What's "Notepad" for the Mac?

[mckitterick]

Dear Macolytes:

What's the Mac equivalent of Notepad? That is, a program that does not add any formatting to the text and code typed into a file? Is it called Text Edit?

Thanks,
Chris

Comments

[curieuse.livejournal.com]

TextEdit

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Thanks! So one could use that to create HTML and not mess it up?

[curieuse.livejournal.com]

I definitely think so. :)

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

Yes. With caveats. The default for TextEdit is to format everything, so the first thing you need to do is go to Format: Make Plain Text. And then save with an extension.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

That's an important caveat. I'll tell my Mac-lovin' student this (I suggested something similar, as you have to do with Notepad - Save As "All Types"). Thanks!

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

And if you're not married to TextEdit, I'd download the free TextWrangler:
http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

Agrees with geekmom and gwyndolin

[adammaker.livejournal.com]

If you are looking for the best direct editor: TextWrangler is what I use on the Mac for HTML, perl, and writing in other scripting langs.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

as per their well written FAQ:
"TextWrangler vs. BBEdit vs. BBEdit Lite

TextWrangler is a very capable text editor. ...

TextWrangler is considerably more modern and capable than BBEdit Lite. Among other things, it can open files from (and save them) to remote FTP servers, offers a significantly more powerful grep engine, supports multi-byte and non-Roman text files, can perform Find Differences on pairs of files, and can be invoked from the Unix command line."

[gwyndolin.livejournal.com]

If you're going to be doing HTML editing, I would recommend TextWrangler. It's a free download and has a little better functionality for that sort of thing than textedit. It's what I use for all my website editing.

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

TextPad, highly recommended.

[adammaker.livejournal.com]

Chris, if this is for use within your class...
the part where you emphasize the direct edition of HTML...
I'd have to go with the free ware called TextWrangler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextWrangler