoubtedly, more and more applications will become Drag Manager-aware as Mac users discover the power of this new technology and demand its addition to their favorite programs. Developers who ignore advanced features of the Mac operating system in an effort to maintain “cross-platform uniformity” do not deserve our support…
MS-DOS versus the Mac…
You may have noticed that your e-mail sometimes has funny little boxes at the beginning of each line. This problem arises because MS-DOS/Windows and the Mac have different opinions about line endings.
MS-DOS editors commonly use a character-based line width. When the cursor gets to the last (usually 80th) character position, the editor obligingly backs up to the beginning of the word being typed, inserts a CR (carriage return) and LF (linefeed character) and then carries the unfinished word down to the next line. This prevents lines from extending past the right margin and also prevents words from being split between lines. In a similar manner, most generic BBSs terminate each line with a single CR.
In the Mac world, text editors dynamically “word-wrap” at the right margin and do not insert any special characters until the end of the paragraph, at which point they insert a single carriage return. (See Figure 4.) When viewing a non-Mac file, therefore, the Mac user may note that each line is preceded by an empty box (signifying the terminating LF character from the preceding line). In a large window, the text may not extend to the right margin, and in a small window, there is usually an odd mixture of alternating short and long lines. The Mac thinks each line is a separate paragraph!
Figure 4. This looks like a job for the “Strip CR/LF” command (in the Modify dialog)!
You may have also noticed strange squiggles and misspelled words scattered throughout your downloaded text. (See Figure 5.) This is because the Mac and MS-DOS have different ideas about the use of the “upper” ASCII range. (ASCII is a standard convention used to define how all computers store alphanumeric characters.)
Unfortunately, the ASCII convention only specifies values for the first 128 (out of 256) characters. The Mac uses the remaining upper range of characters to hold diacritical markings, foreign characters, typographical (curly) quotes and a host of other goodies not found on a standard typewriter. As you might guess, MS-DOS uses those upper 128 characters for a completely different set of symbols.
Figure 5. Notice what happens to curly quotes, em dashes, ligatures, ellipses, etc.
Luckily for you, Tex-Edit Plus can easily handle all of these problems using the Modify dialog (see below).
Tex-Edit Plus versus other Editors…
You will discover that Tex-Edit documents lose all their style attributes, pictures and sounds when opened by other word processors (and vice versa). This is because most word processors use their own private method for storing character styles (font, size, color) as well as non-text embellishments.
Tex-Edit Plus can swap styled documents with America Online, Joliwrite, SimpleText and Stylus, since they all store style information in the same way. You have to rely on the clipboard (or Drag & Drop) to swap styled text with most other word processors. Curiously, at least one expensive word processor does not support Apple’s standard clipboard format for styled text. Go figure…
Apple Menu
About Tex-Edit Plus…
This displays the identifying number and release date of this version of Tex-Edit Plus. This information is useful when obtaining product support. The Help button activates the Help dialog which contains some interesting information, tips, tricks and shortcuts. Use the popup menu to navigate between the various topics.
File Menu
New
This opens a new blank document window. Up to 40 windows can be open simultaneously, depending on Tex-Edit’s memory allocation. To increase Tex-Edit’s memory allocation, enter a new “preferred size” in the Finder’s Get Info dialog box. You will need to add about 40K per extra window.
Open…/Open Any…
Use this command to pick the TEXT or PICT document you wish to open.
Figure 6. Holding down the option key lets you open anything!
If you wish to view a non-TEXT document, such as a Normal Word document, hold down the option key when choosing this command. (Technically, Tex-Edit Plus only opens the “data fork” of the chosen file.) You may notice some strange characters embedded in the text. (For example: “ 4 4 2Real Mac users do it with Tex-Edit”) These proprietary formatting characters are used by the parent program.
Have you forgotten the name of the file you’re looking for? Save time by using the “Show Preview” button to display the first few lines of each text file (or a miniature representation of the chosen picture file). This feature requires installation of the QuickTime extension.
Open Selection…
Want to be able to move quickly between related documents? You can create simple hypertext networks, using the main (root) Tex-Edit Plus document as a jumping-off point for a whole group of related documents. Select the word of interest and choose Open Selection to activate the “hyperlinked” document. (To demonstrate, try opening this document: Revision History.)
Figure 7. If the word “song” is selected, then Open Selection will play the song file.
The desired document (or its alias) must reside in the same folder as the root document. If the selected file cannot be found, Tex-Edit Plus will beep and display a standard Open dialog. If the selected file exists and is not a TEXT, PICT or SimpleText document, Tex-Edit Plus will open the document by launching its creator application. For example, if the desired document is an Excel spreadsheet, Tex-Edit Plus will launch Excel and Excel will display the spreadsheet.
Insert…/Insert Any…
Use this command to insert a bit of text from another document. The text from the chosen donor document is inserted into the active document at the cursor position, replacing any text that may be selected. The donor document is not affected. If you hold down the option key before choosing this command, you will be allowed to insert text from any file, including non-TEXT files.
Close/Close All
This closes the active window. You will be prompted to save any changes you may have made. If you hold down the option key, all document windows will be closed rapidly. Likewise, holding down the option key while clicking in the close box will close all windows rapidly.
Save/Save All
This saves any changes you have made to the file in the active window. Tex-Edit Plus displays a standard Save As dialog if the document has not yet been saved to disk. Holding down the option key will allow you to quickly save all open documents.
Save As…
This brings up the standard dialog for creation of a new text file on your disk. The File type pop-up menu allows you to choose the desired file format. Tex-Edit Normal is the default styled Tex-Edit Plus format. Tex-Edit Plain Text will create a Tex-Edit Plus document without any style information, thus saving a small amount of disk space (about 20%). Tex-Edit Read Only will create a styled document that can be viewed, read aloud, printed and copied from but not altered. (This is useful if you want a “ReadMe” file to remain unaltered.)
Figure 8. An oddly-titled document is about to be saved in WordPerfect format.
If you want to create a stationery pad boiler-plate, use the Stationery button. The Stationery button does not affect the file’s creator or format and can be used with any text file type. A stationery pad document will always open as “untitled,” so changes do not affect the parent template.
Tex-Edit Plus can also directly create Word, Word Perfect, MacWrite, WriteNow, SimpleText and America Online documents (as well as a few others). To create another type of document, select the Other option. This displays a dialog box that allows you to enter any 4-character creator code.
