[If this is your first time here, see my post about how I do reviews.]
If you are anything like me, you may feel a little depressed about the state of document writing on OS X.
Yes, there is Microsoft Office, but I have philosophical reasons to be opposed to everything Microsoft (I'll extrapolate this another time) and I'd rather use pen and paper than Office.
NeoOffice is pretty good, but when I want to write a quick document, I hate waiting 3 minutes (I know, this is a little exaggerated, but you get my frustration) for the darn thing to load up to the point I can start typing. I could fire up an old Mac SE/30 and be 3 sentences in by the time I see the icons in NeoOffice.
I love simplicity, but, for crying out loud, Apple's "TextEdit" is just ridiculous. You can't even resize the window without changing the margins. This is fine for doing plain text, but if you want to do a real document, this just doesn't cut it.
Fortunately, I have discovered Bean (http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html). Bean is a great document editor and you will love it if you are like me and fit into any one or more of the above mentioned categories of complaint.
First of all, you may notice I am referring to it as a document editor rather than a text editor. This may seem odd to many of you, but I am a programmer and my definition of a text editor is something that only does plain text and is generally only useful for coding or simple ReadMe files. By referring to it as a document editor, I am highlighting the fact that this program makes actual documents... formatted, multi-page pieces that generally include styling of some sort. This is what most people generically refer to as "Word documents". This annoys me to no end by the way, so please cease and desist said practice if you fit that category. A Word document is any document of the Word format, denoted by its filename extension of ".doc". Okay, now that my mini-rant is over, let's move on. ;)
As I hinted at above, Bean is simplicity. It does not have boatloads of features. It does, however, take advantage of all the built-in OS X goodness such as the Dictionary features, live spell-checking, Text-to-Speech feature, the excellent Font Chooser, the system-wide Color Picker, and drag-and-drop from Finder. These are what I consider the essential basic features for a document editor. These features also exist in Apple's TextEdit and were the only reasons I could tolerate it from time to time. Now, I can get these features in an app that works the way one expects a document editor to work.
There are several other features of Bean that come in really handy:
1. "Paste and Match Style" - If you've ever copied something from another document and pasted into the current working one, you have noticed that it kept the font settings of the other document (depending on what program you are using - but most do). Sometimes, this is good. Most of the time it is not, which means you now have to highlight the text and change it to match the surrounding text you just pasted into. In Bean, under the Edit menu, you will find Paste and Match Style, which will bring you happiness. :)
2. A live wordcount + character count + page count on the bottom of the window - Now you can keep an eye on how long winded you are at all times and save yourself the guesswork of having to go back and edit words out at random.
3. "Send to Mail" - Granted, it is easy enough to attach a document to a new email the old-fashioned way, but having a menu item to do the work for me makes the lazy person in me want to smile (dancing for joy wouldn't exactly promote the lazy ethos now would it?).
4. The ability to save as Word and other formats - For me, this is not a great feature because I prefer to just send someone an rtfd document and tell them they should be using something more universal and free than Word format, but I know this is a big deal to many of you, so I included it. Yes, there are easy ways to convert to Word format, but being able to choose it in the Save dialog is so much better.
5. Its default document format is rtfd - As I said, I prefer to promote file formats that are more open and not locked to a several hundred dollar piece of software created by an evil empire. RTFD is accessible to most document programs and allows for styling. Admittedly, the OpenDocument format is best in that regard, but it is less accessible until everyone gets a copy of OpenOffice or NeoOffice installed on their machines (they are free, by the way).
I have used Bean a few times now and am really happy I discovered it. It is still in Beta as of today's writing, but I have not had any issues with it and the only quirk I have noticed is that the document focus will sometimes shift up or down as you are typing near the top or bottom of a window. This doesn't cause a problem because the cursor continues doing what it is supposed to do, however, it can cause you to do a double-take the first time or two as you make sure you are still typing in the right place. After a few times, you know to trust it and keep typing and it is no longer a concern.
For really complex documents, you will still need something more robust, but if you are like me and want simplicity as much as possible, be sure to check it out:
http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html
Peace,
Todd
