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OSX

OS X Odyssey 143 - Tex-Edit Plus X 4.3.0b2 Now Reads And Writes RTF Files

Friday, July 5, 2002

By Applelinks Contributing Editor Charles W. Moore

This is big news for those of us who work with and love Tom Bender’s superb Tex Edit Plus text editor. Among other enhancements, the new TE+ 4.3.0b2 OS X beta now Reads And Writes RTF Files and can access OSX services from the Tex Edit Plus menu.

Tex-Edit Plus is a scriptable, styled text editor that fills the gap between Apple’s bare-bones SimpleText and a full-featured word processor. I also find it to be an excellent html editor, customized with a suite of html markup AppleScripts that can be executed via TE+’s convenient Scripts Menu, or by keystroke assignments. TE+ is fast, efficient, and has a clean, uncluttered interface. It’s also great for cleaning up text downloaded from emails or Websites.

There are (I think literally) dozens of text editor applications available for the Mac, but I’ve never found one I like better than TE+, thanks largely to its speed, rich feature set, text-cleaning facility, happy ability to open almost any kind of file, and especially its extremely slick implementation of AppleScript, unmatched, IMHO, by any other program, and with which I was able to add just the conveniently toggled html markup functions that I specifically need.

New in this version:
• Read and write RTF documents.
• OS X Services enabled (in the Tex-Edit Plus menu).
• Quartz anti-aliased text enabled (requires OS 10.1.5 or greater).
• New character styles added (All Caps, All Lowercase, Hidden).
• Click at the left margin to select a line, double click the left margin to select a paragraph.
• Improved tab efficiency. The “Real Tabs” menu item has been eliminated, since tabs are always enabled. Adjust global tab spacing in the prefs dialog.
• Various minor internal performance enhancements and bug fixes.
• Downgrade alert--> The “Show Invisibles” command will show “hidden” text, but it no longer shows non-printing characters (CR, FF, Tab, space). This hopefully will be corrected in a future version of the text engine.
• Fixed script bug involving the “close window saving yes” command.
• Fixed bug noted after editing iDisk files. (Tex-Edit would ask to mount iDisk at incorrect times.)

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.0 or higher

Tex-Edit Plus X is $15.00 shareware

For more information, visit:
http://www.tex-edit.com/

Re: upgrading my WallStreet PB 233 to Mac OS X?

Hi Charles,

Thanks for passing on that opinion re upgrading a WallStreet 233
PowerBook to Mac OS X. I don’t really care about speed, though: I
just want a home system I can learn OS X on. (My workstation at work
already has Mac OS X, but I’m in the desktop publishing biz, so until
Quark goes X, I stick with 9.2 as my main system.) My only true
concerns would be compatibility with my current peripherals: generic
USB card in my PCI slot, Epson 740 printer (has an X driver, I hear),
Fuji FinePix A201 camera (works with iPhoto), UMAX Astra 1220U
scanner (uhoh), and my DSL setup (Earthlink modem through an Xsense
XRouter Pro).

I’m guessing the scanner is probably the biggest problem, but I can
live with just using OS 9 for scanning, as long as upgrading to OS X
doesn’t break that. I know I’m due for a new system anyway, but I
just love love love my WallStreet!

regards, Joe

___

Hi Joe;

I love my 233 MHz WallStreet, too. Still my favorite Mac than I’ve owned.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

*** Charles W. Moore

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