[HN Gopher] TextEdit and the relief of simple software
___________________________________________________________________
TextEdit and the relief of simple software
Author : gaws
Score : 36 points
Date : 2025-10-24 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| al_borland wrote:
| For those who may be unaware, Text Edit also handles plain text.
| Format -> Make Plain Text
|
| Or if you want that as your default: TextEdit
| -> Settings -> Format -> Plain Text
|
| I've seen many people giving presentations claim that Apple
| doesn't ship and plain text editor and tell people to download
| one to make a basic edit. So I spread this information every time
| I have the excuse.
|
| Plus, plain text will likely outlive RTF. My RTF files from high
| school are trash now. I don't know if it was from disk corruption
| or changes over the last 25 years, but they've been lost to time.
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| > many people giving presentations claim that Apple doesn't
| ship and plain text editor and tell people to download one to
| make a basic edit
|
| macOS also comes with vim btw.
|
| Open terminal and then run vim from there.
|
| Or use ed. macOS has ed also. And as we know, ed is the
| standard text editor.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.en.html
| ksherlock wrote:
| Until Catalina, emacs and nano were also included.
| jshier wrote:
| nano is now an alias for UW pico, since Apple won't take
| any new versions of GPL tools.
| mfro wrote:
| Pico is also still included (and aliased to nano, funnily)
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| ed is old, but osx bash is ancient
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Assuming it was disk corruption, as seems likely, it's not
| immediately obvious to me why plain text would have been any
| better?
| al_borland wrote:
| Plain text wouldn't be better in that case, but then I'd know
| it was corruption instead of questioning if there was a spec
| change and trying to find a compatible piece of software that
| would still open it.
| wat10000 wrote:
| RTF is a textual format. You can open it in a plain text
| editor to see whether it's completely trashed or not. If it
| isn't, then you can even recover the raw text from it
| without too much difficulty.
| jesse__ wrote:
| ^
| al_borland wrote:
| In that case, it was corrupt. I did try opening it in a
| plain text editor. Some of the file was there, but not
| the whole thing.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| Try opening them in Libreoffice, it's often able to open crusy
| old documents.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think I tried that. I'm not sure if I still have them, I'll
| have to go look, but I tried every app I could think of. I
| spent a few hours on it last time I looked. There was a
| paragraph here or there that would show up, with a bunch of
| garbage around it for the rest of the file.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I do this so religiously that when I'm setting up a new system
| I am always surprised that rich text is the default.
|
| TextEdit is pretty great.
| Lammy wrote:
| > I am always surprised that rich text is the default.
|
| It's because RTF support was an early headline feature for
| NeXTSTEP, and TextEdit was meant to be as much of an API demo
| for the NS/OPENSTEP/Cocoa+ APIs as it was meant to be a
| usable application.
|
| Peep the NeXT 0.9 release notes: https://vtda.org/docs/comput
| ing/NeXT/NeXT%200.9-1.0%20Releas...
|
| "Built-in RTF Support: Rich Text Format (RTF) is a standard
| document interchange format specified by Microsoft Corp. In
| addition to opening and saving documents in its own internal
| format, the 0.9 version of WriteNow supports opening and
| saving documents in RTF format. Using this format, WriteNow
| on the NeXT Computer can exchange documents with Macintosh or
| IBM PC programs like WriteNow or Microsoft Word. RTF
| documents retain most of their font and formatting
| information."
|
| And the NeXTSTEP 3.0 programming book which goes on and on
| _and on_ about the `Text` object and how good their RTF
| support is:
| https://simson.net/ref/1993/NeXTSTEP3.0.pdf#G16.44605
|
| + https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/Text
| E...
| jesse__ wrote:
| I would think you should reasonably be able to open those files
| with a regular text editor (vim comes to mind) and manually
| extract the contents .. right? I guess if there was disk
| corruption and that produced an invalid UTF8 stream then maybe
| not .. but that'd at least be a smoking gun pointing to
| corruption, versus nobody being able to read the files
| anymore..
| ioblomov wrote:
| https://archive.ph/YvSxS
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I'd like to highly recommend CotEditor: https://coteditor.com
|
| It's open source, fully Mac native, no Electron, fast, and small.
