Tex-Edit is a handy text editor that fills the gap between Apple’s bare-bones TeachText and a full-featured word processor. It is particularly useful for formatting text which is transmitted to and from a BBS.
This document lists all available commands, ordered as they appear in the menus. At the end are some trouble-shooting tips and set-up hints. The accompanying Welcome to Tex-Edit! document discusses several useful features in detail and lists some power-user shortcuts. And don’t forget Tex-Edit’s balloon help facility! Tex-Edit is ShareWare ($5).
Contents:
Apple Menu
About Tex-Edit…
Here you will find a few helpful hints as well as instructions on how to contact me for suggestions or bug reports.
File Menu
New
This opens a new blank document window. Up to 20 windows can be open simultaneously, depending on Tex-Edit’s memory allocation. To increase Tex-Edit’s memory allocation, enter a new “preferred size” in the Finder’s Get Info dialog box. You will need to add about 50K per extra window.
Open…/Open Any…
Use this command to pick the TEXT or PICT document you wish to open. If the text exceeds 32K, you will be asked to select a 32K portion of the document. You may also open the file into multiple consecutively-numbered windows (split on paragraph boundaries). This allows you to view, speak and print large files.
Electronic–text (etext) documents are prepared by “Project Gutenberg” of the Illinois Benedictine College. Project Gutenberg is working to make a large number of public domain texts available as etexts. Large documents opened as “etext” can subsequently be closed with a single option-click in the top window’s close box.
If you wish to view a non-TEXT document, such as a Normal Word document, hold down the option key before choosing this command. (Technically, Tex-Edit only opens the “data fork” of the chosen file.) You may notice some strange characters embedded in the text. (For example: “ 4 4 2Real Mac users do it with Tex-Edit”) These proprietary formatting characters are used by the parent program.
Open Selection…
Use this command to jump directly to another document. This allows you to create simple hypertext documents. For example, the main (root) Tex-Edit document could serve as a jumping-off point for a whole group of related documents. Select the word of interest and choose Open Selection to activate the “hyperlinked” document.
The desired document (or its alias) must reside in the same folder as the root document. If the selected file cannot be found, Tex-Edit will beep and display a standard Open dialog. If the selected file exists and is not a TEXT, PICT or TeachText document, Tex-Edit will open the document by launching its creator application. For example, if the desired document is an Excel spreadsheet, Tex-Edit will launch Excel and Excel will display the spreadsheet. (This feature requires System 7.)
Insert…/Insert Any…
Use this command to insert a bit of text from another document. The text from the chosen donor document is inserted into the active document at the cursor position, replacing any text which may be selected. The donor document is not affected. If you hold down the option key before choosing this command, you will be allowed to insert text from any file, including non-TEXT files. (The resultant combined document can not exceed 32K.)
Close/Close All
This closes the active window. You will be prompted to save any changes you may have made. If you hold down the option key, all document windows will be closed rapidly. Likewise, holding down the option key while clicking in the close box will close all windows rapidly.
Save
This saves any changes you have made to the file in the active window. Tex-Edit displays a standard Save As dialog if the document has not yet been saved to disk.
Save As…
This brings up the standard dialog for creation of a new text file on your disk. For System 7 users, there is a pop-up menu which allows you to choose the desired file format. Normal is the default styled Tex-Edit format. Plain Text will create a Tex-Edit document without any style information, thus saving a small amount of disk space (about 20%). Stationery Pad format creates a styled Tex-Edit boiler-plate. Read Only will create a styled document that can be viewed, read aloud, printed and copied from but not altered. (This is useful if you want a “ReadMe” file to remain unaltered.)
Tex-Edit can also directly create Word, Word Perfect, MacWrite, WriteNow, TeachText and America Online documents (as well as a few others). To create another type of document, select the Other option. This displays a dialog box which allows you to enter any 4-character creator code.
Normal, Stationery Pad and Read Only Tex-Edit documents remember their size and screen position during each save. They will appear in the same place when re-opened, if you have selected Remember window size and position in the Preferences dialog.