Tex-Edit Normal and Tex-Edit Read Only documents remember their size and screen position when saved. They will appear in the same place when reopened, if you have selected Documents remember size and position in the Preferences dialog.
A Sound file is a double-clickable System 7 sound document that can be placed in the System to be used as an alert sound, etc. Tex-Edit Plus can create such a file if you have used the Record Sound or Insert Sound command to insert a sound into the current document. The first sound in the document is used to create the new sound file. Likewise, use the PICT file type to create a normal picture file containing the first picture in your document. Saving as a sound or pict does not affect your original document in any way.
Revert
Did you make a mistake that even Undo can’t correct? This command will restore the last saved version of the active document. All changes made since the last time the file was saved will be lost.
Page Setup
Use the Page Setup dialog to adjust the appearance and layout of the printed page. The top portion of the dialog is printer-specific. (Use the Chooser to select the desired printer.) Tex-Edit adds a few special options to the bottom portion of the dialog.
Adjust the white space surrounding the printed text by entering the desired margin widths (in inches or centimeters, depending on the Preferences dialog). If the margins are set to zero, then your printer’s maximum printable area will be used. (The maximum printable area can sometimes be increased by selecting “Larger Print Area” in the Page Setup/Options dialog.)
Figure 9. Here, each page will have a 1 inch margin, be single-spaced, and numbered.
The “Double spaced” option creates double spaced printouts and the “Pages numbered” option prints a page number at the bottom of each page.
Each document has its own page setup settings. These settings are saved with the document. Choose “Save settings as defaults” to use the current margin, spacing and numbering settings as the default settings in new documents.
Tip: to avoid misaligned indents in printouts, leave “Font Substitution” off.
Print…/Print Selection…
This displays the standard Print dialog for the printer you have selected in the Chooser, allowing you to print the current document. Hold down the option key to print just the selected text.
Want to print front and back? Tex-Edit adds the option to print just the odd or even numbered pages. (First, print “odd only.” Next, turn the printed pages over and reinsert them into the printer. Finally, print “even only.”)
Print One Copy
Need to spit out a printed copy of the active document fast? This command sends a print command directly to your printer, bypassing the standard Print dialog.
Quit
This closes the Tex-Edit Plus application. You will be prompted to save any altered or unsaved documents before Tex-Edit Plus quits.
Edit Menu
Undo
This reverses your most recent editing action or style change. After you undo something, it can usually be redone if desired.
Cut
This removes the current selection to the clipboard, making it available for pasting into other locations or other documents. The clipboard holds the text as well as its “styl” information, making styled selections available to other programs.
Copy
This makes a copy of the current text/sound/picture selection and places it in the clipboard.
Paste
This moves a copy of the text/sound/picture in the clipboard to the current insertion point, deleting anything that may be selected. If you hold down the option key, only plain text will be pasted.
Clear
This erases the current selection.
Copy Unstyled
Sometimes it is convenient to move plain text (without any associated attributes, such as font, size or style). This command copies the plain, unstyled text to the clipboard.
Paste Unstyled
This command moves the clipboard’s text to the current insertion point, ignoring styles.
Select All
This hilites (selects) the entire document. If a PICT document is active, then the entire picture is enclosed in the selection marquee.
Insert Date
The current date is pasted at the insertion point.
Insert Time
The current time is pasted at the insertion point. The clipboard is not affected. Use the “Date and Time” control panel (System 7.1+) to alter the format of the date and time.
Insert Page Break
If you want to make sure that chapter headings always appear at the top of the page, use this command to insert a formfeed character. All subsequent text will print starting at the top of a new page. The formfeed character shows up as a little non-printing box.
Preferences…
Do you like to use 18 point Times, save all your documents in Word format and use curly quotes? The Preferences dialog allows you to preset many of these features and store your preferred settings in a “Prefs” file in the Preferences folder.
Figure 10. Easily customize many of Tex-Edit’s features.
The Preferences dialog has multiple “panels” which consist of logically-grouped options. Use the popup menu at the top of the dialog to select the desired panel. The Reset button will revert all settings in all panels to their factory default values.
Global Options:
1) Display splash screen at startup. If you wish to maximize launch speed and avoid seeing the beautiful Tex-Edit startup picture, turn this option off.
2) Use temporary (system) memory. Are you running into some unwanted “out of memory” messages when working with large documents? If this option is selected, Tex-Edit will attempt to use unallocated system memory instead of its own memory block (which is adjusted by choosing “Get Info” in the Finder). In most circumstances, this allows you to manipulate larger documents and also frees memory for other applications.
3) Offscreen (flicker-free) drawing. Do you ever notice a “flickering” effect as typed characters appear on the screen? Use this option to allow characters to be formed offscreen before they are moved smoothly into the text.
4) Enable Text Services Manager at startup. Some non-Roman script systems make use of “inline input” to enter multi-byte characters directly into the text. To enable inline input the next time Tex-Edit Plus is launched, turn this option on.
5) Enable WYSIWYG Font menu at startup. So, is Arial a serif or a sans-serif? Use this option to enable a WYSIWYG Font menu with embedded type specimens. (Requires OS 8 or newer.)
6) Startup action:___ This pop-up menu allows you to specify how Tex-Edit Plus behaves when first launched. If you normally like to create new documents from scratch, choose Show Blank Document. If you spend most of your time editing preexisting documents, then choose Show “Open…” Dialog. If you like having Tex-Edit Plus instantly available for text editing chores (and who doesn’t), use the Nothing option and place an alias of Tex-Edit Plus in the Startup Items folder (in the System folder).
Do you always start the day with four precisely-positioned, pre-formatted windows? Consider using the Run “Startup” Script option. If you place a script named “Startup” in the Scripts folder, it will run automatically whenever Tex-Edit is launched.
7) Measurement: Choose your preferred unit of measurement, inches or centimeters. This choice is used in the Page Setup dialog (margins).
Document Options:
1) Play first sound when document opens. If this is selected, Tex-Edit Plus will automatically play the first sound object embedded in each document as it is opened. Sounds can be attached to documents using the Record Sound or Insert Sound commands in the Sound menu.
2) Default justification. This popup menu specifies the text alignment used by generic documents and new blank windows. Normal Tex-Edit documents remember their previous alignment setting. Note that “real tabs” will only work when the text is left-aligned.
