9380 Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge! MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people. But sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean's niche.

Bean is not a replacement for MS Word. It does not do footnotes and is only partially compatible with the various Word formats (more here).

Why use Bean?

Bean is lean, fast, and uncluttered.

If you get depressed at the thought of firing up MS Word or OpenOffice, try Bean.

If you use Text Edit but have to jump through hoops just to get a word count or change the margins, try Bean.

If you desire a simple, beautiful writing environment, try Bean.

Features

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that includes:

• 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 alternate colors option (e.g., white text on blue)


• An option to show invisible characters (tabs, returns, spaces)


• Selection of text by text style, paragraph style, color, etc.


• A floating windows option (like Stickies has)


• Easy to use menus


• Remembers cursor postion (excluding .txt, .html, .webarchive formats)


• All of Cocoa's good stuff (dictionary, word completion, etc.)


• Please keep in mind that Bean is betaware

File Formats

• Bean natively reads and writes these file formats:


• .rtf format (rich text)


• .rtfd format (rich text with graphics)


• .bean format (identical to .rtfd)


• .txt format (Unicode and legacy)


• .html format (as source code)


• .webarchive format (Apple's web archive format)

Bean transparently imports and exports these formats:

• .doc format (MS Word '97, minus images, margins, and page size)...more info here


• .docx format (Word 2007, minus images and some formatting)...more info here


• .odt format (OpenDocument, minus images, margins, and page size)


• .xml format (MS Word 2003 XML, minus images)

Bean can export all of the above formats to these formats:

• .html (web page format, minus images)


• .pdf


• .doc compatible (with images intact)


• .rtf (with images intact)

Bean doesn't...
• ...do footnotes, columns, pre-defined text styles, floating graphics (but it does do in-line graphics).

New in version 2.4.3:

Changes:

• Edit > Paste & Match Style has a new, friendlier (albeit non-standard) keyboard shortcut (Shift + Cmd + v) (user suggestion)


• Print... is now the last item in the File menu


• The Replace and Replace All commands in the Find/Replace panel now maintain the text selection after replacement occurs. (user suggestion) There is a hidden preference setting which restores the old behavior where no text remains selected after Replace/Replace All: quit Bean and paste this command into a Terminal.app session (change YES to NO to re-enable the new behavior).


• The left hanging margin in text list items now equals the text offset, so that text wraps properly (user suggestion)


• The 'Float' toolbar icon now has an orange halo when active (the blue halo looked too much like the UI's 'focus ring')


• File > Export > To HTML now exports to HTML 4.0, not XHTML (user suggestion)


• The Applescript code that makes Bean the default application for opening RTF and RTFD format files that are saved in Bean under Snow Leopard is now compiled and is much faster (there was a noticeable pause while the script compiled for the first time under Bean 2.4.2)

Bigfixes:

• Addressed a bug that could cause a crash when the insertion point tries to draw to a just-hidden document window


• Code/Localization:


• Bean 2.4.3 includes a new Czech localization and a revised Danish localization


• Note to localizers: there are no significant changes to the user interface in Bean 2.4.3; it is a bugfix release.


• Another note to localizers: nib files are now compiled upon building the app, which means you cannot directly edit the .nib files found inside the released app bundle anymore (this is Apple's doings). Instead, download the Bean source code from http://www.bean-osx.com/source/Bean-Source.zip and use the .nib files found inside the English.lproj folder for your translation.

For the complete changelog:
http://www.bean-osx.com/Changelog.html

System requirements:
• A Mac with a PPC or Intel processor running OS X 10.4+ Tiger or OS X 10.5+ Leopard

Bean is provided at no monetary cost and is released under the Gnu General Public Licence.

Bean is provided at no monetary cost and is released under under the Gnu General Public Licence.

Bean is open source. The source code is located on the installation disk image.

Bean comes with no warranty; you assume all the risk of using it (see the Gnu GPL for details).


System Support:
PPC/Intel

Free

For more information, visit:
http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html


Read my full review of Bean here:
http://lowendmac.com/misc/07/0529.html

Tags: Software Updates ï Software News ï Writing/Publishing ï

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