Sometimes writers want a simple, direct writing tool which is not weighted down with all the bells and whistles. Text Editors often fill the bill. Some are tailored for computer programmers. Others, however, are aimed directly at writers, with special features to facilitate their writing.
I’ve come across just such a program, called simply Bean, for the MacIntosh crowd. The developer even calls it a “word processor,” rather than just a text editor. As I don’t have a Mac myself, I have not been able to personally evaluate it, but everything I read about it sounds good. And it’s free.
Here’s the developer’s description:
Many people have found Bean useful, but before you take the time to download it and try it, take a moment to understand what Bean is and what it isn’t.
Bean is not a replacement for MS Word. It does not do footnotes or hierarchical styles, which are necessary for students and professionals. Further, it is only partially compatible with the famous .doc format of Word (more about that here). Also, Bean is not a competitor for AbiWord, which is a full-featured word processor. Don’t even try to compare the two…apples and oranges.
So, what is Bean? Bean is a rich text editor, with many niceties added to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. It is, to use a horrible cliché, Text Edit on steroids. Bean uses Apple’s very cool NSText object to do most of what it does, but it adds live word count (thanks Keith!) and the ability to adjust printed margins. Lots of other bells and whistles too (see Features below). MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people. But sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean’s niche.
Features
Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor that includes:
- a live word count
- a Get Info panel for in-depth statistics
- a zoom-slider to easily change the view scale
- an Inspector panel with lots of sliders
- date-stamped backups
- autosaving
- a page layout mode
- an alternate colors option (e.g., white text on blue)
- an option to show invisible characters (tabs, returns, spaces)
- selection of text by text style, paragraph style, color, etc.
- a floating windows option (like Stickies has)
- easy to use menus
- remembers cursor postion (excluding .txt, .html, .webarchive formats)
- all of Cocoa’s good stuff (dictionary, word completion, etc.)
Bean is in its final “beta” stages. It can be downloaded here.
Sorry, comments are closed.
Comment by
David Dunham
25 Jun 2007
From the web site, looks sort of like a “reskinning” of TextEdit (or perhaps the underlying object, NSTextView).
Comment by
Mac Blogger
27 Dec 2007
Bean is my favourite text editor. It is sooo simple and easy to use. I really like it
Comment by
Tom Colvin
1 Jan 2008
Not being a Mac user myself, I’ve often wondered if there is an active freeware and shareware community for the Mac. Mac Blogger’s website [just click on his name in the comment above] focusses just on the matter, identifying a lot of stuff that’s available. Great site for Mac users!