3) Default window size:___ This pop-up menu allows you to set the size of new windows. Full Screen windows will attempt to fill your main screen. (Note that the window cannot be wider than the “text wrapping width” setting described below.) The Custom (Top Window) option will make the default window size the same as the document window you are currently viewing. The Small, Medium and Large options match the size of the corresponding “text wrapping width” options (below).
4) Text wrapping width:___ To allow your text to automatically word-wrap to fit between the left and right sides of the window (like SimpleText), select Soft Wrap. This deactivates the horizontal scrollbar and may cause a delay when resizing windows containing a large amount of text.
If you always view BBS text of a given line width, several handy presets are available, allowing you to set the line width to exactly 60, 80 and 100 characters (if you are using 9 point Monaco). If you are writing source code and want each entry to stay on a separate line, select the Wide Open option. The Page Setup Size option will wrap the text to the page width specified in the Page Setup dialog, giving you a better idea how the printout will look. These options do not affect the document’s data, only the screen display.
5) Size/Font:___ These pop-up menus allow you to change Tex-Edit’s default font and font size. The default font and size are used when a new window is created or when a generic unstyled text file is opened.
Edit Options:
1) Shift-delete mimics forward delete key. If you don’t have an Extended Keyboard, but need the functionality of the forward delete key, check this box. Shift-delete will then delete the character following the insertion point, rather than the character preceding the insertion point.
2) Smart cut, paste and delete. In most cases, this option will save two keystrokes in the cut-and-paste cycle. Cutting a word from the middle of a sentence will leave only a single space, which is usually what you want. If you subsequently paste the word between two other words, Tex-Edit Plus will place a single space between each of the words. Likewise, the delete and forward delete keys will remove the selected word(s) as well as the extra space, saving one keystroke.
3) Smart (“”) quotes. If this is selected, typographically superior (“curly”) quotes will automatically be used whenever you hit the single or double quote key. You may wish to disable this feature if you are creating files to be sent to non-Mac systems, since they won’t be able to recognize these characters.
4) Quote Characters… Different languages use different characters to signify "plain" and “smart” quote characters. Luckily, you can customize Tex-Edit’s opinion of what constitutes a plain or smart quote. The desired substitutions are used whenever the Smart Quotes option is active, or when invoking the Smarten or Stupefy Quotes commands.
Save Options:
1) Change document “creator” to:___ If you want Tex-Edit Plus to save documents so that another word processor (e.g., Word) will open when the document is double-clicked, check this option and enter the appropriate 4 character creator code. (For example, Word’s creator is MSWD.) The Finder uses this code to identify the document’s parent application and icon.
If you wish to save files as Tex-Edit Plus documents, check this option and use TBB6 (Tex-Edit’s creator code). To open, edit and save a file without changing its parent application or icon, leave this option off.
2) Documents remember size and position. If this is selected, Tex-Edit Plus will restore a document’s previous size and screen position when it is reopened. This only works with Tex-Edit Normal and Tex-Edit Read Only documents. If this option is off, document windows will be evenly “staggered” as they are opened.
3) Documents remember text selection. This option makes it easy to start up again where you left off. When a document is reopened, the cursor will be at the same place it was when you last saved the document. This only works with Tex-Edit Normal documents. If this option is off, the cursor will always reappear at the beginning of the document.
4) Auto-save every ___ minutes. Ever spend an hour of diligent typing, only to have a helpful coworker trip over your power cord? This option will execute a “Save All” at whatever time interval (1-99 minutes) you select. This command is surprisingly unobtrusive and is highly recommended. If you never write anything of importance, please turn this option off.
Tab/Block/Print/Speech Options:
These preference panels are discussed individually in the Style Menu, Special Menu, File Menu and Sound menu sections respectively.
Special Menu
Find/Replace…
Suppose you wish to quickly locate a specific name in a long text document? Or, you want to update a document by replacing all instances of the year “1997” with the current year? The Find/Replace dialog allows you to locate any given text string and optionally specify a replacement string.
The Find button hilites the first occurrence of the desired string. (You may then use the Find Next or Replace & Find Again menu commands.) The Replace All button replaces all occurrences of the find string with the replacement string, then reports how many replacements were made.
Figure 11. Some commonly used, non-printing characters are displayed.
Perhaps you want to search for non-printing characters in order to manually clean up a passage of downloaded text. The small buttons labeled CR (carriage return), Tab, FF (formfeed/page break) and LF (linefeed) give you easy access to four commonly encountered invisible characters. (You may use the double caret ^^ to signify a single caret.) Use the convenient ASCII popup menu to enter any printable character (except ASCII 0 or 1) into your find or replace strings.
Or, maybe you want to “dress up” your document by making the first character of each paragraph 14 point Horstcaps. Change your mind and want to try 18 point Old English green? Luckily, Tex-Edit Plus offers a wildcard search character (the “Wild” button) as well as sophisticated tools for text style manipulation.
All searches start at the top of the document, unless you select the Start search at cursor position option. The Cases must match option forces Tex-Edit Plus to look for exact matches. Turn this switch off if you wish case to be ignored. (To properly find and replace words with foreign language characters/diacriticals, you must leave this switch on.) The Whole words only option limits matches to distinct whole words (i.e., looking for “the” will find “the” but not “them” or “mother”).
Need to look for the same string in all your documents at once? How about quickly changing your name in every open document? If Search all windows is selected, the Find and Replace All commands will affect all open documents. All switch settings are saved between Tex-Edit Plus sessions.
Both the find and replace text boxes have corresponding style popmenus. These popmenus allow you to independently set various style attributes. Entering “eagle” in the find text box and then choosing bold from the popmenu will “match” instances of the word “eagle” that are boldfaced (regardless of its font, fontsize and color). In a similar manner, the popmenu associated with the replace text will superimpose the chosen style(s) on the replacement text.
The Wild button inserts a placeholder (^?) into either the find or the replace string. A wildcard in the find string is ignored during the search process (i.e. the wildcard will “match” any other character, including non-printing characters). A wildcard in the replace string instructs Tex-Edit to pass over the corresponding character in the found text selection during a replace operation.
For example, if you search for “^?athy” you will find “Cathy” as well as “Kathy”. Likewise, you could search for “^?athy” and replace it with “^?atherine”, which would simultaneously change “Cathy” -> “Catherine” and “Kathy” -> “Katherine”.
