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- TidBITS#327/06-May-96
- =====================
-
- The big news this week involves licensing: Apple gets Java from
- Sun Microsystems and announces plans to integrate it into the
- Mac OS, and IBM gets the Mac OS from Apple. Also in this issue,
- information on Power Computing's new high-speed Macs, Tonya takes
- a look at the new HTML authoring tool PageSpinner, and Sean
- Peisert reviews a collection of tools almost everyone has to
- use: text editors.
-
- This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
- * APS Technologies -- 800/443-4199 -- <sales@apstech.com>
- Makers of hard drives, tape drives, and neat SCSI accessories.
- For APS price lists, email: <aps-prices@tidbits.com>
- * Northwest Nexus -- 206/455-3505 -- <http://www.halcyon.com/>
- Providing access to the global Internet. <info@halcyon.com>
- * Power Computing -- 800/375-7693 -- <info@powercc.com>
- Now shipping... The Award-Winning First MacOS Compatible!
- Press comments! <http://www.powercc.com/News/quotes.html>
- * America Online -- 800/827-6364 -- <http://www.aol.com/>
- The world's largest provider of online services.
- Give Back to the Net -- <http://www.aol.com/give/>
- * EarthLink Network -- 800/395-8425 -- <sales@earthlink.net>
- Providers of direct Internet access for Macintosh users.
- For eWorld refugees: no setup fee! <http://www.earthlink.net/>
- * DealBITS: New deals on Macs, tools, software, and more! <-- NEW!
- <http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/> -- <dealbits@tidbits.com>
-
- Copyright 1990-1996 Adam & Tonya Engst. Details at end of issue.
- Information: <info@tidbits.com> Comments: <editors@tidbits.com>
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Topics:
- MailBITS/06-May-96
- Apple Licenses Java
- PageSpinner Spins Into View
- Text Editors - Getting Your ASCII In Gear
-
- <ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1996/TidBITS#327_06-May-96.etx>
-
-
- MailBITS/06-May-96
- ------------------
- Tonya and I are deep into working on the fourth edition of
- Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh, which means that we're likely
- to be less responsive to email for a while.
-
- If you're the author of a freely distributable freeware or
- shareware Internet program, I'd like to consider your program for
- inclusion on the CD that will come with the book. The same goes
- for commercial Internet programs with freely distributable demos.
- So, if you'd like to submit your program for inclusion on the CD,
- check out the Web form at:
-
- <http://www.tidbits.com/iskm/cd_form/cd_submit_form.html>
-
- Similarly, if you are an Internet service provider (anywhere in
- the world) that supports PPP and would like to be included in the
- book and installer, send email to <iskm-providers@tidbits.com>.
- We'll collect names and send out more information when we have a
- Web signup form posted. [ACE]
-
-
- **IBM Gets Wide-Ranging Mac OS License** -- As noted in
- TidBITS-324_, IBM today announced an agreement with Apple allowing
- it to sell PowerPC processors along with a Mac OS sub-license to
- any manufacturer. As noted, IBM does not appear to plan to
- manufacture Mac clones, but instead to sell reference design
- specs, licenses, and logic components to other manufacturers who
- will make PowerPC Platform machines. Those manufacturers, in turn,
- can choose to develop Mac clones and license the Mac OS directly
- from IBM, without having to enter negotiations with Apple.
- Datatech (DTK) Enterprises and Tatung are expected to announce
- plans to sub-license the Mac OS from IBM; other manufacturers have
- already announced third-party products for the PowerPC platform
- that would help system manufacturers build Mac OS computers for
- the PowerPC Platform. Also, rumor has it that IBM plans to drop
- OS/2 in favor of the Mac OS. [GD]
-
- <http://www.ibm.com/News/ls960506.html>
-
-
- **PowerTower & PowerCenter** -- Power Computing announced two new
- lines of Mac clones last week, including a machine that qualifies
- as the fastest single-processor Mac available. The PowerTower line
- sports a PowerPC 604 processor running at a dizzying 166 or 180
- MHz in a mini-tower case with three PCI slots, a minimum of 16 MB
- of RAM, and four drive bays. The PowerCenter line features a 120,
- 132, or 150 MHz PowerPC 604 in a low-profile (120 MHz) or desktop
- case, with three PCI slots and a minimum of 8 MB of RAM. Pricing
- for PowerTowers starts around $3,800, PowerCenters around $1,900.
- Tests so far show that the PowerTowers edge out Apple's high-end
- Power Mac 9500/150 by five to fifteen percent, even though they
- can't use memory interleaving, being based on the 7200 motherboard
- design (which is currently the only one that can crank a PowerPC
- 604 above 150 MHz). As with previous models, Power Computing
- machines ship with a keyboard, a significant software bundle
- (including Speed Doubler on the PowerTowers), and a 30-day, money-
- back guarantee. [GD]
-
- <http://www.powercc.com/>
-
-
- **WebHead Update** -- No sooner do I write an article on recent
- Web browser updates (see TidBITS-326_) than it's, well, out-of-
- date. Netscape released version 2.02 or Navigator last week
- (primarily fixing security problems); NCSA released 3.0b2 of
- Mosaic, and beta 4 of Apple's Cyberdog is now available (if you
- have a Power Mac and OpenDoc). [GD]
-
- <ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/navigator/2.02/mac/Netscape2.02Installer.hqx>
- <ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/Mac/NCSAMosaic30b2.hqx>
- <http://cyberdog.apple.com/>
-
-
- **Quicken 6 R7** -- Intuit has release R7 of Quicken 6.0 for
- Macintosh, which is supposed to address limitations of Quicken's
- online banking features and "a few" other problems reported by
- customers. The download ranges from 1.2 to 3.4 MB, depending which
- version you need. [GD]
-
- <http://www.qfn.com/quicken/technical-support/quicken/releases/
- qfm6-releases/>
-
-
- Apple Licenses Java
- -------------------
- by Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>
-
- Apple announced last week it has licensed Sun's Java programming
- environment, joining the massive list of current Java licensees.
- Apple says it plans to integrate Java into its operating systems
- (including the Mac OS, the Newton, and Pippin) as well as in media
- and Internet technologies, including Cyberdog. Apple is not alone
- in planning to put Java into its operating systems: Novell,
- Microsoft, SGI, IBM, and others have announced similar strategies.
- One has to wonder what impact this announcement might have on
- developers currently bringing Java to the Macintosh, considering
- how long it will be before Java support is available directly from
- Apple.
-
- <http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1996/q3/
- 960430.pr.rel.java.html>
-
- As a cross-platform application technology, one of Java's
- nightmare scenarios is that it could cause all rules of interface
- and functionality to be thrown out, regardless of the client
- platform. (If you think Microsoft applications bend Apple's Human
- Interface Guidelines now, wait until you see Java-based
- applications from Microsoft and other vendors!) In response, a
- campaign is underway to convince Sun to integrate OpenDoc into
- Java as an interface library. OpenDoc is already a relatively
- mature technology (compared to Java), and was built with cross-
- platform interfaces and application design in mind. If you plan to
- do Java or OpenDoc development, the idea is worth checking out.
- [GD]
-
- <http://summary.net/~breck/java-opendoc.html>
-
-
- PageSpinner Spins Into View
- ---------------------------
- by Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>
-
- The world of shareware Web authoring tools recently gained a new
- member in the form of PageSpinner, a $25 shareware program from
- Optima System in Sweden. PageSpinner requires System 7 and wants
- 1800K of application RAM. It works on any Mac with a 68020
- processor or better, but Optima System recommends a 68040 or
- PowerPC-based Mac for working with larger files. You'll also need
- a color or grayscale monitor, 640 by 400 pixels or larger. The
- current release of PageSpinner is 1.0.4, but I'm reviewing 1.1b1,
- which adds a number of features. 1.1b2 may be out by the time you
- read this article.
-
- You can download the latest version of PageSpinner from Optima
- System's Web site. The latest version may also be available on
- Info-Mac.
-
- <http://www.algonet.se/~optima/pagespinner.html>
- <ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/text/html/page-spinner-104.hqx>
-
- PageSpinner resembles HTML Web Weaver/World Wide Web Weaver from
- Miracle Software, and strikes me as targeted at the same audience
- - people who don't need heavy-duty site management features, and
- who don't mind learning HTML but want help with tags and syntax. I
- also see these products as excellent starter tools for people
- learning HTML. (For more about Miracle Software's offerings, see
- TidBITS-317_).
-
- PageSpinner introduces some new features and ideas I haven't seen
- often (or at all) in other Web authoring programs. In particular,
- whenever a tagging command appears on a menu or in a dialog, an
- icon next to each tag not part of HTML 2.0 indicates whether the
- tag comes from HTML 3.0 or Netscape. PageSpinner also comes with a
- number of handy templates, which you can select and preview in the
- New Document dialog box. This nicely done dialog helps you set up
- background and text colors, background tiling, and more.
