TextEdit is an
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 so ...
word processor
A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current ...
and
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 ...
, first featured in
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
's
NeXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...
and
OPENSTEP
OpenStep is a defunct object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification for a legacy object-oriented operating system, with the basic goal of offering a NeXTSTEP-like environment on non-NeXTSTEP operating systems. OpenStep wa ...
. It is now distributed with
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 la ...
since
Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a
GNUstep
GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project.
GNUste ...
application for other
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
-like operating systems such as
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
. It is powered by
Apple Advanced Typography
Apple Advanced Typography (AAT) is Apple Inc.'s computer technology for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid- ...
.
Implementation
TextEdit replaced the text editor of
previous Macintosh operating systems,
SimpleText
SimpleText is the native text editor for the Apple classic Mac OS. SimpleText allows text editing and text formatting (underline, italic, bold, etc.), fonts, and sizes. It was developed to integrate the features included in the different version ...
. TextEdit uses the
Cocoa text system to read and write documents in
Rich Text Format
)
As an example, the following RTF code
would be rendered as follows:
This is some bold text.
Character encoding
A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. T ...
(RTF),
Rich Text Format Directory
Rich Text Format Directory, also known as RTFD (due to its extension ''.rtfd''), or Rich Text Format with Attachments, is a primary document format of TextEdit, an application native to NeXTSTEP and macOS which has also been ported to other ...
,
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 ...
, and
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 JavaS ...
formats, and can open (but not save) old SimpleText files. It also has access to the operating system's built-in
spell-checking In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electron ...
service. The version included in
Mac OS X v10.3
Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. It was released on October 24, 2003.
System requirements
Panther's s ...
added the ability to read and write documents in Word format, and the version in
Mac OS X v10.4 added the ability to read and write
Word XML documents. The version included in
Mac OS X v10.5 added read and write support for
Office Open XML
Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a ZIP (file format), zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized th ...
and
OpenDocument Text. The version included in
Mac OS X v10.6 added automatic spelling correction, support for data detectors, and text transformations. The version included in
Mac OS X v10.7 added versioning of files, and Autosave similar to iOS.
Formatted text, justification, and even the inclusion of graphics and other multimedia elements are supported by TextEdit, as well as the ability to read and write to different
character 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 tha ...
s, including
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
(
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''.
UTF-8 is capable of e ...
and
UTF-16). TextEdit automatically adjusts letter spacing in addition to word spacing while justifying text. TextEdit does not support multiple columns of text.
The high-resolution TextEdit 1.5 icon found in Mac OS X versions starting with 10.5 (Leopard) features an extract from Apple's "
Think different
"Think different" is an advertising slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Apple Computer, Inc., now named Apple Inc. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.
The slogan has been widely taken as a resp ...
" ad campaign. This was replaced by a blank sheet of notebook paper in 10.10 (Yosemite).
Source code
Apple formerly distributed TextEdit's
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...
as part of the documentation of its
integrated development environment
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...
(IDE)
Xcode
Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It was initially released in late 2003; the latest stable release is version 14.2, released on December 13, ...
. On the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
, the source code of TextEdit can be found in Apple's ''Mac Developer Library''.
The following quote is from the characteristic part of the
BSD-3-Clause-compliant license text included in the source code:
See also
*
List of word processors
The following is a list of notable word processors.
Free and open-source software
* AbiWord
* Apache OpenOffice Writer
*Calligra Words
* Collabora Online Writer – enterprise-ready edition of LibreOffice, included with Online, Mobile and Desktop ...
*
Comparison of word processors
This is a comparison of word processing software.
General information
This table provides general information about selected word processors.
Characteristics
This table gives characteristics of each word processor.
Operating system compati ...
*
Office Open XML software
This is an overview of software support for the Office Open XML format, a document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.
The list here is not exhaustive.
ECMA-376 1st edition implementations
The ECMA-376 1st edition ...
*
OpenDocument software
*
TextEdit (API)
TextEdit was the name of a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the classic Mac OS for performing text editing.
These APIs were originally designed to provide a common text handling system to support text entry fields in di ...
References
External links
TextEditin ''Mac Developer Library'' (with source code)
c2: TextEditEnhanced TextEdit from WWDC presentation
{{macOS
Free word processors
MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc.
MacOS word processors
MacOS text editors
MacOS-only free software
Software that uses GNUstep
Software using the BSD license