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I've never made any secret of my admiration for Tex Edit Plus, the application I use like a Swiss Army Knife for virtually all my text crunching and HTML markup needs. I constantly marvel at how good this little program is, and developer Tom Bender just keeps gilding the lily and making it better. However, one shortcoming of Tex Edit Plus has been its lack of a spell checker. I have understood Tom's reasoning in not including a spell checker in TE+ -- creeping featuritis can turn a lithe and nimble application into a ponderous piece of bloatware if one is not careful. In the Classic OS, my workaround has been quite simple -- I just used the nifty little freestanding spell checker application, SpellTools, which I like, and which works nicely with Tex Edit Plus. However, there is no OS X version of SpellTools, and while the freeware Excalibur spell checker is available for OS X, I've always found it cumbersome to use compared with SpellTools. What I have been doing instead is copying and pasting text from TE+ into whatever Cocoa application is most convenient, and using the built-in OS X Services spell checker, then re-copying and pasting the corrected text back into Tex Edit Plus. Not a very elegant solution, but it works. 
However, that clumsy workaround will no longer be necessary. The latest Tex Edit Plus X 4.4b2 beta supports spell checking using built-in OS X dictionaries. I'm not sure how Tom did this, since TE+ is not a native Cocoa applictaion, but it's a delightful addition. As someone on a forum remarked, "now it's perfect." Hard to disagree. 
The other new feature in the 4.4b2 beta is that you can now drag and drop desktop files onto open document windows to insert text. I checked that out, and it's slick. This is a super version upgrade, Tom. Thanks!
System requirements:
More OSX moaning Inkwell on Pismo 400 OS 10.2.2 server question From Tom Bender Hi Charles: Sorry I misled you with my little "benchmarks." As I said, I'm not a professional communicator. ;-) Thank you for allowing me to clarify my points (concerning OS X speed) a bit further. 1. You stated that speedy appearance of windows/dialogs is more important that speedy departure. I presume most people would agree with you. Allow me to suggest, however, that this may be more a matter of perception than a detriment to workflow. You might contend that we are basically just waiting a little longer for a prettier window. It is my contention that, in properly-designed OS X windows/dialogs, text elements are more readable, defaults are more dramatic, focus is more apparent, window precedence is more clear-cut, heck, the function of every interface element is more obvious than in OS 9. (Not to mention the fact that windows/dialogs move and disappear more quickly.) A case can be made that this actually improves workflow. You and I may instantly recognize and be comfortable with the old OS 9 widgets, but most Mac users aren't 18 year veterans. Remember when the Mac was young and its "interface speed" was constantly compared negatively to that of DOS machines? (For you young folks who have never seen a character-based "menu" appear, it gives a whole new meaning to the word "instantaneous.") Well, the world (including, sadly, Bill Gates) soon figured out that the graphical interface wasn't just prettier--it was better. Proportional fonts were easier to read, graphical menus were easier to browse, and workflow improved for all but the most menial of tasks. Similarly... OS X is better. 2. You stated that you don't multitask much. I presume that most people would agree that they can only do one thing at a time. Allow me to suggest that there are many potential multitaskers lurking among us. Imagine any process that takes computer time: backing-up, uploading, downloading, printing, ripping, stuffing, unstuffing, copying, burning, filtering, indexing, encoding, rendering, compiling, launching, etc. If you _ever_ find yourself twiddling your thumbs while watching a progress bar, then you, my friend, have the potential to become a true blue, dyed in the wool, power multitasker. Can I have an amen... As you know, OS 9's multitasking skills are feeble and wholly dependent on the good graces of the foreground application. Here's a quiz: your 56K modem is halfway through a 5 hour Quake VII download and you're just itching to try out the alpha version of a cool new utility app ("Tex-Edit Pro") that a friend sent you last night. Pick an OS... OS X is better. 3. You stated that starting up and shutting down Jaguar takes forever. In your special situation as a journalist who is carefully evaluating and comparing OS's, this is obviously an important consideration. For "the rest of us" out here, this activity falls squarely in the category of "needlessly wasted time." There is no reason to restart OS X in a production environment. OS X wakes up faster and wakes up better. I rarely go a full day in OS 9 without a reboot, but then again I like to use Internet Explorer. (There, I've admitted it.) OS X is better. --- Now, before everyone out there deletes all traces of OS 9 and goes running naked into the streets proclaiming OS X's vast superiority, let me add some caveats: 1. I sure wouldn't switch if it meant leaving behind your favorite app or peripheral. Fortunately, most interesting apps and peripherals have been or will be ported to OS X. 2. The interface sluggishness becomes annoying on anything slower than a 500 MHz G3. Below this point, I think I would concede most of the "OS X is slow" points that you have offered. The difference between my old WallStreet and my QuickSilver is night-and-day. 3. I am obviously biased. I work with OS X all the time. I like OS X. All my development work is in OS X. (I don't have time for both.) Apple's future depends on the success of OS X. The success of my product depends on the success of OS X. Add grains of salt liberally. --- And now for the obligatory unsolicited suggestions: 1. Apple could ameliorate the interface sluggishness by allowing folks to disable some of the graphical effects, such as transparency, drop shadows, and anti-aliasing. Why not let the horde of 233 MHz iMac people experience the power and stability of OS X without having to wait forever for the menus to drop? 2. Apple should allow everyone to upgrade to the latest (fastest) version of OS X for free. Roll the cost into the hardware (as was done in the past) or maybe new Macs could come with a free one year ".mac" subscription including free system updates (renewed yearly). It's easier to develop software when "OS X required" means just one thing. OS 9 programs are a tangled mess of conditional code that attempts to allow backward compatibility to OS 7 or 8. Apple would give its developers a big boost if they made sure this didn't happen again. 3. Did I mention multi-button mice with wheels? Good. Thank you for listening and thank you for all the great columns!
