Smultron is a

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

that is designed for both beginners and advanced users, named after the Swedish word for the

woodland strawberry ''Fragaria vesca'', commonly called the wild strawberry, woodland strawberry, Alpine strawberry, Carpathian strawberry or European strawberry, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the rose family that grows naturally throughout much of the Norther ...

. It was originally published as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

but is now sold through the

Mac App Store The App Store (also known as the Mac App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" ...

. It is written in

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXTS ...

using the

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...

API, and is able to edit and save many different file types. Smultron also includes

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

with support for many popular programming languages including C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

LISP A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sa ...

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

Prolog Prolog is a logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is intended primarily ...

, IDL and D.

Features

Smultron only works with

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limit ...

files, without support for images or graphics. Smultron has many syntax highlighting and

text encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values that ...

options. It can be helpful in the quick creation of websites, and allows the user to utilize and customize shortcuts for quick coding implementations, snippets and file organization. Other features include split file view, line wrapping,

incremental search In computing, incremental search, hot search, incremental find or real-time suggestions is a user interface interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible matches for the text ...

, a command line utility,

line number In computing, a line number is a method used to specify a particular sequence of characters in a text file. The most common method of assigning numbers to lines is to assign every line a unique number, starting at 1 for the first line, and increm ...

s, and an HTML preview.

History

Smultron was created by

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

programmer Peter Borg as his first

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

project, in order to fix what he perceived as a lack of free, advanced, easy-to-use Mac text editors at the time. Its first version was released for free on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

in 2004, and has since received significant support and feedback from the Mac open-source community.. The name of the application is derived from the common Swedish

, hence the application icon. Lingon, another program developed by Borg, is named after another common Scandinavian berry. Smultron 2 added a new projects drawer to organize files, and added a tab bar to switch between open documents, in addition to the previous sidebar. It required

Mac OS X Tiger Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Some o ...

, due to its adoption of the latter's new

Core Data Core Data is an object graph and persistence framework provided by Apple in the macOS and iOS operating systems. It was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and iOS with iPhone SDK 3.0.Apple, "Core Data Tutorial for iPhone OS". It allows data orga ...

and Sync Services frameworks. In his review, Giles Turnbull noted that the app could be slow when handling large text files. Smultron 3 was released in 2007, with better project handling, memory usage, and syntax highlighting. It also changed the behavior of the Preview panel to only refresh when a file is saved, a change which was criticized by ''Ars Technica'''s Jeff Smykil. In July 2009, Borg announced that he would no longer be developing Smultron, due to lack of time. At the time, the latest release was version 3.5.1. In September 2009, Borg released version 3.6beta1 to make the app compatible with

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. ...

. He also said he would not be releasing "any more versions for the foreseeable future." In 2010, programmer Jean-François Moy released a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

of Smultron, as version 3.7. It was later renamed Fraise, the French word for strawberry. Also open-source, this fork offered

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

support for Snow Leopard (but did not support

Mac OS X Leopard Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tig ...

), added an auto-update mechanism, duplicate line detection, and other features. Fraise was shortly abandoned. On January 6, 2011, Borg resurrected Smultron and released version 3.8. He relicensed it as

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...

, and made it a paid app available in the

. Version 3.8.2 added support for the

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is appealing to human readers in its source code form. Markdown is ...

markup language. Smultron 4, released in November 2011, was among the first Mac text editors to support iCloud sync, a new feature of

Mac OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...

. Files could be moved from the local drive to iCloud through a menu, which reviewer Nicolas Furno criticized as "not ideal". In August 2011, Smultron 5 was released on the Mac App Store as a paid upgrade, adding Retina display support, iCloud sync support for code snippets, support for expanding and collapsing functions, The current version is Smultron 13.

Notes

References

External links

*
Smultron at MacUpdateSmultron at Peter Borg Apps site (Paid 'PC app')Smultron at Mac App Store
*{{github, jfmoy/Fraise
Fraise at MacUpdateErbele
on GitHub MacOS text editors

Features

History

See also

Notes

References

External links