I don’t use Word. I don’t use Pages. Word processing, killer app of the ’80s, simply doesn’t matter to me. Why? I don’t write documents meant for printing. (Not strictly true. The last time I prepared printed materials was more than a year ago, but it was just Keynote slides and some cleverly formatted OmniOutliner documents.)

For day-to-day text, I use TextEdit. It opens Word documents well enough. Preview is good for images and PDFs, mostly LaTeX typeset papers. For programming, I’ve been with TextMate since the beginning, RubyConf 2004, straight from DHH’s laptop, serial number #66. Geek cred.

Preview

Preview opens every image format I throw at it and most every PDF (a little trouble with fancy forms). Over the years Preview has gradually accumulated features without spoiling its simple everyday use as an image and PDF viewer. You can crop, resize, magic wand, and copy images. You can, sometimes, fill out PDF forms. You can even annotate PDFs though the annotation tools are new and still feel clunky.

• Toolbar
  • Back/Forward, Zoom (-/=/+), Page, Move/Text/Select, Flexible Space, Sidebar, Search
  • Icon Only

TextEdit

TextEdit dates back to NeXTSTEP days, supports plain text in a bunch of encodings and rich text in a bunch of formats: Microsoft’s RTF most strongly, but also some Word formats, HTML, and even OpenDocument Text. TextEdit is lightweight, versatile, and even open source if you aren’t entirely satisfied.

• Preferences
  • New Document
    • ✓ Plain Text
    • Width: 80 characters — naturally.
  • Open and Save
    • Autosave modified documents: Never — I am my own autosave ⌘S after every sentence.
• Keyboard Shortcuts (via System Preferences > Keyboard)
  • Start Speaking ⇧⌘D — I like to be read to.
  • Stop Speaking ⌘D

TextMate

People say that TextMate is Emacs re-imagined with Macish sensibilities. Despite several tries, I could never pickup Emacs. TextMate, on the other hand, scales in a naturally Macish way. Basic usage is a piece of cake. Advanced usage is just a menu or arcane keyboard shortcut away.

TextMate’s largest disadvantage is the slow pace of its 2.0 development. In the meantime, while we don’t wait for the remarkable new TextMate, ProjectPlus TextMate’s most superficial mar — they replace the ugly, Expose hostile project drawer with a nice panel.

• Preferences
  • General
    • ✓ Show right margin indicator
    • ✓ Don’t create untitled documents
  • Fonts & Colors
    • wl theme — a color scheme to match Xcode, no bold, italic, or underline.
    • Selection: #F7A071 — to match the system highlight. When the system highlight color is red, text selection is a sort of Apricot color.
    • Font: Monaco 10pt — consistent with Terminal.
    • ✗ Anti alias
  • Project+
    • SCM
      • SCM statis flags: Git, Subversion
• View
  • Gutter
    • ✗ Foldings
    • ✗ Bookmarks
  • ✓ Soft Wrap
  • Wrap Column: 80
• Keyboard Shortcuts (via System Preferences > Keyboard)
  • Previous File Tab ⇧⌘[
  • Next File Tab ⇧⌘]
• Bundles — Check them out.
  • Haskell
  • JSON
  • Lua
  • Ruby Haml
  • Ruby RSpec
  • Scheme

Next Time?

Key to iOS, the essential, the mandatory, Xcode.