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However, Tex Edit plus hasn't been upgraded for more than a year. Happily, it has handled the transition to OS 10.5 Leopard without indigestion, but I was getting a bit concerned about its future prospects.
My apprehensions ratcheted up several notches when I discovered a software conflict TE+ seemed to have with the new Logitech V-550 Nano cordless mouse, which is a superb mouse that I like a lot. I suspected the problem was with Logitech's Control Center driver software - specifically the scroll wheel driver. In TE+, touching the V-550 Nano's scroll wheel will about four out of five times bring up a gaggle of "Error Detecter - 9870" dialog screens. I haven't a clue what Error 9870 signifies, but it is more than annoying having to close all those dialogs.
This week I emailed Tex Edit Plus developer Tom Bender to get his read on the problem. First, some excellent news. Tom says he's been back in school, but plans to be finished with that in December, at which time he intends to resume active TE+ development.
As for the software conflict, Tom figured the problem was with the Logitech Control Center. He says he thought they had fixed it with the current version, but the version I have installed (2.6.0) is the one that shipped with the Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard, which is a brand new product, so I expect it's the current one. Tom says he uses Logitech mice too, and loves them, but he doesn't use Logitech Control Center.
"I could choose to ignore all -9870 reports from the [scroll] wheel, but it just seems 'wrong' to insert 'special case code' into Tex Edit Plus so that it ignores the erroneous error report from a single buggy piece of software," Tom says. "I guess no other carbon apps are trapping for errors properly. Sad." He makes a good point.
However, I removed Logitech Control Center [or thought I had; please read the Update at the end of this article], rebooted the PowerBook, and unfortunately the bug is still there. Tom also got back to me saying that he had also downloaded the latest version of LCC and is not encountering the issue with his Logitech mice, so presumably there is something in particular TE+ doesn't like about the V-550 mouse's scroll wheel, even using the OS X default drivers. The V-500 has a pretty sophisticated scroll wheel that supports both detented and freewheeling (weighted) operation, and horizontal scrolling by nudging it left or right, I decided to reinstall Control Center since it didn't turn out to be the culprit, and it adds functionality (such as the horizontal scrolling) to the V-550 mouse. However, those error screens popping up in bunches are tough to live with. I'm just speculating, but I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that Tex Edit Plus is a Carbon application, developed out of the Classic OS version.
This problem got me to thinking about what I might turn to as a surrogate for Tex Edit Plus if I ever had to, and I found the pickings pretty thin
Now, I hasten to add that I don't mean to imply that there are no other text editors and word processors out there for OS X. Indeed there are a ton of them. I have current versions of Apple's Pages and the German program Papyrus, both of which are excellent applications, but most of the time I don't need their advanced text formatting and near desktop publishing features. I rarely print anything out in hard copy, and haven't for years. The vast majority of my work is with digital plain text and HTML, so a text oriented application is what I need.
Apple of course actually bundles a pretty good little text application with OS X - TextEdit, and I use it a fair bit for utilitarian tasks - its integration with the OS is convenient and it is fast.
However it seems to me that TextEdit really can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a text editor or a word processor (it can be configured to default to either plain text or RTF), and while does a decent basic job of both, it's a master of neither. Its ability to all the Microsoft Word documents with basic formatting intact can be priceless, especially for those of us who don't use Word, but TextEdit's text manipulation tools and functions are pretty sparse, and it really doesn't measure up as an adequate replacement for Tex Edit Plus.
I also also have Bare Bones Software's excellent freeware text editor, Text Wrangler, and I use it regularly for things like "zapping gremlins" from troublesome word processor formatted text - for instance press releases distributed in Word files, before posting it to the Web. Text Wrangler does an excellent job of that (and it's one of the few text-cleaning functions TE+ doesn't do as well), and of course can do many other things with text. It's an amazingly powerful program for freeware, but it doesn't support text styling and I don't find it nearly as flexible or versatile for general purpose use and as Tex Edit Plus.
Text Wrangler also has a convenient Cocoa drawer in which links to all open documents are located, something TE+ doesn't offer.
There is also of course Text Wrangler's big commercial software brother, BBEdit, the most powerful and comprehensively-featured text editor for the Mac platform, which would likely do pretty much everything I've needed to do and more. Developed specifically to meet the needs of Web authors and software developers, BBEdit has an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files (even unopened files on remote servers), project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save, AppleScript, Mac OS X Unix scripting support, text and code completion, and of course a complete set of robust HTML tools.
