Bean 2.3 - A fast and uncluttered word processor. (Free)
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're pining away for Write Now-esque simplicity or just want a low-pressure writing environment, try Bean.
Features:- 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
Enhancements
added Date/Time toolbar icon, which inserts date/time (select the date/time format from the icons popup menu) (user suggestion)
Option key + view scale slider will now change view scale in rounded 25% increments; use this for example to set the view scale at exactly 100%
Shift + Enter is now the keyboard shortcut for inserting a line break (a soft return) which causes a new line of text without creating a new paragraph (user suggestion)
Changes/Bug Fixes
Highlight toolbar icon now has None option (that is, remove highlight) in icons popup menu (user suggestion)
the method for applying a custom highlight color to selected text has changed: use Shift + Option + select a color from the color panel (instead of the previous Option + select a color from color panel). This makes a bug less likely where the highlight color becomes the same as the text color, making text illegible. (user reported)
Text List improvements/fixes
- Format > List > Numbered/Bulleted can now create lists without a text selection (user suggestion)
- font changes applied just after the text list marker are no longer rejected, and new list items created with a Return now inherit their font from the tail of the previous list item (and from the preceding tab thereafter). This avoids the Cocoa text system inconvenience where a cached font used for creating the list markers spills into new text list items (compare Text Edit). Note: under Tiger, the old behavior of restricting font changes after the marker remains as this works around a more severe bug where the font Lucida Grande appears in text list items when it shouldnt. (user reported)
-Format > List > Indent/Unindent now works with multiple selected list items and in multiple selection ranges (user suggestion)
-re-enumeration of list markers is attempted when a list item is cut or deleted
-Format > List > Move Item Up/Down behavior is less buggy (Leopard only)
Find/Replace panel improvements/fixes
-the text of a found match can now be referred to in the Replace text field as \0 (thats the digit zero, not the letter oh) when Match Patterns (Regex) is active; in other words, the text of the found match will be substituted for its symbol in the text to replace it. For example, Find: bad; Replace: not \0 at all; Result: not bad at all.
-Find All/Replace All (in Selection) now works on multiple text selections, not just the first text selection (user suggestion)
-fixed a bug where Replace would replace the next found match if the current text selection did not match the Find field text. Instead, Replace now highlights the next match without replacing it; click Replace again to actually replace the found match.
fixed a problem where inserting large images into a paragraph with line spacing greater than 1 in layout view would cause subsequent text to disappear. (Text Edit also has this problem.) Incidentally, note that you can use the Inspectors Force Line Height / At Most control to limit the space above inline images to a reasonable amount (otherwise, double-spaced text, for example, will create a line spacing that is double the height of an inline image, which may be too much). (user reported)
Center Cursor Vertically is now disabled when Layout view is hidden in OS X 10.4 (Tiger); this is because there was a bug under Tiger that caused the scroller to misbehave that I could not fix
fixed a bug where Font > Strikethrough would sometimes not work (user reported)
fixed a bug where the File > Special New > Plain Text / Plain Text from Pasteboard commands would not work in localized versions (user reported)
fixed a bug where a document could be saved in full screen mode with alternate colors on, even though that document should open in windowed mode with alternate colors off (user reported)
fixed a bug involving undoing a change of margins with layout mode off
Code
fixed code so the final dummy item in the Find panels patterns menu is no longer required
(UI) Page Up/Page Down buttons below scroller at last have their own subview