It's difficult for me to pick an all-time favorite Mac application.
Different types of software do different things for you. However, for
me, Tex-Edit Plus (TE+) has to be one of the strongest contenders. (For
more on why Moore loves Tex-Edit Plus, see Tex-Edit Plus: Powerful Styled Text Editing for OS
X and the Classic Mac OS, Using Tex-Edit Plus and AppleScript
for HTML Markup and his review of
Tex-Edit Enhancer. ed)
Since the mid-late 1990s, Tex-Edit Plus - described by its developer
as a "scriptable, styled text editor that fills the gap between Apple's
bare-bones SimpleText and a full-featured word processor" - has been my
main text crunching tool and general dogsbody program.
The vast bulk of my archives and much of my research materials are
stored in Tex-Edit documents. Most of my composing, editing, and HTML
markup has been done in Tex-Edit Plus for about 15 years now. It's been
fast, slick, versatile, and reliable, and its close integration with
and support of AppleScript has made it a joy and a pleasure to use, as
well as a big-time efficiency enhancer.
Another thing I love about TE+ is its backward compatibility. The
latest OS X version of the application fully supports documents I
created on Tex-Edit some 15 years ago, and as a matter of fact I use
the last PowerPC version of the app most of the time with Classic Mode
in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on
my Pismo PowerBooks,
mainly because there's an auto-scrolling app I find useful that's never
been released in an OS X version.
Consequently, I was dismayed when the Trans-Tex Software website,
home of Tex-Edit Plus, dropped from the Internet for a few days in
early January. Tex-Edit Plus hadn't been updated for a long time,
although it has been working so well and is such an integral part of my
workflow, I guess I just began taking it for granted.
I dashed off an email to Tex-Edit Plus developer Tom Bender, who got
back to me directly, explaining that there had been some sort of glitch
with his website hosting service and that the Trans-Tex site was
already back online, which it was when I checked.
Sigh of relief. I don't know what I would do without Tex-Edit Plus.
There are other good text editors, word processors, and HTML authoring
applications out there, but none that combines all three plus the
highly-integrated and easily customizable TE+ implementation of
AppleScript in one neat and comprehensive package that pretty well does
everything I need a text application to do.
However, while Tex-Edit Plus still works just fine in Mac OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard, it is
a Carbon application with a few Cocoa elements grafted on, and I expect
that at some point Apple will pull the plug on Carbon support. So it
was good to hear from Tom that although he's been quite busy with other
developments in his life for the past couple of years and has not had
enough time to invest the quality time he needs to finish Tex-Edit
Plus's conversion to Cocoa yet, he's planning on having more time any
day now - although those plans could change due to forces beyond his
control.
I also asked Tom whether he had any plans to migrate Tex-Edit Plus
to the Mac App Store, noting that while I have some misgivings and
reservations about Apple's "walled garden", it seems to be an
attractive proposition for shareware developers. He observed that he
might be interested it's non-exclusive, although being a bit of a
nonconformist, he hopes the Mac App Store never becomes the only way to
purchase software for the Mac.
Me too. Glad he feels that way.
In the meantime, I'm eagerly anticipating that Cocoa-native version
of Tex-Edit Plus, whenever it arrives.