A Sound File is a double-clickable System 7 sound document that can be placed in the System to be used as an alert sound, etc. Tex-Edit can create such a file if you have used the Record Sound command to attach a sound to the current document. The text portion of the document is not inserted into the sound file.
Revert
Did you make a mistake that even Undo can’t correct? This command will restore the last saved version of the active document. All changes made since the last time the file was saved will be lost.
Page Setup
This displays the standard Page Setup dialog allowing you to set specific options for your printer.
Print Options…
This dialog allows you to set the page margins (in inches). You can also specify double-spaced printouts and page numbers (at the bottom of each printed page). None of these choices affect the actual file or the on-screen display.
If the margins are set to zero, then your printer’s maximum printable area will be used. (The maximum printable area can generally be increased by selecting “Larger Print Area” in the Page Setup/Options dialog.) All settings are saved in the “Prefs” file when you quit Tex-Edit (see below).
Print…
This displays the standard Print dialog for the printer you have selected in the Chooser.
Preferences…
Do you like to use 18 point Times, save all your documents in Word format and use curly quotes? The Preferences dialog allows you to preset many of these features and store your preferred settings in a “Prefs” file in the System folder (System 6) or Preferences folder (System 7).
1) Show “Open…” dialog at startup. If this is selected, you will be greeted with the standard file selection dialog (instead of a new blank window) when Tex-Edit launches.
2) Wrap text inside window. If you are writing source code and want each entry to stay on a separate line, use this option to enable the horizontal scrollbar. Otherwise, you should leave this option off so that text can automatically word-wrap to fit between the left and right sides of the window. This option does not affect the document, only the screen display.
3) Change file “creator” to:___ If you want Tex-Edit to save documents so that another word processor (e.g. Word) will open when the document is double-clicked, check this option and enter the appropriate 4 character creator code. (For example, Word’s creator is MSWD.) The Finder uses this code to identify the document’s parent application and icon.
If you wish to save files as Tex-Edit documents, check this option and use TBB5 (Tex-Edit’s creator code). To open, edit and save a file without changing its parent application or icon, leave this option off.
4) Smart cut, paste and delete. In most cases, this option will save two keystrokes in the cut-and-paste cycle. Cutting a word from the middle of a sentence will leave only a single space, which is usually what you want. If you subsequently paste the word between two other words, Tex-Edit will place a single space between each of the words. Likewise, the delete and forward delete keys will remove the selected word(s) as well as the extra space, saving one keystroke.
5) Tab creates ___ spaces. This option may be helpful to indent the first line of a paragraph (or create columns if you are using a mono-spaced font like Monaco). If this is selected, pressing the tab key will result in the insertion of the chosen number of spaces into the text.
6) Smart (“”) quotes. If this is selected, typographically superior (“curly”) quotes will automatically be used whenever you hit the single or double quote key. You may wish to disable this feature if you are creating files to be sent to non-Mac systems, since they won’t be able to recognize these characters.
7) Remember window size and position. If this is selected, Tex-Edit will restore a document’s previous size and screen position when it is re-opened. This only works with Normal, Stationery Pad and Read Only Tex-Edit documents. If this option is off, document windows will be evenly “staggered” as they are opened.
8) Play sound when file opens. If this is selected, Tex-Edit will automatically play the sound file attached to each document as it is opened. Sounds can be attached to documents using the Record Sound command in the Sound menu.
9) Default window size:___ This pop-up menu allows you to set the size of new windows. If you always view BBS text of a given line width, several handy presets are available, allowing you to set the line width to exactly 60, 80 and 100 characters (if you are using 9 point Monaco). Full Screen windows will nearly fill the main screen, leaving a thin strip of desktop on the right side (for the disk and trashcan icons). The Current Window option will make the default window size the same as the document window you are currently viewing.
10) Font/Font size:___ These pop-up menus allows you to change Tex-Edit’s default font and font size. The default font and size are used when a new window is created or when a generic text file is opened.