-
- PageSpinner has a toolbar, but - unlike many of today's action-
- packed toolbars - it includes blank space between groups of
- reasonably large buttons, making it easier to use than most. More
- interestingly, PageSpinner offers an HTML Assistant floating
- window that you can optionally leave open. The HTML Assistant can
- assist you with about twenty tasks, including making links,
- creating tables, and setting up form interfaces.
-
- Each HTML Assistant task comes with an Example button. Clicking
- the button presents you with the HTML Examples dialog, which
- offers a number of mini-templates for elements like lists and
- tables. (For some tasks, such as tables, it offers multiple
- templates; for others, such as forms, it offers none.) You can
- preview the templates visually and as HTML code, and copy the code
- from the Example dialog into your document. What's so great about
- HTML Assistant and HTML Examples is that they help you figure out
- not only what commands are in the program but also how to employ
- them effectively. In this way, PageSpinner pushes people up the
- HTML learning curve.
-
- Another common limitation of PageSpinner-like Web authoring tools
- is a 32K file size limit; PageSpinner supports larger files.
-
- Like many Web authoring tools, PageSpinner shows text and HTML
- tags in its document window. The text shows with some
- representation as to how it will appear on the Web (headings look
- big, bold text appears bold, etc.). Tags appear in a dark gray
- color, making them easy to distinguish from text. You can set the
- default font and size for both tags and text.
-
- Unlike a number of similar Web authoring tools, PageSpinner's tags
- are discrete objects - they never look the same as body text. You
- can set PageSpinner so tags may be edited, so tags may be edited
- but not deleted, or so tags may not be modified in any way. If you
- type tags of your own into PageSpinner, it recognizes and converts
- them into discrete tag objects.
-
- Similarly, if you open a non-PageSpinner-native HTML document, you
- can issue the Restyle command to convert your tags to PageSpinner
- tags. The Restyle command also works on PageMill documents brought
- into PageSpinner via the program's new PageMill conversion
- feature. The PageMill conversion offers some flexibility for
- correcting <BR>-related problems, but it won't "pretty print" text
- (align it nicely). (Adobe plans to fix the <BR> problem in
- PageMill 2.0, due out in July; see TidBITS-325_.)
-
- PageSpinner 1.1b1 sports improved and useful table features both
- for creating tables from scratch and for converting tab-delimited
- text. (If you do make a table in the Assistant, use the Table menu
- to add additional tags or to modify the table!) The new version
- also now supports relative links and handles anchoring correctly.
-
- To access PageSpinner's documentation, you use its Apple Guide,
- available via the Help menu. The documentation is well-written,
- but I'd like to see it expanded even more. I'd also like to see
- additional HTML examples - I was recently delving into the world
- of HTML forms and would have appreciated a few examples.
-
- I haven't completely covered every aspect of PageSpinner - at the
- rate it's improvements spin out, the program is difficult to pin
- down. Also, I've neglected PageSpinner's Find/Replace, Web Tools
- menu, and several other helpful features. Hopefully, you have the
- idea that it's not a perfect program, but has much to offer in
- both unique features and a feature set for people who want to
- dabble with HTML or who want a program to boost them up the HTML
- learning curve.
-
-
- Text Editors - Getting Your ASCII In Gear
- -----------------------------------------
- by Sean Peisert <speisert@ucsd.edu>
-
- Many Macintosh users are only vaguely familiar with text editors,
- since SimpleText opens our text documents and we configure our
- machines with control panels and thus rarely need to edit
- configuration files. Even so, the explosion of the online world
- has created a strong demand for tools to read and edit text-only
- (ASCII) documents, since ASCII is the standard for most online
- written material, from news postings and email to ReadMe files,
- FAQs, and HTML.
-
- You can open text files in a word processor, and for a lot of
- people that's fine. However, text editors are often a more
- effective alternative. Text editors bear some resemblance to word
- processors (they let you create, read, and edit documents), but
- they aren't primarily concerned with fonts, graphics, special
- characters, margins, or printed output. Instead, they're designed
- to let you manipulate text files in useful ways.
-
- This article provides an overview of good, commonly available text
- editing tools. All these editors are top-notch programs, though
- some may suit your purposes better than others. Just because an
- editor is not included doesn't mean it isn't good, just that we
- didn't have space to include it. Similarly, this article doesn't
- cover two popular "monsters" of text editing - Alpha and the
- commercial version of BBEdit - which deserve reviews unto
- themselves.