Want to find the next URL in your document? Use the Wild Run button to insert a placeholder (^*) for a variable (0-255) number of characters. Searching for “<^*>” will thus find “<a.long@example.com>” as well as “<me@too.com>”. Only the first Wild Run placeholder in the find string is recognized.
If you want to change all the URLs you just found from blue to green, use a solitary Wild Run (^*) placeholder in the replace string and set the replacement color to green. In the replace string, the Wild Run wildcard serves as a placeholder for the entire found selection. During the replacement, the text of the found selection replaces each Wild Run wildcard.
This table demonstrates various wildcard searches:
Sample document text:
Time is the Enemy
Find the text: First match: Comments:
^? T Matches first character.
^? {italic} E Matches first italic character.
^?^?^? Tim First three consecutive characters.
T^?E the T and E separated by single character.
T^*E Time T and E separated by multiple characters.
M^*E me M and E separated by no characters.
^* Time is the Enemy Matches entire document.
^* {italic} Enemy Matches first run of italic characters.
H^* he Enemy Matches first “H” through end of doc.
^*H Time is th Matches all text up through first “H”.
This table demonstrates how a wildcard replacement operates:
Sample document text:
Time is the enemy
Find the text:
the
Replace with: Replace All result: Comments:
^? Time is t enemy Found text replaced by first letter.
^?^? Time is th enemy Replaced by first 2 letters of find str.
T^?Y^?^? Time is ThY enemy Superfluous trailing wildcards ignored.
^?^?^?IR Time is theIR enemy First three letters of match unchanged.
^* Time is the enemy No change, but can count occurrences.
^* {italic} Time is the enemy Set style of found text to italic.
ANO^*R Time is ANOtheR enemy
^* ALLY OF ^* Time is the ALLY OF the enemy
Find Again/Find Previous
This command allows you to continue searching for the next match. Hold down the option key to search backwards (for the preceding match).
Find In Next File
Can’t find what you want in the active document? Use this command to quickly search all the remaining open documents.
Replace & Find Again
This replaces the hilited word with the replacement string (from the Find/Replace dialog) and continues searching for the next match.
Enter Find String/Enter Replacement String
If you see a word in the document and wish to find its next occurrence, select the word and use this command to instantly copy the selection (up to 255 characters) into the Find/Replace dialog. Then use the Find Again command. Hold down the option key to copy the selection into the “Replace with:” field of the Find/Replace dialog.
Change Case
If someone sends you a file that is ALL CAPS, select the offending text and use this command to fix it. You can change all the selected text to uppercase, lowercase, title case or sentence case. Title case capitalizes the first letter of each word and sentence case capitalizes the first letter of each sentence.
Block Format
Quoting a brief passage from received e-mail allows the sender to remember their original message and thus the context of your reply. This command will convert the selected text into a marked, indented block format, suitable for use in outgoing e-mail.
> Here is a brief example of block
> formatted text with the line length set
> to 40 and block header set to “ > ”.
Block formatting may also be useful if you simply wish to emphasize a brief passage of text embedded in your document. The number of characters per line and the indenting header characters are set in the Block Options dialog. Notice that words are not split.
Block Options…
It is often useful to dramatically hilite a block of text or an e-mail quote. You can use this dialog to customize various attributes of the Block Format command (above). These settings are saved in the “Prefs” file.
Figure 12. Use the Leading/Trailing line to add a distinctive flair to your reply.
1) Leading line:___ To indicate the beginning of a new “block” in your block-formatted text, enter a few distinctive characters here. If blank, no leading line is inserted. Only the first 63 characters are used.
2) Line header:___ These characters will precede each line of the block-formatted text. You may use 0-15 characters.
3) Length:___ Enter the maximum character width of each block-formatted line (between 20 and 200 characters per line). Note that words will not split between lines.
4) Trailing line:___ These characters will be inserted on the line following the block-formatted text. If blank, no trailing line is inserted.
Quick Modify
This submenu provides convenient access to several of the Modify dialog’s most useful features. (Note that a selection from this submenu will alter the entire document, not just the selected text.) Most of these commands are explained in the Modify Document section (below), however three commands deserve special attention:
1) Strip LFs. Sometimes you download a file with funny boxes in front of each line. These boxes are actually linefeed characters that are inserted by MS-DOS systems. (They generally follow each carriage return to signify line endings.) Macs don’t use linefeeds. Use this command to remove all these useless characters from the document.
2) CRs->LFs (Mac->UNIX). This is handy if you wish to upload a Mac file to a UNIX system. UNIX systems use a single linefeed character (without a carriage return) to terminate each paragraph. This command converts all carriage returns into linefeeds.
3) LFs->CRs (UNIX->Mac). Use this command to quickly convert a downloaded UNIX or etext file into Mac format. All linefeeds are converted to carriage returns. Electronic–text (etext) documents are prepared by “Project Gutenberg” of the Illinois Benedictine College. Project Gutenberg is working to make a large number of public domain texts available as etexts.
Modify Document…/Modify Selection…
File transfers between Mac and non-Mac systems often result in frustration for users at both ends. The non-Mac users end up with split words and run-on paragraphs, while the Mac users are greeted by a screen full of little empty boxes and oddly wrapped lines. If you’ve ever experienced these problems, you’ve come to the right dialog!
The Modify dialog is Tex-Edit’s most complex and powerful feature. It allows you to globally change (munge) special characters in the text. If you only wish to modify a portion of the document, select the text of interest and choose Modify Selection. If you don’t like the resulting modifications, be sure to choose Undo before doing anything else. Tex-Edit Plus remembers the settings in the Modify dialog between sessions.
To convert a downloaded document to editable Mac format, first try Strip CR/LF. If this causes all the paragraphs to “run” together, then Undo and try Replace multiple space characters with Nothing along with Strip leading spaces, Strip trailing spaces, and Strip CR/LF. If a lot of nonsense characters are still visible, then try Strip control characters and Strip high ASCII.
Figure 13. Perform multiple, simultaneous modifications to “clean up” any file.
1) Replace multiple space characters with:___ Some files use runs of space characters to line up columns in a table or to separate paragraphs. This option will convert every run of two or more spaces into a Single Space (useful for normalization of word spacing), Tab (useful for tables), CR (useful if every paragraph starts with a run of spaces), or Nothing (for eliminating padding which might interfere with the Strip CR/LF command).