| I use it almost every hour of every day.
| maratc wrote:
| Coteditor is cool, but it's not TextMate though :(
| ryanianian wrote:
| I absolutely adore TextMate, but it hasn't kept up. It will
| often fail to respond to the `mate` terminal command, or it
| will take many seconds to start even on my mostly vanilla M4
| Max.
| Lammy wrote:
| Needs moar BBEdit. It's my daily driver on my M3 MBP at
| work and it and its `bbedit` shell helper (which I alias to
| `bb` for brevity) are never something I have to wait on:
| https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/current_notes.html
| stblack wrote:
| TextEdit pet peeve: closing an empty window prompts the save
| dialog. Always.
|
| An empty TexEdit window with a non-dirty buffer should just
| disappear upon close.
|
| But I'm ready to learn otherwise from the HN commentariat.
| alain94040 wrote:
| Just tried: open TextEdit, new document (creates an empty
| document). Close it, no save dialog.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Happens for me too. I assume it's an iCloud thing (I vaguely
| remember the behaviour changing around the time I set up iCloud
| years ago), but I haven't ever bothered trying to figure out a
| way to turn it off...
| prvc wrote:
| >The best way to reclaim our digital experiences, though, might
| be to stick with the likes of TextEdit, software that is unable
| to do anything except follow our commands.
|
| Man, if he only knew...
| lapcat wrote:
| TextEdit has actually become super buggy since Apple switched to
| TextKit 2. There are now so many drawing and editing glitches,
| it's frustrating. I've switched over to using BBEdit for a lot of
| plain text editing that I used to do in TextEdit.
| danielfalbo wrote:
| What about vim
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| This x100. While I do use AI in (Neo)vim it's not built in and
| you can take it or leave it. And even when you do choose to use
| it it's on an as-needed/wanted basis.
| Koshkin wrote:
| IDK vim and emacs are probably not for everyone, they are like
| the "higher math" of editing...
| FredPret wrote:
| I grew to like vi after thousands of unpleasant exposures, but
| I'd like to see the day the New Yorker writes about vim at all,
| nevermind about how simple it is to use
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Vim is far from simple no matter how you put it. It is tens of
| MB, plenty of features and a steep learning curve.
|
| I think a better fit would be nano. Smaller and easier to use
| than vim.
|
| Now, even nano is not that small, if you want small and you
| like vim, you have vi (not vim), like the version included in
| Busybox.
| submeta wrote:
| Anything but TextEdit, for heaven's sake. Sublime, BBEdit, Zed,
| and any other alternative is a thousand times more useful.
|
| Does Apple make any professional, polished, sophisticated apps?
| It's their hardware and OS, but apps?
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Spent a bit of time thinking there must be one app by Apple but
| doesn't seem like it.
| phil-pickering wrote:
| Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro.
| commandersaki wrote:
| Preview.app? I consider it to be the best app by Apple and
| haven't found anything that is on its level. But it does lack
| being able to do Acrobat (proprietary) signatures. Everything
| else in this space is a joke.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The iWork apps are all brilliant.
| al_borland wrote:
| Code editors are overkill, and can be annoying, for those who
| are just looking to write a bit of text and don't want the app
| to try and highlight it based on an assumed syntax, start
| indenting things, or whatever else it will try and do.
|
| I used Sublime for many years, and currently use VS Code for
| work reasons. I still open TextEdit or Stickies all the time
| when I just need to note some text down and I don't want it in
| a random tab in my project. Sometimes I will use VS Code, if I
| need the tools if offers to do something to the text. It's all
| about picking the right tool for the job.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| You just named three code editors. TextEdit is not a code
| editor. Not everyone is a developer.
| hbn wrote:
| I figured something like this didn't need to be stated but then
| Microsoft added Copilot to Notepad
|
| No this is not a joke. Notepad has a giant always-present Copilot
| button now
| card_zero wrote:
| They put it in Paint, too. That's when I rediscovered
| Irfanview.
| natebc wrote:
| You think that's great, wait till you rediscover VLC!
| politelemon wrote:
| Apple has added it to textedit too with their equivalent
| intelligence enabled. You're throwing shade in the wrong
| direction.
| al_borland wrote:
| Apple added it as a system-wide service available in any text
| field. There isn't a dedicated button and branding for it
| within TextEdit. It's there because it's runs inside macOS.
| jonnyysmith wrote:
| TextMate is also nice since it has left file browser which comes
| handy and preserves last open file/folders in the view.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Rmate is really nice to open remote files locally in Textmate.
| dchest wrote:
| Ackchyually, TextEdit now has built-in AI as any other native
| macOS textview control if Apple Intelligence is turned on. It
| even autocompletes your sentences.
|
| It also likes to save to iCloud by default if you're signed in.
| vlark wrote:
| Everyone making recommendations for other apps is missing the
| fact that the article is aimed at non-techies who aren't going to
| fire up a terminal or go searching for a plain-text, non-stylized
| text editor. TextEdit can save as plain text as other posters
| note, but most non-techies want a word processor where they can
| change fonts and font styles.
|
| While I do like TextEdit, I prefer Bean (https://www.bean-
| osx.com/Bean.html), which has been my quick word processor of
| choice on the Mac since the Tiger days.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Also, don't sleep on the tragically underappreciated Pages.
| vlark wrote:
| Fair, but Pages tries to hard to be a Word replacement. And I
| think it calls home to the Apple mothership quite often, too.
|
| Oh, for the good old days of AppleWorks!
| fortylove wrote:
| <this comment doesn't really add anything, but thought I'd share
| anyways for whatever reason>
|
| I forgot the editor (maybe TextMate?) that was in vogue during
| the peak of the Ruby on Rails era, but there was such a feeling
| of magic to using what was a fairly basic editor that still had
| syntax highlighting.
|
| Was this feeling of magic purely because I was younger? Or
| perhaps we did peak in terms of the ergonomics of human-
| controlling-machine without too many aids?
|
| Fighter pilots used to fly with skill and instincts, but now are
| assisted by all sorts of high tech equipment that has removed
| much of the "flying skill" and replaced it with "equipment
| skill". It's not that fighter pilots are worse now. I'm sure they
| are better at achieving the outcomes desired, while commanding
| much more complex equipment. But the perhaps the art of flying is
| less emphasized.
|
| In the same way, perhaps the era of software engineering is
| changing too?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| My favourite Mac app for over 20 years.
|
| I used to edit a news-stand magazine: every article that went
| into the magazine was subbed with TextEdit. All my daily notes
| are in TextEdit. My todo lists are in TextEdit. If I'm writing
| longform for the web I draft in TextEdit and then copy and paste.
|
| It's just so immediate. Write, save. WYSIWYG formatting in the
| way the Mac has always done it.
|
| The author says "It doesn't redesign its interface without
| warning, the way Spotify does". I think it changed its interface
| once, c. 2005. Before then you could just have a window with no
| chrome whatsoever, just a blank slate to write in. Now you can't
| get rid of the formatting bar - the one with the typeface, size,
| bold/italics/underline. That pissed me off for a while. But
| compared to the ongoing hurt of 25 years of a broken spatial
| Finder, I can cope with it.
|
| Thank you, whoever in Apple maintains TextEdit.
| Call_center wrote:
| Berikut Cara Untuk membatalkan pinjaman Adapundi, Anda harus
| menghubungi layanan pelanggan melalui Live Chat via WA di
| 0813-5138-4097, atau Cs 0838-4068-5703, Siapkan data diri seperti
| KTP dan ikuti instruksi dari petugas customer service untuk
| proses pembatalan lebih lanjut.
| naet wrote:
| Long before I got into programming I would pop into windows
| notepad whenever I wanted to type something for myself. The bare
| window is oddly comforting and helps me get into a flow state of
| writing, brainstorming, or whatever.
|
| I heard on newer windows versions it has copilot though which is
| _crazy_ to me...
| krackers wrote:
| TextEdit is actually open source. I'm surprised no one has made a
| TextEdit++.
| jibal wrote:
| > The most basic computing interface is the command-line prompt,
| the empty box in which users write instructions in code directly
| to the machine
|
| LOL. I stopped reading there ... but I'll read the comments here
| with interest.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| this is a pretty reasonable fairly non-technical reduction for
| the average New Yorker reader.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-24 23:00 UTC)