-
-
- **Things to Look For** -- When selecting text-processing tools,
- there are some factors to keep in mind. The first is whether the
- program can open files larger than 32K. This limit is the one of
- the main deficiencies of Apple's SimpleText, and though it isn't a
- problem for some files, many FAQs and other online documents are
- larger than 32K. All the programs here can open files larger than
- 32K.
-
- One complaint about older text editors was a lack of support for
- "soft wrapping." No more - all of the editors here support soft
- wrapping, which is what most word processors do. (When a line of
- text reaches a margin or other preset limit, the program moves
- remaining text to the next line without altering the string of
- characters.) Hard wrapping, conversely, inserts a carriage return
- at the end of each visible line, breaking the lines "by force."
- Most email, news postings, and other online documents (including
- TidBITS issues) must use hard wrapping.
-
- Different operating systems (Unix, DOS, and Mac OS) end hard
- wrapped lines differently. By default, the Mac uses a carriage
- return, Unix uses a linefeed character, and DOS uses both. Each of
- these editors deals differently with line wrapping and converting
- a file from one method to another; you'll want to select a tool
- that meets your needs.
-
-
- **BBEdit Lite 3.5.1**, a freeware editor, is the smaller cousin of
- Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 3.5.1, a commercial text editor.
- Originally designed for programmers, BBEdit has evolved
- significantly over the years. BBEdit has now split into two
- programs (one commercial and one freeware). The differences
- between BBEdit 3.5.1 and Lite 3.5.1 are covered extensively in the
- ReadMe file distributed with BBEdit Lite.
-
- <http://www.barebones.com/>
-
- BBEdit Lite lacks features many other editors have these days -
- such as drag & drop - and it's not scriptable. The newest
- incarnation of BBEdit Lite, however, supports soft wrapping and
- contains some Power Mac-native code. BBEdit Lite is one of the
- fastest editors around - its launching speed has to be seen to be
- believed, taking a mere three seconds to open a 900K file. (I used
- a Power Mac 6100/60AV, with plenty of RAM, System 7.5.3, and
- Connectix's Speed Emulator from Speed Doubler for my tests, with
- Power Mac-native or fat versions of programs whenever possible.)
- This blazing speed is four to six times faster than some of the
- other editors reviewed here.
-
- BBEdit Lite has a small disk footprint, takes up a meager amount
- of RAM, and is Apple event-aware, so it can be used in conjunction
- with an application like Anarchie to view text documents. BBEdit
- Lite does not integrate directly as an editor for programming
- environments such as CodeWarrior or Symantec C++.
-
- BBEdit Lite achieves its light RAM footprint by using system
- memory. If you open a document which would exceed BBEdit Lite's
- allocated memory, it asks the system for memory outside of BBEdit
- Lite's application partition. (Many applications do similar things
- with sounds or QuickTime.) If the memory is available, BBEdit will
- open the file without difficulty, so you can keep BBEdit's memory
- partition small and still work with large files.
-
- BBEdit Lite is not devoid of cool features. Its powerful search
- engine supports grep expressions and multi-file searches. (In
- addition to searching for words, grep lets you search for complex
- patterns. Typical search engines can only look for words or
- phrases.) BBEdit Lite has a "balance" feature that identifies
- unbalanced sets of parentheses, braces, and quotes (handy for
- programmers and HTML writers).
-
- Much of BBEdit Lite's power is built into BBEdit extensions. These
- extensions don't go in your System Folder; instead, you install
- them in a special folder provided by BBEdit and then choose them
- from a menu within BBEdit. Extensions have been written for a wide
- variety of tasks, such as HTML composition, inserting the date or
- time, sorting lines, and speaking text. These extensions make
- BBEdit Lite a more powerful tool than it first appears.
-
- <ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/text/bbe/>
-
-
- **Emacs** -- This port of GNU Emacs from Cornell University is
- exactly what you would expect from the GNU Emacs editor.
-
- <ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/parmet/>
-
- GNU Emacs is a widely-distributed text editor originally developed
- by the Free Software Foundation, with ports available for the
- Macintosh and PC, along with most flavors of Unix and other
- operating systems. Emacs uses "modes" which alter the keystroke
- bindings (what commands are "bound" to particular keys) and the
- way the editor functions. Modes are available for C programming,
- HTML authoring, standard text editing and many other purposes.
