Something to replace notepad?

I thought TextEdit would do the trick and for the most part it seemed to, but as soon as I had to open the file on a Windows PC I ran into problems.

I wrote out some html coding and tried to keep it organized. When I open it in windows it is completely unorganized, and has weird boxes. The file still works, it just doesn't look nice any longer. This is a problem when I'm presenting the file in front of a class, or trying to turn some work in..

How would I go about fixing this, or is there a program that would work better then TextEdit? The idea of installing Windows just to use notepad seems very wrong.

TextWrangler is soon becoming my favorite text editor. It colors the code, which is always helpful, and best of all it's free.

I just did a little test. An html file I had opened fine in WordPad, but looked a mess in NotePad.

I don't get Windows

TextEdit will work just fine. The problem is you need to change the format it's saving in. Change the defaults to "Plain Text".

When you go to save click Save As and than change the file format to Word 2007 or 97.

lifeisabeach said:

TextEdit will work just fine. The problem is you need to change the format it's saving in. Change the defaults to "Plain Text".

Click to expand...

that may be, but it's find/replace function seems to work lousy for me. I've searched for patterns I was staring at with no hits.

Besides, I've been looking for something more along the lines of Ultraedit or Textpad, which are a bit more.. visual.. than Textedit, or vi.. and it looks like TextWrangler may fit the bill. Thanks!

edit: Okay, maybe not. Find is still sucking.

ecodisk said:

I thought TextEdit would do the trick and for the most part it seemed to, but as soon as I had to open the file on a Windows PC I ran into problems.

I wrote out some html coding and tried to keep it organized. When I open it in windows it is completely unorganized, and has weird boxes. The file still works, it just doesn't look nice any longer. This is a problem when I'm presenting the file in front of a class, or trying to turn some work in..

How would I go about fixing this, or is there a program that would work better then TextEdit? The idea of installing Windows just to use notepad seems very wrong.

Click to expand...

Are you trying to show the HTML or render it through a browser? I believe TextEdit, by default, saves in RTF. To display the code, you'd want to save it as plain text and, of course, to render it in the web browser, HTML.

Minutes later....

I stand corrected. I just wrote a basic HTML code that, if saved a HTML, would display. I saved it in RTF and it and the code displays just fine. I have a feeling this has something to do with Mac/Windows compatibility. I'd save the documents in HTML and open them on the PC with a text editor.

I saved it as a .html file, so that it would display in a web browser. When I tell it to open in notepad I have the issues, also when I go to view the page source in IE or FireFox I have the same problem. It displays the page I wrote just fine, but not the code.

As for changing it to plain text, I had to do that to get it to work in OSX. When I was originally writing it I couldn't get it to open as a web page on the Mac until I told it to be plain text, so it was saved as plain text before I transfered it to the Windows machine.

Sorry I forgot to include this info, I was a bit frustrated when I wrote my first post. It kinda just shot me in the foot when I was doing a presentation.

Oh, and thanks for the TextWrangler suggestion, I'm going to go test that right now.

I would also strongly recommend BBedit

You can download BBedit lite for free and it is set-up to help coders write html etc

edit: lite is no longer developed, but BBedit is shareware

louishen said:

I would also strongly recommend BBedit

You can download BBedit lite for free and it is set-up to help coders write html etc

edit: lite is no longer developed, but BBedit is shareware

Click to expand...

The free version of BBEdit is called TextWrangler. It replaced "BBEdit Lite" several years ago.

Discerptor said:

It's GNU or nothin' for me.

Click to expand...

And the obligatory Vim counter point! ;D

http://code.google.com/p/macvim/

Seriously though...this VIM version is great on my MBP

Cheers!

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I use smultron on the mac, but now that I've more figured parallels I'm going to try loading notepad++

GroovyLinuxGuy said:

And the obligatory Vim counter point! ;D

http://code.google.com/p/macvim/

Seriously though...this VIM version is great on my MBP

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I suppose this is where one would have to match the Cocoa appeal with Aquamacs Emacs... but I like my GNU/Linux-identical, dated Carbon look. Though, to be fair, I most enjoy using it from the Terminal.

Bean is a really good text editor. It's similar to Word but free.

I think it's important to understand the underlying technology to be able to help. Most word processing programs add formatting to a document. Like if you save a Word document and try to open it in notepad, you'll see little squares all over the place. This is where Word added formatting to the document, and very basic editors can't translate that formatting. And it doesn't matter if you do any specific formatting of your own, the program will add it's.. touch.. anyway when you save.

I can't fully answer this on the Mac side of things regarding programs, but you will want to look for a flat text editor.

I did a quick search on google, and this may help: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106212

Discerptor said:

I suppose this is where one would have to match the Cocoa appeal with Aquamacs Emacs... but I like my GNU/Linux-identical, dated Carbon look. Though, to be fair, I most enjoy using it from the Terminal.

Click to expand...

Ooohh...Aquamacs...it does look really nice...

Now if I could just get rmail to work

I know you can get mutt working

Amanda said:

Bean is a really good text editor. It's similar to Word but free.

Click to expand...

Bean works great, thanks for the link!

I've fallen in love with TextWrangler

Subethaedit and Textmate are my editors of choice.