[kcmac]

So what do you think will eventually become of TextEdit as Pages gets more features?

Sounds like TextEdit will get a few new features in Tiger making it more powerful. But someday, it seems something will have to give. Will TE simply be the word processor that comes standard with the Mac and you will have to buy Pages? Might Pages/iWork someday be bundled with a new Mac making TE somewhat redundant?

Now that I have Pages, (and Word) I don't even think too much about TE although I do like its simplicity.

[Apfhex]

TextEdit should remain a fairly basic rich text editor. I like to use it because it's quick to open and has a very minimal interface, great for dropping a few bits of text into (I also keep a Notes.rtf file).

[brettcamp]

Yeah, I've been wondering that, too. I have Word and AppleWorks, but in the last year or so, I've used TextEdit for almost all my writing -- and I'm a journalist. I like the simplicity, and as I email all my stuff in, I don't really need much formatting. Just line spacing, font control, spellcheck, basic style sheets, and word count.

I don't have Pages yet, but I've read that it's missing some of the features of the current AppleWorks word processor. (Such as?) Since Pages looks like an Apple version of Publisher (although SJ called it a "word processor"), there's still room for a word processor to replace the one in AppleWorks, assuming iWork will replace AW eventually. It actually does make at least as much sense to do that by adding the few missing features to TextEdit rather than trying to clutter Pages. When you consider all the features that can be added via Services (like thesaurus, word count), are already contained in OSX (like spellcheck), and what might soon be available in Tiger's widgets, TextEdit isn't really very far away from having all the functionality most people need in a WP -- a stealth replacement for Word. So that people would use the free TextEdit for anything written for online use only, simple letters, papers, etc., and buy Pages for anything requiring graphics or anything more than simple formatting.

So, what features do y'all think Apple should add to TextEdit in Tiger and beyond? Just the features currently in the AppleWorks word processor? Would footnoting and a reviewing function be too much? Or would those be better in Pages than TextEdit? Even though I'd hate to sacrifice the clean and simple look of it now, I'd like live outlining, personally, along with WYSIWYG font menus in the menu bar, live word count.... what else?

[Big Mac]

I actually don't really know what live outlining is, but I do know that a word processor needs foot/endnotes. However, I don't think TextEdit will get such capabilities, since it is not meant to be a complete word processor. It is a text editor, hence its name, and its primary reason for inclusion is to open RTF Read Me files, providing the same function that TeachText/SimpleText provided in the classic Mac OS. The major reason why TextEdit is better than SimpleText is that it's so easy to get a basic text editor out of Cocoa. Sure, you can use TextEdit as a word processor, and it may suit your needs. But it's never going to be what one would consider feature rich.

[Millennium]

My guess is that TextEdit and Pages will evolve along a path similar to WordPad and Word on Windows. That is to say that TextEdit will remain a surprisingly powerful rich-text editor, but it won't ever really achieve the power of a word processor (footnotes/endnotes, table-of-contents support, and such).

Meanwhile, Pages will be marketed as Apple's word processor offering.

The hell of it is, most people don't really use word processors as anything more than text editors, and for these, TextEdit is more than sufficient. Even among students, most people still use manual footnotes and endnotes, and they don't bother with styles.

[brettcamp]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
I actually don't really know what live outlining is, .

Sorry -- should have specified. This is a term I came across in another forum. It refers to the kind of outline you see in Mellel, CopyWrite, ZWrite and others, in which the outline sits out to the side of the main text window. When you click on any outline point, the text window displays the text that falls under that outline point. Makes navigating through long docs much easier. I agree -- features like outlining, footnotes and so on seem too much for TextEdit, and I also agree that most people don't need anything more than TextEdit.

But if TextEdit doesn't have those features, and Pages doesn't either (and Pages seems more like a DTP program anyway), and AppleWorks (which does have many of them, though not live outlining) is going to be replaced by iWork -- then will those of us who need those features have to turn to non-Apple software? Not that I mind, really; Mellel is reasonably priced and has everything I'd need. But it'd be kind of surprising for Apple to take away features that were found in AppleWorks, even if they were pretty basic. I do think the new features in Pages are great and were really needed in the low-budget range, but I guess I'm just surprised at how many AW features are missing.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The hell of it is, most people don't really use word processors as anything more than text editors, and for these, TextEdit is more than sufficient. Even among students, most people still use manual footnotes and endnotes, and they don't bother with styles.

I agree.

The only time I would ever have use for a word processor is for essays - and LaTeX is my preferred choice there. TextEdit does fine for letter writing and the like.

I will be buying Pages, but it's for layout more than anything. InDesign is a bit hefty for my needs there - I loved AppleWorks' drawing module, but hated the limit on the DPI of a picture. If that one feature was fixed I'd be happy... and I imagine Pages will be fine with variable DPI!

Amorya

[kcmac]

Someone just taught me a new trick with TextEdit.

You can drag and drop pdf's straight in to an open TextEdit window. (the document needs to be in rich text format.)

Say you have a folder with several pdf's that you want to combine into a single pdf document. Drag them into TextEdit, in the order you would like them to appear. Then go to Print>Save as a pdf.

You will now have one document with multiple pages in pdf format.

[Old Toad]

Thanks for a great tip! Have been trying a number of apps to do the same thing but it took much more effort with less satisfying results. Again, thanks.

[Rickster]

TextEdit has always been little more than a "wrapper", putting an app and a document model around the Cocoa text system. It's long been a favorite intro-to-Cocoa demo to show how one can build an app with nearly all of TextEdit's features in about 50 lines, about 40 of which are just ObjC structural gunk common to any app. The complete source code to TextEdit is in /Developer/Examples/AppKit if you've installed the developer tools. (There's a bit more code there than there probably needs to be; TextEdit came before the NSDocument architecture for document-centric apps, so it implements much of that kind of stuff itself.)

I imagine Apple will only be adding features to TextEdit when it has something worth adding to the text system for all apps. This philosophy would pretty much limit it to always being more a "text editor" than a "word processor". Stuff for word-processing applications (footnotes, outlining, legal formatting, et cetera) doesn't have much use elsewhere, while other text features (file format support, typography controls, hypertext, and so forth) can be of value to a wide range of applications.