- This modularity makes Emacs one of the most versatile editors
- available.
-
- This Mac version of Emacs doesn't require special keystrokes for
- basic use, but the keystroke bindings are what makes Emacs so
- powerful. Using Emacs to full advantage means memorizing over a
- hundred keystrokes, but you can learn along the way. This Mac
- version contains everything from the text editor mode of Unix
- Emacs (except email, news, and shell capabilities) and adds a few
- extra features. By default, text windows are light grey, making
- long hours in front of the monitor a little less tedious on the
- eyes. (All the colors used in the program can be edited.) Like
- most of the editors reviewed here, Emacs transparently supports
- Unix, DOS, and Mac ASCII formats. Since normal Emacs requires the
- use of "control" and "meta" modifier keys, Mac Emacs let you
- assign any modifier key to the role of control or meta.
-
- Emacs's performance can be astounding. As a test, I tried
- replacing 2,088 occurrences of "from" with "to" in my 900K
- outgoing mail file. Emacs found and replaced all occurrences in 1
- second, BBEdit Lite in 9 seconds, Plaintext in 62 seconds, Style
- in 3.5 minutes, and Tex-Edit Plus in 4 minutes and 45 seconds.
-
- Regrettably, in the end Mac Emacs's Unix roots make it non-
- graphical and hard to learn. For instance, an Emacs window doesn't
- have a scrollbar, and doesn't allow text selection with the mouse.
- Emacs will interface with CodeWarrior, which is great for
- programmers who grew up using Emacs on Unix systems. The current
- version of Emacs for the Mac aligns itself with version 18.59 on
- the Unix side. The current version on the Unix side is version
- 19.x. The author of the Mac port has said that he would like to do
- a version 19.x port but we shouldn't expect anything soon.
-
- [Alpha, a large, sophisticated text editor not reviewed here, also
- offers a lot of Emacs's functionality. -Geoff]
-
- <ftp://www.cs.umd.edu/pub/faculty/keleher/Alpha/>
-
-
- **Plaintext 1.6.1** is a freeware text editor written by
- neurobiology professor Mel Park in his spare time. Plaintext's
- fortes are its simplicity and the variety of conversion options
- for text files from different platforms.
-
- <ftp://nb.utmem.edu/pub/plaintext/>
-
- Plaintext has a few features distinguishing it from most other
- editors. First, Plaintext supports bookmarks. If you're working
- with a particularly long document and want to remember where you
- were reading or note an important passage, you can set a mark. You
- can jump quickly to any mark by selecting it from the Mark menu,
- and a file can contain a large number of marks. Plaintext contains
- column editing that enables you to select a vertical column, and
- Plaintext supports a small command-line language.
-
- Plaintext's command-line commands are mostly Unix commands (find,
- ls, pwd, and cat, among others) which the author implemented out
- of respect for the power of the MPW shell (MPW stands for
- Macintosh Programmer's Workshop; it's a programming environment
- from Apple with Unix-like features.) These simple commands
- (activated by typing them and pressing Enter rather than Return)
- have less overhead than menus and dialog boxes and make Plaintext
- a smaller, sleeker application. Most of these commands are also
- available via the menu bar.
-
- Plaintext has been updated several times recently, fixing bugs and
- adding a few features. Plaintext has a mostly full Apple event
- implementation but does not have an AppleScript dictionary.
- Plaintext supports drag & drop - a feature BBEdit Lite lacks - and
- Park has said he plans to add full AppleScript support and
- possibly have it support OpenDoc in the future.
-
-
- **SaintEdit** is a $10 shareware editor that Craig Marciniak
- introduced in 1992 and updated to version 1.5b13 recently. After
- two years of relative hibernation, however, SaintEdit is about to
- revive itself in an enhanced 2.0 version. The new version is based
- on the WASTE engine and will feature a spelling checker, improved
- interface, AppleScript support, and drag & drop, as well as
- extensive conversion and find and replace options, Text-to-Speech
- support, and HTML macros. Craig has promised a public beta
- shortly.
-
- <ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/text/saint-edit-15b13.hqx>
-
-
- **Style 1.4**, a $10 shareware tool by Marco Piovanelli. Termed a
- "styled text editor," Style supports different fonts, text styles
- (like bold), font sizes, colors, and text alignment. It also
- supports embedded sounds and graphics. Style can read and create
- SimpleText documents (with styles intact), and SimpleText can read
- Style documents (with styles intact) provided the document is
- saved as text rather than in native Style format. Style uses
- Marco's WASTE text engine which lets Style handle documents larger
- than 32K and helps give it the ability to use different languages
- via WorldScript - a definite boon for creating documents in
- languages such as Japanese or Russian.
-
- Style supports some great technologies, like XTND, drag & drop,
- and Internet Config; in addition, Style is a fat binary and
- supports AppleScript recording. Style uses a memory management
- scheme similar to BBEdit and Tex-Edit Plus, where temporary memory
- is used when no space is available in Style's memory partition.
-
- Some extra niceties of Style are a Window menu, smart quotes,
- auto-indent, a basic find and replace feature, linefeed
- translation, extensive scripting capabilities, and a special
- scripting menu to which Command keys can be assigned. Simply drop
- an AppleScript into the Style Script folder and the script appears
- as a menu item. Style comes with several sample scripts and
- droplets.
-
- <ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/text/style-141.hqx>
-
-
- **Tex-Edit Plus 1.7.0**, by Tom Bender, is a $10 shareware editor
- which feels like a nicely enhanced SimpleText with a good blend of
- features found in both Plaintext and SimpleText. The current
- version is Power Mac native, uses the WASTE engine, and boasts
- large speed improvements. A Japanese version of Tex-Edit Plus 1.7
- is available, and a French version should appear soon.
-
- <ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/text/tex-edit-plus-17.hqx>
- <ftp://members.aol.com/tombb/>
-
- Like Plaintext, Tex-Edit Plus enables conversion of Mac, Unix, and
- DOS text files. A nice find and replace utility provides an easy
- means to manipulate tabs, carriage returns, and other special
- characters. The Modify Document menu contains some wonderfully
- useful conversion utilities, including converting curly and
- straight quotes, ellipses, dashes, spaces, and other special
- characters often used with word processors or desktop publishing
- programs.
-
- Tex-Edit Plus has a huge Sound menu with options for speaking text
- and recording sound. Although all of the text editors reviewed can
- use different fonts to view documents, Tex-Edit Plus supports
- multiple fonts, sizes, and styles in one document, more like
- SimpleText, Style, or a typical word processor. The author
- comments that one of Tex-Edit Plus's bonuses is its ability to
- open SimpleText documents and display their formatting (including
- inline graphics), something none of the other editors quite do.
- Tex-Edit Plus also opens read-only SimpleText files.
-
- Other useful features include inserting the date or time, going to
- any specified line number, drag & drop support, and text
- justification. One annoying caveat: Shift-Delete does a forward
- delete, and there doesn't appear to a way to turn this feature
- off. Otherwise the program appears to be squeaky clean. Tex-Edit
- Plus also uses temporary memory, like BBEdit Lite and Style, to
- open very large files instead of requiring the user to give more
- memory to the program and re-launch.
-
- The author says a new version will be available in the near future
- which will show invisible characters and support AppleScript
- recording and QuickDraw GX.
-
-
- **Conclusions** -- Which editor you use depends largely on your
- purposes. To create text files with graphics or multiple fonts,
- sizes or styles (like SimpleText ReadMe files), Tex-Edit Plus and
- Style are the only way to go - no other editors support these
- features. Style's fortes are undoubtedly its Script menu, the
- ability to command-click URLs (helped out by Internet Config), and
- the WorldScript-savvy WASTE engine. Tex-Edit Plus has a few extra
- niceties, such as a better (although slow) search and replace,
- sounds embedded in documents, and more translation options.
-
- If you have no need to create files with graphics or multiple font
- sizes, consider BBEdit Lite, Plaintext, or Emacs. BBEdit Lite is a
- small, fast, elegant text editor, and its superb interface and
- reliability make it an excellent tool for programming, HTML
- editing, composing ASCII text, or simply viewing existing
- documents. Bare Bone's decision to include soft-wrapping in BBEdit
- Lite has made it a much more multi-purpose text editor, satisfying
- the demands of most anyone. Despite the fact BBEdit Lite is not
- fully (or even mostly) Power Mac native, it's still fast - much
- faster than the fully native Plaintext.
-
- If you need extensive conversion capabilities not covered in
- BBEdit Lite's extensions or text conversions, Plaintext is a good
- choice. Plaintext doesn't have the extensive feature sets of other
- editors, but it's a solid program. Emacs is wildly different from
- any of the other editors; though I can't recommend Emacs to novice
- Mac users or the general public, though anyone used to the Unix
- version will find it an excellent port.
-
-
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