2) Replace each tab with ___ space characters. This is useful for creating tab-like text columns for use in non tab-aware programs. If this is selected, each tab character will be replaced with the specified number of space characters.
3) Strip control characters. If a downloaded document contains lots of little boxes scattered through the text, this option may help. It deletes all non-Mac control characters. Specifically, it deletes all characters with an ASCII value less than 32 (except for tabs, carriage returns and formfeeds, which are used by Mac programs).
4) Strip high ASCII characters. If your downloaded text is filled with “wrong” characters and misspelled words, use this option to delete all characters in the upper ASCII range (128-256). This option will strip many useful typographic characters (ligatures, ellipses, em dashes, curly quotes, etc.) as well as foreign language characters, so you should first convert (“stupefy”) any useful characters you wish to keep.
5) Normalize sentence spacing. Many people who learned to type on typewriters are still in the habit of following each sentence with two spaces. When using proportional fonts, it is typographically preferable to separate sentences using a single space. This option will change each instance of double space characters (following a sentence) into a single space.
6) Strip leading spaces. Would you like all your text to line up nicely along the left side of the window? Use this option to remove the spaces and tabs from the beginning of each line.
7) Strip trailing spaces. Use this option to remove the unnecessary padding (spaces and tabs) that some editors add at the end of each line.
8) Strip diacritical marks. Many foreign languages use accents, umlauts, cedillas and the like. If you wish to upload text that contains foreign characters, use this option to remove the diacritical marks from letters, converting them to their ordinary (English) equivalent.
Figure 14. Sample non-English characters and their English equivalents.
9) Quotes. The foot and inch marks (' ") are poor substitutes for typographical (curly) quotes, however they are all that most BBSs understand. Use this popup menu to replace all ordinary quote marks with typographer quote marks and vice versa.
10) Ligatrs. The two available choices allow you to replace all occurrences of “fi” and “fl” with the single-character typographer ligatures or vice versa. Note that some fonts do not have these ligatures installed, thus producing empty little boxes. As with the smart quotes, ligatures are usually not recognized by less intelligent computer systems.
11) Ellipses. This popup menu presents two choices, allowing you to replace all ordinary ellipses (three consecutive periods) with a typographic ellipsis character or vice versa.
12) Dashes. This popup menu presents two choices, allowing you to replace all ordinary twin dashes with a typographic em dash character or vice versa.
13) Line Endings. These various choices allow you to easily convert BBS or MS-DOS line formatting to Mac line formatting and vice versa. (See the section: “MS-DOS versus the Mac” above.)
Use Strip CR/LF to convert downloaded text to Mac-formatted word wrapping text. If this does not seem to “work” right, undo the modifications and try it again with Strip leading spaces checked (above).
In an effort to maintain proper paragraph separation, the Strip commands ignore all CR-CR, CR-tab and CR-space character pairs. You can also adjust the Min line length to preserve proper formatting for most tabular or blocked data (e.g. an address). A typical setting of 40 characters will ignore CRs on lines less than 40 characters in length.
If you wish to format text for upload to a BBS or non-Mac computer, use the Add CR/LF option and set the Max line length to about 60-80 characters (which easily fits on most on-line editors).
14) Reset. Use this shortcut to turn off all the selected modifications at once (resetting them to their default values).
Go To Line #…
If you are working with source code or a line-numbered legal document, use this command to jump to any specified line in the document.
Figure 15. Instantly select any line in the document.
This option is most helpful if you use the “Wide Open” text wrapping width (Preferences dialog).
Word Count…
It is sometimes helpful to know exactly how long your book report is so far. This command shows the word count, line count, character count, sentence count and paragraph count for the entire active document as well as the current selection. The page count is an estimate based on the current paper size selected in the Page Setup dialog. The character count is also continuously displayed in the lower left corner of each window, followed by the number of characters currently selected (hilited).
Word Services
Would you like to integrate a spelling checker (such as Spellswell Plus) into Tex-Edit? Use this submenu to add or delete any Word Services program (“service”). The services show up as menu items at the bottom of the submenu.
To add a service, you much first launch the desired service in the Finder. Then select the Get New Service command and choose the desired service from the dialog. Now, whenever you wish to use the service, simply select it from the Word Services menu. To remove a service, use the Remove Service command.
Font Menu
The font menu lists all the fonts available to Tex-Edit Plus. The current selection’s font is checked.
If you have OS 8 or newer, you can use the “Display typefaces in font menu” option in the Preferences dialog to show actual samples of the various fonts in the menu (WYSIWYG). This option can cause a noticeable delay if you have many fonts installed and little memory.
Size Menu
The size menu lists a selection of common font sizes. The current selection’s font size is checked.
Smaller
This decrements the current selection’s font size by one point. If the selection contains varying text sizes, then each of the various text sizes is reduced by one. The command keys are a useful shortcut for easily adjusting font size.
Larger
This increments the current selection’s font size by one point.
Other(_)…
If you wish to change quickly to an odd font size, use this command to select any point size between 1 and 256. Simply enter the desired value in the font size box (or use the arrow buttons).
Figure 16. A text sample is displayed at the given size.
The sample text is redrawn as its size changes.
Style Menu
Use the Style options to add a splash of color or emphasize important points. If you have a color-compatible Mac, then the standard color picker dialog is available in the Color submenu.
Justification
The Justification submenu may be useful for centering text on announcements or if you are using a right-to-left language script. The justification setting affects how the document is displayed and printed, but does not alter the file’s contents.
Full justification will flush-align both the left and right margins in the display and the printout. Default justification will set document alignment to match your system’s usual convention. Left justification (default Roman) is recommended for fastest performance and is required for use of real tab spacing.
Text Width
To allow your text to automatically word-wrap to fit between the left and right sides of any size window (like SimpleText), select Soft Wrap from the Text Width submenu. This deactivates the horizontal scrollbar and may cause a delay when resizing windows containing a large amount of text.
The Small, Medium and Large presets allow you to set the line width to exactly 60, 80 and 100 characters (9 point Monaco). If you are writing source code and want each entry to stay on a separate line, select the Wide Open option. The Page Setup Size option will wrap the text to the page width specified in the Page Setup dialog, giving you a better idea how the printout will look.
The text width setting is saved with each document.
