Mac OS X Server 1.x: About TextEdit

• TextEdit is a small but powerful word-processing application based on the Yellow Box. It is written in Java, using the Java Yellow Box APIs. (The TextEdit application in Developer Release 1 was written in Objective-C using the Objective-C version of the same APIs.

Features

Most of TextEdit's word-processing capabilities come from the Yellow Box text system. These capabilities include:

• Editing rich text with graphics
• Support for Unicode and other encodings (if you have installed the Japanese package, you can read, write, and edit Japanese files on any Rhapsody system)
• Reading and writing RTF and reading HTML
• Ruler for setting paragraph properties
• Advanced typographical features such as hyphenation, kerning, ligatures, and baseline offsets
• Spell checking and correction
• Ability to access text services provided by other Yellow Box applications (such MailViewer's "Mail Text")

Additional features of TextEdit include:

• Ability to specify explicitly the character encoding to be used for each opened or saved file.
  Plain text files from different operating systems often use different encodings for international and special characters; if the default encoding choice that TextEdit uses when it opens a file turns out to be wrong, the user can specify the encoding through the pop-up menu in the Open panel. The default choice, "Automatic," tells TextEdit to use either the default eight-bit encoding of the system or Unicode.TextEdit can usually differentiate an eight-bit plain text file from a Unicode file, so it will choose the appropriate one.
  Similarly, the user can use the encoding pop-up menu in the Save panel to specify explicitly the encoding for a saved file. By default TextEdit uses the encoding used when the file was opened.
  You can set the default settings of these pop-ups items through the Preferences panel.

• Loading rich text files without interpreting the rich text; this allows the user to see and edit HTML tags (for instance) directly.
• A "Wrap to Page" mode, which presents the document wrapped to the current page size (as opposed to the window size), thus giving the user a simple WYSIWYG representation of the pages. This mode also allows zooming.
• A simple non-modal find panel with replace capability.
• Services ("Open File" and "Open Selection") to allow other applications to open files and text in TextEdit.
  TextEdit source files are installed with the development environment in the examples directory (on Rhapsody /System/Developer/Examples/Java/AppKit/TextEdit; on Windows in Developer/Examples/Java/AppKit/TextEdit under the directory where you installed the Yellow Box).

Known Issues

• If TextEdit or other Yellow Box Java applications fail to launch, the most likely cause is that your CLASSPATH environment variable is not correctly set. (This variable contains the path to the resources for the Java environment.) If this is the case, the application actually launches, but since it can't find its resources, it continues running without any graphical user interface. (You must kill the process with the Task Manager.)
  The workaround is to either remove this existing CLASSPATH (if you don't need it anymore), or to add the default class path for Yellow Box Java to the existing CLASSPATH. On Rhapsody, use the javaconfig command with the "DefaultClasspath" argument, for example:
  
  setenv CLASSPATH .:'javaconfig DefaultClasspath'

  On Windows NT, you can do this via the System control panel; on Windows 95 or 98, you need to edit your autoexec.bat file. The string to add (assuming you installed the Yellow Box in C:\\Apple) is:

  
  C:/Apple/Library/Java;C:/Apple/Library/JDK/lib/classes.zip
  Add this after the existing value, separated by a colon. Replace the two occurences of "C:/Apple" with the location you installed the Yellow Box in.

• If you wish to customize the list of encodings TextEdit shows in the Open panel popup, please copy the file DefaultEncodings.txt in TextEdit.app/Resources to Encodings.txt and add or delete the encodings you want. For a complete list of appropriate string encodings, see the header file NSString.h in the Foundation framework. For instance, WinLatin2 nor CP1251 encodings are "11" and "15".
• The complete list of encodings that are actually useful for TextEdit is: 2,3,4,5,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,30
• TextEdit can open HTML files, but doesn't save them. If you open an HTML file, edit, and then save, the file will be saved as an RTF or RTFD file. TextEdit will present you with a Save panel allowing you to specify a new name. Do not try to overwrite your HTML file, as TextEdit will simply end up appending "rtf"or "rtfd" to the name.