11) Block header:___ If you wish to use special characters to hilite and indent each line of “quoted” text used in an e-mail reply, enter the desired characters here. (e.g. “ > ”) These “block” settings are used by the Block Format command (explained under Special menu). The header may consist of 0 to 8 characters.
12) Block length:___ Enter the maximum character width of each block-formatted line (between 20 and 200 characters per line).
Quit
This closes the Tex-Edit application. You will be prompted to save any altered or unsaved documents before Tex-Edit quits.
Edit Menu
Undo
This reverses your most recent editing action or style change. After you undo something, it can usually be redone if desired.
Cut
This removes the current selection to the clipboard, making it available for pasting into other locations or other documents. The clipboard holds the text as well as its “styl” information, making styled selections available to other programs.
Copy/Copy Unstyled
This makes a copy of the current text or picture selection and places it in the clipboard. Sometimes it is convenient to move plain text (without any associated attributes, such as font, size or style). If you hold down the option key, only the plain, unstyled text will be copied to the clipboard.
Paste/Paste Unstyled
This moves a copy of the text in the clipboard to the current insertion point, deleting any text which may be selected. If you hold down the option key, only plain text will be pasted.
Clear
This erases the current text selection.
Select All
This hilites (selects) all the text in the document. If a PICT document is active, then the entire picture is enclosed in the selection marquee.
Paste Time
The current time is pasted at the insertion point. The clipboard is not affected. Use the “Date and Time” control panel (7.1) to alter the format of the date and time.
Paste Date
The current date is pasted at the insertion point.
Insert Page Break
Use this feature to force your printer to start at the top of a new page. Tex-Edit inserts a formfeed character, which shows up as a little gray non-printing box.
Special Menu
Find/Replace…
Suppose you wish to quickly locate a specific name in a long text document? Or, you want to update a document by replacing all instances of the year “1993” with the current year? The Find/Replace dialog allows you to locate any given text string and optionally specify a replacement string.
The Find button hilites the first occurrence of the desired string. (You may then use the Find Next or Replace & Find Again menu commands.) The Replace All button replaces all occurrences of the find string with the replacement string, then reports how many replacements were made.
Perhaps you want to search for non-printing characters in order to clean up a passage of downloaded text. The small buttons labelled CR (carriage return), Tab, FF (formfeed/page break) and LF (linefeed) give you easy access to four commonly encountered invisible characters. This type of document conversion is completed more easily, however, using the Modify dialog (below).
All searches start at the top of the document, unless you select the Start search at cursor position option. The Cases must match option forces Tex-Edit to look for exact matches. Turn this switch off if you wish case to be ignored. (To properly find and replace words with foreign language characters/diacriticals, you must leave this switch on.) The Whole words only option limits matches to distinct whole words (i.e. looking for “the” will find “the” but not “them”). All switch settings are saved between Tex-Edit sessions.
Find Again
This option becomes available once a match has been found. It allows you to continue searching for the next match.
Replace & Find Again
This replaces the hilited word with the replacement string (from the Find/Replace dialog) and continues searching for the next match.
Enter Selection
If you see a word in the document and wish to find its next occurrence, select the word and use this command to instantly copy the selection (up to 255 characters) into the Find/Replace dialog. Then use the Find Again command.
Change Case
If someone sends you a file that is ALL CAPS, select the offending text and use this command to fix it. You can change all the selected text to uppercase, lowercase, title case or sentence case. Title case capitalizes the first letter of each word and sentence case capitalizes the first letter of each sentence.
Block Format
Quoting a brief passage from received e-mail allows the sender to remember their original message and thus the context of your reply. This command will convert the selected text into a marked, indented block format, suitable for use in outgoing e-mail.
> Here is a brief example of block
> formatted text with the line length set
> to 40 and block header set to “ > ”.
Block formatting may also be useful if you simply wish to emphasize a brief passage of text embedded in your document. The number of characters per line and the indenting header characters are set in the Preferences dialog. Notice that words are not split.
Strip LF’s
Sometimes you download a file with funny boxes in front of each line. These boxes are actually linefeed characters which are inserted by MS-DOS systems. (They generally follow each carriage return to signify line endings.) Macs don’t use linefeeds. Use this command to remove all these useless characters from the document.
LF’s->CR’s (UNIX->Mac)
Use this command to quickly convert a downloaded UNIX or Etext file into Mac format. UNIX systems use a single linefeed character (without a carriage return) to terminate paragraphs. All linefeeds are converted to carriage returns.
CR’s->LF’s (Mac->UNIX)
This is handy if you wish to upload a Mac file to a UNIX system. This command converts all carriage returns in the active document into linefeeds.
Modify Document…/Modify Selection…
File transfers between Mac and non-Mac systems often result in frustration for users at both ends. The non-Mac users end up with split words and run-on paragraphs, while the Mac users are greeted by a screen full of little empty boxes and oddly wrapped lines. If you’ve ever experienced these problems, you’ve come to the right dialog!
The Modify dialog is Tex-Edit’s most complex and powerful feature. It allows you to globally change (munge) special characters in the text. If you only wish to modify a portion of the document, select the text of interest before choosing this command. If you don’t like the resulting modifications, be sure to choose Undo before doing anything else. The settings in the Modify dialog are remembered until you quit Tex-Edit.
1) Replace each tab with ___ spaces. This is useful for aligning tab columns created by other programs. If this is selected, each tab character will be replaced with the specified number of space characters.
2) Strip control characters. If a downloaded document contains lots of little boxes scattered through the text, this option may help. It deletes all non-Mac control characters. Specifically, it deletes all characters with an ASCII value less than 32 (except for tabs, carriage returns and formfeeds, which are used by Mac programs).
3) Strip high ASCII characters. If your downloaded text is filled with “wrong” characters and misspelled words, use this option to delete all characters in the upper ASCII range (128-256). This option will strip many useful typographic characters (ligatures, ellipses, em dashes, curly quotes, etc.) as well as foreign language characters, so you should first convert (“stupefy”) any useful characters you wish to keep.
4) Strip leading spaces. Would you like all your text to line up nicely along the left side of the window? Use this option to remove the spaces and tabs from the beginning of each line.
5) Strip trailing spaces. Use this option to remove the unnecessary padding (spaces and tabs) that some editors add at the end of each line.
6) Strip double spaces. Many people who learned to type on typewriters are still in the habit of following each sentence with two spaces. When using proportional fonts, it is typographically preferable to separate sentences using a single space. This option will change each instance of double space characters (following a sentence) into a single space.
7) Strip diacritical marks. Many foreign languages use accents, umlauts, cedillas and the like. If you wish to upload text that contains foreign characters, use this option to remove the diacritical marks from letters, converting them to their ordinary (English) equivalent.
8) Quotes. The foot and inch marks (‘ “) are poor substitutes for typographical (curly) quotes, however they are all that most BBSs understand. Use this popup menu to replace all ordinary quote marks with typographer quote marks and visa versa.
9) Ligatrs. The two available choices allow you to replace all occurrences of “fi” and “fl” with the single-character typographer ligatures or visa versa. Note that some fonts do not have these ligatures installed, thus producing empty little boxes. As with the smart quotes, ligatures are usually not recognized by less intelligent computer systems.
10) Ellipses. This popup menu presents two choices, allowing you to replace all ordinary ellipses (three consecutive periods) with a typographic ellipsis character or visa versa.
11) Dashes. This popup menu presents two choices, allowing you to replace all ordinary twin dashes with a typographic em dash character or visa versa.
12) Line Endings. These various choices allow you to easily convert BBS or MS-DOS line formatting to Mac line formatting and visa versa. (See the section: “MS-DOS versus the Mac” in the accompanying Welcome to Tex-Edit! document.)
Use Strip CR/LF to convert downloaded text to Mac-formatted word wrapping text. If you wish to format text for upload to a BBS, use the Add CR option and set the Line Length to about 60 characters (which easily fits on most BBS editors). To convert a file for transfer to an MS-DOS computer, use Add CR/LF.
13) Reset. Use this shortcut to turn off all the selected modifications at once (resetting them to their default values).
Go To Line #…
If you are working with source code or a line-numbered legal document, use this command to jump to any specified line in the document.
This option is most helpful if you de-select “Wrap text inside window” (Preferences dialog).
Word Count…
It is sometimes helpful to know exactly how long your book report is so far. This command shows the word count, line count, character count, sentence count and paragraph count for the entire active document as well as the current selection. The character count is also continuously displayed in the lower left corner of each window, followed by the number of characters currently selected (hilited).
Font Menu
The font menu lists all the fonts available to Tex-Edit. The current selection’s font is checked.
Size Menu
The size menu lists a selection of common font sizes. The current selection’s font size is checked.
Smaller
This decrements the current selection’s font size by one point. If the selection contains varying text sizes, then each of the various text sizes is reduced by one. The command keys are a useful shortcut for easily adjusting font size.
Larger
This increments the current selection’s font size by one point.
Other(_)…
If you wish to change quickly to an odd font size, use this command to select any point size between 2 and 127. Simply enter the desired value in the edit box (or use the arrow buttons).
The sample text is redrawn as its size changes.
Style Menu
Use the Style options to add a splash of color or emphasize important points. If you have a color-compatible Mac, then the standard color picker dialog is available in the Color submenu.
The Justification submenu may be useful for centering text on announcements or if you are using a right-to-left language script. The justification setting affects how the document is displayed and printed, but does not alter the file’s contents.
Sound Menu
Read Entire Document
This command is remarkably helpful for proofreading documents, catching grammatical errors which elude both spelling checkers and tired eyes. It reads the entire active document aloud. The reading can be canceled or paused at any time.
Read Starting At Cursor
Use this command to begin reading at any arbitrary point in the document.
Read Selection
If you only wish to listen to a specific passage of text, use this command to read the selected text. The reading can be stopped or paused as desired.
Stop
This command immediately stops the reading session and any sound which may be playing.
Pause/Resume
This command temporarily pauses or restarts the reading session.
Turn Speech On/Off
This command activates the Speech Manager. It must be selected before any other speech-related commands are usable. Turning speech off will immediately stop all speech and sound playback and release any memory allocated for the Speech Manager.
Speech Settings…
Want to try a different voice or listen to a document read at double-speed? This dialog allows you to modify some of the Speech Manager’s speech characteristics. The Voice pop-up menu lists all the currently available voices. Selecting a voice will adjust the Voice pitch, Speech rate and Modulation to that voice’s default setting.
Try experimenting with different rates and pitches to get the most pleasing results. The Sample button will cause a sample sentence to be read aloud.
Auto-Highlighting
Would you like to sit back and watch what is being read while Tex-Edit proofreads your document? Choose By Word or By Sentence from this menu to have Tex-Edit scroll each word/sentence into view and hilite it as it is read aloud. Background editing functions are disabled while auto-highlighting is active.
Record Sound…
If you’d really like to “wake up” recipients of your documents, try attaching an audible note! This command displays the standard sound input dialog for microphone-equipped Macs. Once you finish recording the desired sound, it is attached to the current document (making it available for playing when the document is re-opened later). Only one sound can be attached to each document, therefore the old sound is erased when a new one is recorded.
Play Sound
This command will play the document’s attached sound file, if any. Use command-period to interrupt sound playback.
Erase Sound
Want to minimize your document’s size? This command permanently erases the document’s attached sound file. It is not undo-able. Read-Only document sounds cannot be erased.
Windows Menu
All open documents are readily available using the Windows menu. Choose the document you wish to activate. The currently active window is checked.
Switch
Having trouble juggling several documents at once? Use this command repeatedly to “cycle” through all open documents.
Miscellaneous
Requirements
Tex-Edit requires System 6.0.7 or better. To use the speech facility, you need Apple’s new Speech Manager extension. (The old Macintalk no longer works.) To use the Drag & Drop function, you will need to use System 7.5 or place the Macintosh Drag and Drop extension in the Extensions folder. (See the accompanying Welcome to Tex-Edit! document for more details on Drag & Drop.)
About The Speech Manager
The Speech Manager and the MacinTalk Pro extension should be placed in the Extensions folder (or the System folder under System 6.0.7). All voice files should be placed in a folder named “Voices” in the Extensions folder. The Speech Manager only requires 150K of RAM and will function on practically any Mac, while the higher quality MacinTalk Pro voices require a lot more memory and processing power (System 7, 700-2800K and 68020+). Tex-Edit runs fine without the Speech Manager.
You can purchase the Speech Manager direct from Apple or from Quality Computers (AOL: QualityPD). Quality Computers sells a low-priced package that includes a fascinating group of speech-related programs and utilities.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Tex-Edit makes full use of Apple’s extended keyboard including the forward delete, home, end, page up, page down and cursor keys. Other shortcuts:
• Shift-arrow extends a selection.
• Option-left/right arrow moves the cursor one word at a time.
• Option-up/down arrow moves the insertion marker to the beginning/end of the line.
• Option-shift-arrow extends the selection one word at a time.
• Option-home will move the insertion marker to the beginning of the document.
• Option-end will move the insertion marker to the end of the document.
• Option-shift-home will select all text up to and including the current selection.
• Option-shift-end will select all text from the current selection to the end of the file.
• Option-delete mimics the extended keyboard’s forward delete key.
• Enter or Return activate the default (outlined) button.
• Esc or Command-period activate the Cancel button.
• All other pushbuttons have command key equivalents based on the first letter in the
name of the button. (For example Command-d activates the Don’t Save button in
the “Save Changes?” dialog.)
Other Features
Tex-Edit is 32 bit clean, stationery aware, Drag manager aware, required Apple event aware, System 7 compatible, MultiFinder compatible, color compatible, big screen compatible, 68040 cache compatible and PowerPC compatible (under emulation). Balloon help is available under System 7.
Limitations
Tex-Edit is made to handle up to 32000 characters per files. This keeps the code as small and fast as possible. It also allows multiple documents to be stored in RAM, thus benefiting PowerBook owners. If the file is larger than 32K, a dialog will allow Tex-Edit to open any 32K chunk of text within the file or open the file into multiple windows.
Trouble Shooting
It is easy to use all of Tex-Edit’s memory allotment while manipulating large PICTs. If you see an “out of memory” message, simply increase Tex-Edit’s memory allocation in the Finder. I would suggest at least 1200K if you plan on doing a lot of PICT editing with a big color monitor.
If you have trouble with the speech functions, try increasing Tex-Edit’s memory allocation. The “Male Voice” and “Female Voice” use the most memory. “Marvin” and “Fred” use the least.
If the speech functions still don’t work, or if you notice any other strange behavior while using Tex-Edit, try deleting the “Tex-Edit Prefs” file in the Preferences folder. Older versions of Tex-Edit sometimes created corrupted Prefs files when the System configuration was changed.
It is possible to overflow the text area if your text is very tall and/or the window is very thin. Tex-Edit will usually recover from this type of error.
Source Code
Tex-Edit is ShareWare ($5). Registered owners may obtain a copy of the THINK Pascal source code (for personal use) by sending a disk and a self-addressed stamped disk mailer envelope to:
Tom Bender
5313 Beverly Drive
San Angelo, Texas 76904
On-Line Support
If you have questions, suggestions or bug reports, you can also reach me via modem:
America Online: TomBB
eWorld: TomBB
Internet: tombb@aol.com
Other Products
Please also try Eliza (clinical psychologist), Re-Pete (memory game) and Azile (Eliza’s evil twin)!
Credits
I am grateful to the many users who have contributed to the evolution of Tex-Edit, however I would especially like to thank E.J. Chichilnisky (for suggestions, feature development and extensive beta testing) and Martin Kimeldorf (for extensive help with this manual)!