Auto Indent
Are you creating source code for your latest program? This option automatically indents each new line of text when you hit return. Tabs and spaces are added to the beginning of the new line so that it matches the indent of the previous line.
Use Real Tabs
If you would like to use tabs to create columns and indents, select this option. It will enable tab spacing in the active document. The tab stops can be set in the Tab Options dialog. Turning this option on will force the document to be left-aligned while turning this option off will speed up file loading and window re-sizing. The state of this switch is saved with each document.
Tab Options…
This dialog allows you to fine tune tab handling in your documents.
Figure 17. New documents will open with tab stops already visible.
1) Tab keypress will insert ___ spaces. If you wish to create tab-like text alignment, but the recipient computer/software is possibly not tab-aware, select this option. With this option activated, pressing the tab key will result in the insertion of the chosen number of spaces (instead of a tab) into the text.
2) Real tabs on by default. If you want to easily line up columns of numbers or indent the first line of each paragraph, turn this option on. New or generic documents will open with Use Real Tabs enabled. Tabs are only displayed when a document is left-aligned.
3) Space (in points) between tabs:___ Tab stops (for real tabs) are equally distributed across the document with inter-tab spacing based on the number of pixels (1-120) you specify. Tex-Edit runs fastest when this value is a multiple of 16 (16, 32, 48, etc.).
Show Invisibles
If you are having trouble figuring out why the text is wrapped, spaced and indented the way it is, it may help to see the location of invisible characters. Select this option to display non-printing placeholders for the five common “white space” creators: returns, tabs, spaces, formfeeds (page breaks) and linefeeds.
Sound Menu
Read Entire Document
This command is remarkably helpful for proofreading documents, catching grammatical errors that elude both spelling checkers and tired eyes. It reads the entire active document aloud. The reading can be canceled or paused at any time.
Read Starting At Cursor
Use this command to begin reading at any arbitrary point in the document.
Read Selection
If you only wish to listen to a specific passage of text, use this command to read the selected text. The reading can be stopped or paused as desired.
Stop
This command immediately stops the reading session and any sound that may be playing.
Pause/Resume
This command temporarily pauses or restarts the reading session.
Turn Speech On/Off
This command activates the Speech Manager. It must be selected before any other speech-related commands are usable. Turning speech off will immediately stop all speech and sound playback and release any memory allocated for the Speech Manager. This switch setting is remembered between launches.
Speech Options…
Want to try a different voice or listen to a document read at double-speed? This dialog allows you to modify some of the Speech Manager’s speech characteristics. The Voice pop-up menu lists all the currently available voices. The Default selection will activate your system’s default voice (chosen in the Speech control panel). Notice that the “pro” voices are listed separately from the ordinary voices. Selecting a voice will adjust the Voice pitch, Speech rate and Modulation to that voice’s default setting.
Figure 18. Radical alterations of voice characteristics are easy.
Try experimenting with different rates and pitches to get the most pleasing results. The Sample button will cause a sample sentence to be read aloud.
Auto-Highlighting
Would you like to sit back and watch what is being read while Tex-Edit Plus proofreads your document? Choose By Word or By Sentence from this menu to have Tex-Edit Plus scroll each word/sentence into view and hilite it as it is read aloud. Background editing functions are disabled while auto-highlighting is active. This menu setting is remembered between Tex-Edit sessions.
Record Sound…
If you’d really like to “wake up” recipients of your document, try inserting an audible note! This command displays the standard sound input dialog for microphone-equipped Macs. Once you finish recording the desired sound, it is inserted at the current selection.
Figure 19. Six seconds (out of the available 27) have been recorded.
Sounds show up as distinctive icons which can be cut, copied, pasted, deleted, dragged and dropped (even to the desktop).
To play a sound, simply double click it. Try this one:
Insert Sound…
Would you like to be able to “pull” the sounds out of other applications and documents and use them for your own purposes (copyright laws permitting)? This command will display a standard dialog listing all sound-containing files. Choose a file and all of its sounds will be inserted sequentially into your document.
Windows Menu
All open documents are readily available using the Windows menu. Choose the document you wish to activate (bring to the front). The currently active window is checked.
Switch
Having trouble juggling several documents at once? Use this command repeatedly to “cycle” through all open documents.
Scripts Menu
If you’ve read all the way down to here and still don’t see a command that suits your needs, perhaps you need to create your own! It’s easy. (See the accompanying “WTHI AppleScript?” document or visit Doug Adams’ AppleScripts for Tex-Edit Archive web site: <http://www.malcolmadams.com/te/> )
The Scripts menu contains all of the compiled scripts that were present in the “Scripts” folder when Tex-Edit launched. The Scripts folder must be named “Scripts” and reside in the same folder as the Tex-Edit application itself. If the Scripts menu does not appear, you may need to install AppleScript. (AppleScript is installed automatically if you have System 7.5 or newer.)
To create a command-key shortcut for your favorite script, add backslash-something (e.g., “ScriptName\0”) to the end of the script’s name. The trailing character is used to create a keyboard shortcut for that command. To create a command-shift-key shortcut, use two backslashes (“ScriptName\\0”). To create a function key shortcut, append the name of the function key (F5-F15) to the backslash (“ScriptName\F12”). Just be sure not to pick a shortcut which is already in use.
Edit Script
If the script doesn’t do what you want, hold down the option key when selecting it from this menu. This will launch the Script Editor program, allowing you to tinker with the script to your heart’s content.
Miscellaneous
Window Ornaments
Do you need to keep close track of your document’s size? The numbers at the bottom left corner of each text window conveniently display the character (byte) count followed by the character count in the current selection.
The Internet Config extension will allow you to go to any location on the Internet by simply command-clicking on its URL from within Tex-Edit. Most URLs are bracketed (<example>) for easy identification. Try this one: <http://members.aol.com/tombb/> The Internet Config archive is available at various locations, including: <http://www.quinn.echidna.id.au/Quinn/Config/>
Replacing SimpleText
If you want Tex-Edit to open instead of SimpleText when you double click on a SimpleText document, you should first delete all copies of SimpleText and TeachText. Then open the Mac Easy Open control panel and uncheck the “Always show dialog box” and “Include applications on servers” check boxes, and check the “Auto pick if only 1 choice” check box. Then, click on Delete Preferences.
Next, create a startup set in Extensions Manager, with only Macintosh Easy Open active. Restart while holding down the Command and Option keys to rebuild the desktop. Restore your normal startup set in Extensions Manager, then restart again. Finally, double-click on a SimpleText document to bring up a dialog box that lets you choose Tex-Edit Plus as the substitute application.
An elegant shareware solution to this dilemma also exists in the form of Marco Piovanelli’s Default App control panel. It is available at: <http://www.merzwaren.com/da/>
Helpful Hints
Here are some simple hints and tricks to increase Tex-Edit’s usefulness:
• The watch cursor will spin during any time-consuming, interruptible operations.
Use command-period to interrupt the operation.
• Hold the option key down to edit any item in the Scripts menu.
• To edit the text in a TeachText, SimpleText or Tex-Edit read-only (ttro) document,
open a new blank window and use the Insert command—or simply select and copy the
entire document.
• Open any file by dragging it onto Tex-Edit Plus or its alias. (See “Limitations” below.)
• Insert any number of text documents by simply dragging the document(s) onto an open
Tex-Edit Plus window.
• To move a styled Tex-Edit Plus document into another word processor without losing
style information, use the clipboard to copy and paste the entire document.
• Triple click to select a line.
• Quadruple click to select a paragraph.
• Option-click on a close box to close all windows.
• To delete all occurrences of a string, use the Find/Replace dialog. Just leave
the replace field blank and choose Replace All.
• Count the number of occurrences of any given string using the Find/Replace
dialog. Enter a wild run placeholder in the Replace with box, then choose
Replace All and note the number of replacements.
• To see non-printing characters (tabs, CRs, etc.), use the ASCII fonts included with
this archive. (The ASCII font will show up at the bottom of the Font menu.)
• Tex-Edit’s PICT handling abilities are handy when it comes to cropping screen
shots (Command-shift-3) for use in other programs (e.g., Word). Just
click-and-drag a selection marquee and choose Copy.
• If you run out of memory during a PICT copy operation, try keeping the entire
selection marquee visible.
• If you start noticing slowdowns during editing operations, break your document
into “chapters” and use Tex-Edit’s convenient Windows menu along with its
ability to hyperlink between documents (Open Selection).
• If you notice a delay when opening or resizing large documents, make sure the
text is left justified and Use Real Tabs is off.
• In order to resize windows to any width (like in SimpleText), use the Soft Wrap
text wrapping width option (Preferences dialog).
• A SimpleText read-only document can be read aloud (if speech is turned on) by
choosing one of the Read… commands in the Sound menu.
• A document can be read in the background if Auto-Highlighting is off. You may
use all of Tex-Edit’s normal editing functions during the reading session.
• If you wish to create longer sounds, simply increase Tex-Edit’s memory
allocation (in the Finder’s Get Info dialog).
• To create an emphasized, indented, centered block of text (such as used to quote
brief poetic passages in a larger document), use the Block Format command with
the Block header (Block Options) set to all spaces.
• To “nest” quoted text (make a quote of a quote), use the Block Options dialog
to increase the max line length a little before issuing the Block Quote command.
• To avoid misaligned columns and indents in printouts, leave “Font Substitution” off
(in the Page Setup dialog) or use real tabs instead of spaces.
• All numeric dialog fields have up/down arrow buttons that allow quick adjustment
between allowable field values.
• Tex-Edit Plus is a “fat” binary program meaning that it runs at full native
speed on both the PowerMac and the 680x0 Mac. If you are really strapped for
disk space, you can reduce Tex-Edit’s program size by about 50% using a program
such as FatFree or Strip. This permanently removes the unused PPC or 68K code
from the application file. It does not affect program speed or RAM usage in any way.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Tex-Edit Plus makes full use of Apple’s extended keyboard including the forward delete, home, end, page up, page down and cursor keys. The F1-F4 keys invoke the standard undo, cut, copy and paste commands.
Moving the cursor:
• Option-left/right arrow moves the cursor one word at a time.
• Command-left/right arrow moves the cursor to the beginning/end of the line.
• Option-up/down arrow moves the cursor to the beginning/end of the page.
• Command-up/down arrow moves the cursor to the beginning/end of the document.
• Option-page up moves the cursor to the top of the previous screenful of text.
• Option-page down moves the cursor to the bottom of the next screenful of text.
Extending the selection:
• Shift-arrow extends a selection.
• Shift-option-left/right arrow extends the selection one word at a time.
• Shift-command-left/right arrow extends the selection to the beginning/end of the line.
• Shift-option-up/down arrow extends the selection to the beginning/end of the page.
• Shift-command-up/down arrow extends the selection to the beginning/end of the document.
• Shift-option-page up extends the selection to the top of the previous screenful of text.
• Shift-option-page down extends the selection to the bottom of the next screenful of text.
Miscellaneous keyboard shortcuts:
• Option-delete will delete the previous word.
• Option-forward delete will delete the next word.
• Enter/return will activate the default (outlined) button in dialogs.
• Esc/command-period will activate the Cancel button in dialogs.
• All other pushbuttons have command key equivalents based on the first letter in the
name of the button. (For example Command-d activates the Don’t Save button in
the “Save Changes?” dialog.)
• Command-period will also stop all sound playback, stop all speech and stop most
time-consuming operations.
• Command-up/down arrow will cycle through panels in the Preferences and Help dialogs.
Other Features
Tex-Edit Plus is 32 bit clean, stationery aware, drag manager aware, System 7 compatible, color compatible, big screen compatible, 68040 cache compatible and PowerPC native. (Tex-Edit Plus is a “fat binary” application, meaning it can run at full speed on either a PowerPC or 680x0 Mac.) Balloon help is available.
Tex-Edit Plus has an extensive AppleScript Dictionary (“aete” resource) and supports the Required, Standard, Text and Word Services Apple Event suites. It also supports many items from the Miscellaneous suite as well as a broad range of custom commands, classes and properties (Tex-Edit suite). See the “WTHI AppleScript?” document for further details.
Requirements
Tex-Edit Plus requires System 7.0 or better. To use the speech facility, you need Apple’s new Speech Manager extension. (The old MacinTalk no longer works.) To use the Drag & Drop function, you will need to use System 7.5 or place the Macintosh Drag and Drop extension in the Extensions folder. (See the “Drag & Drop Spoken Here” chapter for more details.)
To use the AppleScript and the Scripts menu, you will need to install AppleScript. (AppleScript is already installed if you have System 7.5 or better.)