Sincerely,
p.s. The 8-track comment _was_ a little harsh--sorry about that! :-) You're an excellent communicator, IMHO. I'm going to give you the (almost) last word today, because I agree with most of your observations above. However, I will note that I actually don't spend much time waiting for stuff to happen in OS 9, so as I said before, OS X's facility for multitasking, while very nice, is not a big advantage for me in my work. By the way, I'm using the new Tex-Edit Plus X 4.4b2 beta this morning, and scrolling seems to be significantly livelier than in the v. 4.3 final and previous buids of Tex-Edit Plus X. Some undocumented improvement there? Whatever, very cool. Charles From Chris Long Hey Charles: A couple more thoughts on OSX for you: One of your readers at Applelinks last week commented that all the zillions of tiny OSX delays was interrupting his creative process as he worked. I've experienced the same thing and agree with him -- in fact, it brought to mind a little metaphor for OSX: People say that OSX is wonderful because it'll do 5 things at once. I agree, but ... OSX is like being in a car stuck in traffic. you can sit on your cell phone, blabbing away ... you can turn on the radio/CD player ... you can even comb your hair and file your fingernails ... you may have 3, 4, 5 things going at once -- but you're not GETTING WHERE YOU'RE GOING any faster. For those times when you want/need to be doing more than one task at a time, OSX is great indeed. but when you need to focus on one task and keep things moving along at a fast rate, OSX falls short, for the reasons we've cited 100 times in the past. I experienced this once again this weekend while working on a small job at home. OS9 doesn't work as well when you've got (say) 3 or 4 or more things going at once (tends to bog down) but when you're using ONE program to do ONE job, it just flies right along --> superhighway, no traffic!!! By the way: in spite of my OSX 'bashing' I made the switch here at work last Friday -- the overall speed of Jaguar on this brand new dual processor 867MHz G4 Mac is not bad at all -- far, far better than what I get at home on my G3 iBook. no surprise that it's considerably faster, but I was/am somewhat pleasantly surprised at the amount of work I'm able to get done in OSX WHEN IT BEHAVES PROPERLY, using this dual 867 G4. I came in this morning and within one hour I've had two real problems with OSX already -- some of my Quickeys macros aren't working (sigh -- who knows why?) -- and my Suitcase Font Manager is telling me I have missing fonts, when in fact I can see that they are, in fact, already loaded. Presumably, someday reasonably soon, all this dust will settle and we can get BACK TO WORK. For now (today, at any rate) I'm back in os9 once again. The saga continues! Chris ps: I forgot to mention -- the reason my dual 867 G4 now seems to move along at a reasonable speed w Jaguar -- I did a fresh install of Jag last Friday and it seemed to make a difference. C
Hi Chris;
For most of what I do with computers, I'm using just one application at a time. Multitasking for me usually consists of perhaps sending email or downloading something in the background while I work in a text application. And on a 26,400 bps dial-up, those tasks don't tax the OS mich for speed.
Charles From Wil Nelson Inkwell works just fine for me and has since I download the Wacom software and plugged in the Wacom table. Turned on in System Preferences and configured in Wacom "control panel". Worked the first time out and still works. Wil Nelson
Hi Wil;
Glad to hear it.
I have a Graphire2 tablet and the latest software too, but no joy on my Pismo. The Preferences panel shows up fine and seems to respond, but there's no sign of the Inkpad, and it won't work in the write anywhere mode either.
Charles From Jay Rubin Hello. Wondering if you've heard of a TiBook 500 with server 10.2 installed, booting directly into console (or terminal)? Tried a clean install that worked for a short time (a few hours/reboots) and then back to the command line. Any thoughts are appreciated.
thanks
Hi Jay;
This is outside my range of technical expertise. I have no experience with OS X Server.
Perhaps our readers will be able to help.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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