But the catch is that BBEdit sells for $129, as opposed to Tex Edit Plus's $15 shareware fee, and while BBEdit arguably offers value for the money if you need its advanced feature set and formidable power, I really don't.
A freeware contender that has quickly developed an enthusiastic coterie of fans is Bean, which is another application that has proverbial feet in both the text editor and word processor categories, but its emphasis is definitely on the latter or at least rich text editing.
Powered by the same speedy text engine as Apple's TextEdit, it's an attractive little package if you're looking for a basic word processor to create letters, other documents, and such, but I couldn't find much in the way of text manipulation commands such as for capitalization/uncapitalization of words, a feature I use intensively in Tex Edit Plus via F-Key toggled Apple Scripts.
Back in the text editor column, another relatively new freeware application is Smultron. Created, designed and programmed by Peter Borg, this text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 both easy to use, nicely configurable and powerful.
Smultron displays icons representing all open documents in a list the left of its text window, similar to iTunes making it easy to switch between open documents - you can also choose to display them as tabs if you prefer.
Smultron as colors text content in different colors depending on what the code does. You also have many ways to search for words and line numbers to help finding the code you are looking for. You can also split the window in two to display two parts of the same document or to compare two different documents side by side.
You can also preview HTML-files directly in Smultron and save snippets of text and insert them simply with a shortcut. And if you don’t want to be disturbed by other applications or the desktop you can let Smultron cover the whole screen to let you concentrate on your work.
For the more advanced users Smultron can find all those system files that are normally hidden and it has authenticated open and saves for them. Smultron can also use regular expressions and it can run commands and scripts.
However, I've found that text copied from Smultron isn't happy being imported to TE+ for html markup, and since that's a crucial function for me.....
Clearly, filling Tex Edit Plus's big shoes would be a challenge. In fact, I'm highly skeptical that there is another text manipulation program out there that even comes close to matching TE+'s sweet spot combination of versatility, deep feature set, nimbleness, stability, flexibility, speed, integration with the OS X spell checker, and elegant Apple Scriptability. It is in most respects the perfect application for my needs.
Consequently, I've pretty much resolved to try and train myself to keep my fingers away from the scroll wheel on the V-550 Nano mouse, when in TE+ and stick with the program, although I'll keep using TextEdit and Text Wrangler for peripheral tasks they perform best, while TE+ remains my main axe.
[Late breaking: As I file this column, Tom Bender has just forwarded me a copy of TE+ with the error trap disabled. I'll check it out and update]
[Update: Well, it turned out to be more of a saga than I had expected. The hacked (is it hacking if it's done by the developer?) copy of TE+ Tom Bender sent didn't do the trick. I had a burst of optimism when I first tried it, but the error sheets soon started showing up again. Bummer. The indefatigable Tom came through with another modded copy of TE+ 4.9.8 - above and beyond for a busy guy - but that didn't fix the issue either, and he needed to get back to his studies, but asked again if I was sure I had uninstalled Logitech Control Center as a troubleshooting diagnostic using the LCC Uninstaller.
Uninstaller? - Oh....
Er, no, I had just dragged the LCC Preference Pane out of the folder in the Library and rebooted. Since it no longer showed up in the Preferences, I assumed it had been successfully uninstalled. Never assume.
I found and ran the LCC uninstaller (in the Utilities Folder), ran it, rebooted,and the error sheets problem seems to have been dealt with. At least I haven't been able to get it to reoccur.
I checked the ReadMe for LCC (the version I have is 2.6.1), and found that the installer distributes about a dozen files around the system, so that explains why just removing it from the Preferences Panes Folder didn't completely get rid of it. Sometimes I'm stuck in a Mac OS Classic time warp I guess.
So Logitech Control Center is the culprit. The V-550 Nano mouse seems to work well enough with the default OS X mouse driver, although some of the advanced functions like horizontal scrolling and the Applications Button that require LCC support are disabled. Easier to live with than the error sheets though.
So thanks to Tom Bender for correctly identifying (and finally convincing me of) the nature of the problem. My problems with TE+ are behind me and I can use my favorite text app. with my new favorite mouse (albeit mildly disabled in non-critical functions). Isn't the Mac community great? Now, if Logitech can just fix the bug in their Control Center driver. CM]
Charles W. Moore
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I hope Tom Bender uploads the new TE+ onto his website.
The error dialog drive’s me nuts as well.
It seems to occur with possibly any Logitech device.