Limitations
Tex-Edit Plus is made to handle files of unlimited size, although slowdowns will become noticeable when files exceed 500-1000K, depending on your computer’s processor speed. This compromise benefits PowerBook owners by keeping the entire document in RAM and minimizing disk accesses.
In unusual circumstances, it is possible to create a document that is so stylistically complex (many changes in font, size, style, color, etc.) that the text styles will be lost when the document is reopened. Normally, the speed problems associated with large, complex files will intervene long before this style limit is reached. If you need to create huge documents with many different styles, it is wise to break the document into manageable chunks.
To maximize its utility, I have given Tex-Edit Plus the ability to read the data fork of any file that it is forced to open (via a Finder drop or the Open Any command). It is unwise to try to open an application file, especially if it is running. (“Doc, it hurts when I do this…”) Never try to open a System file.
Likewise, do not try to insert a sound from an open application or System file.
When opening SimpleText read-only documents, Tex-Edit converts all of the original picture resources into real picture objects (which can be moved, copied, etc.). As a result, the pictures will no longer be automatically centered on the page when viewed in Tex-Edit. Instead they will be positioned in accordance with your text’s Justification setting.
About The Speech Manager
The Speech Manager extension and the MacinTalk Pro extension should be placed in the Extensions folder. All voice files should be placed in a folder named “Voices” in the Extensions folder. The Speech Manager only requires 150K of RAM and will function on practically any Mac, while the higher quality MacinTalk Pro voices require a lot more memory and processing power (700-2800K and 68020+). Tex-Edit Plus runs fine without the Speech Manager. The latest versions of the Speech Manager are distributed under the name “PlainTalk” in the form of a standard Apple Installer archive.
You can acquire the Speech Manager directly from Apple or from Quality Computers (1-800-777-3642). Quality Computers sells a low-priced package that includes a fascinating group of speech-related programs and utilities.
Trouble Shooting
It is easy to use all of Tex-Edit’s memory allotment while manipulating large color pictures or large sounds. If you see an “out of memory” message, try turning on Temporary memory (in the Preferences dialog). If you still are running short on memory, try increasing Tex-Edit’s memory allocation in the Finder. I would suggest at least 1200K if you plan on doing a lot of picture editing with a big color monitor.
If you have trouble with the speech functions, try increasing Tex-Edit’s memory allocation. The “high quality” MacinTalk Pro voices use the most memory. “Marvin” and “Fred” use the least.
If the speech functions still don’t work, or if you notice any other strange behavior while using Tex-Edit Plus, try deleting the “Tex-Edit+ Prefs” file in the Preferences folder. The Prefs file will be rebuilt from scratch the next time you use Tex-Edit Plus.
Similarly, it may help to delete the “Finder Preferences” file.
Some general problems are caused by a corrupted “Desktop” file. Try rebooting your computer with the option-command keys held down. (This is good general monthly maintenance.)
Some other general problems are caused by Extension conflicts. Try rebooting your computer with the shift key held down. You can also try turning off Use real tabs, turning off Temporary memory and/or turning off Offscreen drawing in the Preferences dialog. Lastly, try a “clean install” of your System.
Registration
Tex-Edit Plus is Shareware ($10). Payment may consist of an equivalent amount of foreign currency or stamps. (I love collecting foreign stuff!) My mailing address is:
Tom Bender
5313 Beverly Drive
San Angelo, Texas 76904
USA
Please include your e-mail address, if possible, so I can send you a message acknowledging your registration. If you would like a printed receipt, please send me a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
Registered owners are entitled to all updates, source code and product support. Registered users of previous versions of Tex-Edit are entitled to ownership of Tex-Edit Plus, of course. (Thank you for your support!)
Feel free to give Tex-Edit Plus (with this document) to anyone. You may use Tex-Edit Plus for as long as you wish (i.e., there is no time limit on the trial period). You are under no moral obligation to send in the Shareware fee and you are under no obligation to erase the program if you don’t pay the fee. Simply think of the Shareware fee as a much-appreciated way to encourage future development and to say “thank you!”
Source Code
Registered owners may obtain a copy of the Metrowerks CodeWarrior Pascal source code (for personal use) by sending a disk and a self-addressed stamped disk mailer envelope to the mailing address given above. Alternatively, I can transmit the source code via the Internet, if that is more convenient for you. The source code is well-documented and may be helpful for other amateur programmers.
Product Support
If you have questions, suggestions or bug reports, you may send a letter to the above address. For a faster, more convenient response, you can reach me via modem:
America Online: TomBB
Internet: tombb@aol.com
<mailto:tombb@aol.com>
I will keep the latest version of Tex-Edit Plus posted at my web or ftp site:
<http://members.aol.com/tombb/>
<ftp://members.aol.com/tombb/>
The latest version is also routinely posted on Info-Mac and America Online.
Other Products
Please also try Eliza (clinical psychologist), Re-Pete (memory game) and Azile (Eliza’s evil twin)! I will continue to support Tex-Edit 2.x, which is System 6-compatible and limited to 32K files.
Credits
I am grateful to the many users who have contributed to the evolution of Tex-Edit Plus, however I would especially like to thank E.J. Chichilnisky (for suggestions, feature development and extensive beta testing), Ramon Felciano (for development of the Mercutio MDEF, the power behind many of Tex-Edit's menu tricks), Martin Kimeldorf (for extensive help with the manual), Christopher Li (for localization and testing of the Japanese version of Tex-Edit Plus), Jean-Pierre Kuypers (for localization and testing of the French version of Tex-Edit Plus), Marco Piovanelli (for help with the code as well as development of the excellent WASTE text engine that allows large file handling), Michael Rohde (for the cool splash screen) and Ryan Schmidt (for bug detection and various suggestions).
Many thanks to Guy Kawasaki for his kind support and for letting the world know how great the Mac is! To subscribe to Guy’s ultra-popular EvangeList, send email to: <mailto:evangelist@macway.com>
Many thanks to Doug Adams for creating and maintaining the excellent AppleScripts for Tex-Edit Archive web site: <http://www.malcolmadams.com/te/>
Many thanks also to Bob LeVitus and Christopher Breen for their encouraging words and for letting folks know how to substitute Tex-Edit for SimpleText (MacUser 3/97).
Lastly, I wish to thank my loving Paula for putting up with me (and for occasionally allowing me to borrow her PowerBook).
