Surf-Bits: Surfing For Great Mac Freeware
3. Text Editors

Tim Verpoorten
(May 08)

Text editors come in all shapes and sizes. They can be 800 pound guerrillas like BBEdit, or they can be as simple and as plain as Vi. What is it about editors that interest us so much? Why do we search the file archives and download almost every new text editor we hear about? I think a text editor is like a good pair of shoes, we love them when we find the right fit, but a text editor that doesn't fit our needs can become a real sore spot in a hurry. Plus, like shoes, we need a different one for different occasions. All this is my prelude for this month's freeware article, the topic is text editors and I'm going to share my favorite freeware editors with you. As always, I want you to share your favorites with me.

Before we get started, I'd be remiss not to mention the freeware text editor that comes with OSX, and that's TextEdit. The best background information on TextEdit is found in Wikipedia. It says this about TextEdit:"TextEdit is a simple, open source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with Mac OS X since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-compatible operating systems such as Linux. It is powered by Apple Advanced Typography and has advanced typography features not found in even high-end word processors such as Microsoft Word. It replaces the text editor of previous Macintosh operating systems, SimpleText. TextEdit reads and writes documents in Rich Text Format, Rich Text Format Directory and plain text files, Microsoft Word document format and HTML, and can open (but not save) old SimpleText files. It also has access to the operating system's built-in spell-checking service. The version included in Mac OS X v10.3 added the ability to read and write documents in Word format, and the version in Mac OS X v10.4 the ability to read and write Word XML documents. The version included in Mac OS X v10.5 includes OpenDocument Text read and write support."

That being said, I have to admit that TextEdit is a rock solid editor. A lot of Mac users take advantage of it's features and are quite happy with it's performance. Before you go out and spend any money on shareware, give TextEdit a fair shake, you might like it's speed and OSX integration.

Let's start with the editor I use most often: Bean.

Bean likes to call itself a "Rich Tex Editor" because of it's love for the .rtf format over the plain .txt format. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa and very feature rich, while still launching fast and staying lean. I like the ability to work off a black background with bright orange text. You can use any colors you want, one of the many options I spoke of. Others include a live word count, a Get Info panel for in-depth statistics, a zoom-slider to easily change the view scale, an Inspector panel with lots of sliders, date-stamped backups, autosaving, a page layout mode, an option to show invisible characters (tabs, returns, spaces), selection of text by text style, paragraph style, color, a floating windows option (like Stickies has), easy to use menus and so much more. Bean has always been in my top freeware applications list. Download and see if you agree.

Next is a freeware solution from our friends with the 800 pound guerrilla, Barebones software, it's TextWrangler.

TextWrangler is BBEdit's little brother. It has the look and feel of BBEdit and many of the it's programming abilities. Among other things, it can open files from (and save them) to remote FTP servers, offers a significantly powerful grep engine, supports multi-byte and non-Roman text files, can perform Find Differences on pairs of files, and can be invoked from the Unix command line. TextWrangler is a different animal then we saw in Bean, but that's the way it should be, a tool for every job.

Another freeware text editor that I like is Smultron.

Smultron is somewhere between the last two editors we discussed. It is a good choice for programming because of the colored text code, but it can be used for a fast and simple text editor for a simple note. Smultron can open documents in a list with beautiful Quick Look icons on the left just like the finder so you can easily switch between many documents - you can also choose to display them as tabs if you prefer it that way. Smultron has a lot of fans and it's easy to see why.

You may want to take a look at this freeware option: mEdit.

The main editing functions in mEdit are nothing unique, although they are functional. The big draw for this text editor is it allows combining several documents (worksheets) as a file (workbook). One can switch between the worksheets via tabs on the workbook, similar to using Excel spreadsheets. If your work contains several small documents that turn into one larger file, then you hit the jackpot with mEdit.

Next is a cross-platform editor that has many nice features for all you code jockeys out there: Editra.

Editra is in it's Alpha state, but you can already tell it wants to be a big-boy editor. With the ability to handle plug-ins and a list of features that make you grin like code folding, word wrap, tabbed windows, many importing and exporting options, and as I mentioned before, plug-in support, this may be a real hidden treasure. I would visit their website and look at the features yourself. I'm impressed, and as soon as they get a little deeper into the beta testing, I'll do a full review on the podcast.

Here's another editor that does not receive the press it deserves: Komodo.

Komodo Edit is the free, open source application based on Komodo IDE. Everything you'd expect from an editor like auto-complete and calltips, multi-language file support, syntax coloring and syntax checking, Vi emulation, Emacs key bindings, and more. It has some great extensions like Firefox, and Browser-side technologies like CSS, HTML, JavaScript and XML. It supports Server-side languages like Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl, and Web template languages like RHTML, Template-Toolkit, HTML-Smarty and Django. The feature list goes on and on. I think Komodo is a powerful editor and should be on your download list.

Finally I wanted you to look at a unique text editor called Diamond.

Diamond is an editor that marches to it's own beat. It operates on a work-flow theory with supplied automated work-flows to get you started. It uses spaces on your desktop to create a work-flow that fits you needs and is easy on the eyes, very Mac-like. Additionally, thereís a directory of image files which are added as interesting backgrounds, blends, and such for use as Diamond Pages. This editor is a writers tool more then a coders tool. If this sounds like something that fits your needs, download it and give it a try.

As you can see, freeware text editors abound in the Mac community, I only skimmed the surface. Give these a try and let me know if you find something that works for you. If not, we'll just have to find a few more to talk about. Until next time, you can find us every week on the MacReviewCast podcast.