SimpleText is the
native
Native may refer to:
People
* Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth
* Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory
** Native Americans (disambiguation)
In arts and enterta ...
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 u ...
for the Apple
classic Mac OS
Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. Th ...
. 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 versions of
TeachText that were created by various software development groups within
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
.
It can be considered similar to Windows'
WordPad
WordPad is the basic word processor that has been included with almost all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. It is more advanced than Windows Notepad, and simpler than Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works (last updated in 2 ...
application. In later versions it also gained additional read only display capabilities for
PICT
The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ea ...
files, as well as other Mac OS built-in formats like Quickdraw GX and
QTIF
The Apple Developer Tools are a suite of software tools from Apple to aid in making software dynamic titles for the macOS and iOS platforms. The developer tools were formerly included on macOS install media, but are now exclusively distributed ...
,
3DMF and even
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...
movies.
[ SimpleText can even record short sound samples and, using Apple's ]PlainTalk
PlainTalk is the collective name for several speech synthesis (MacinTalk) and speech recognition technologies developed by Apple Inc. In 1990, Apple invested a lot of work and money in speech recognition technology, hiring many researchers in th ...
speech system, read out text in English. Users who wanted to add sounds longer than 24 seconds, however, needed to use a separate program to create the sound and then paste the desired sound into the document using ResEdit.[
SimpleText superseded TeachText, which was included in System Software up until it was replaced in 1994 (shipped with System Update 3.0 and System 7.1.2). The need for SimpleText arose after Apple stopped bundling ]MacWrite
MacWrite is a WYSIWYG word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. Together with MacPaint, it was one of the two original "killer applications" that propelled the adoption and popularity of the GUI ...
, to ensure that every user could open and read Readme "\n\n\n\n\n\n''README.txt: A Memoir'' is a 2022 memoir by Chelsea Manning. It covers her early life, experience as a soldier in the U.S. Army, and life and imprisonment after she leaked classified information to WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an ...
documents.
The key improvement of SimpleText over TeachText was the addition of text styling. The underlying OS required by SimpleText implemented a standard styled text format, which meant that SimpleText could support multiple fonts and font sizes. Prior Macintosh OS versions lacked this feature, so TeachText supported only a single font per document. Adding text styling features made SimpleText WorldScript-savvy, meaning that it can use Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters.[ although images could increase the total file size beyond this limit. SimpleText style information was stored in the file's ]resource fork The resource fork is a fork or section of a file on Apple's classic Mac OS operating system, which was also carried over to the modern macOS for compatibility, used to store structured data along with the unstructured data stored within the data fo ...
in such a way that if the resource fork was stripped (such as by uploading to a non-Macintosh server), the text information would be retained.
In Mac OS X
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 lapt ...
, SimpleText is replaced by the more powerful TextEdit
TextEdit is an open-source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with macOS since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-like ope ...
application, which reads and writes more document formats as well as including 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.
Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
-like features such as a ruler
A ruler, sometimes called a rule, line gauge, or scale, is a device used in geometry and technical drawing, as well as the engineering and construction industries, to measure distances or draw straight lines.
Variants
Rulers have long ...
and 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, electronic d ...
. TextEdit's styled text format is RTF
RTF may refer to:
Organisations
* African Union Regional Task Force, the military operation of the RCI-LRA, 2011–2018.
* Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, a broadcaster in France, 1949–1964
* Russian Tennis Federation, the national go ...
, which is able to survive a single-forked file system intact.
Apple has released the source code for a Carbon
Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes ...
version of SimpleText in the Mac OS X Panther
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 ...
(10.3) Developer Tools. If the 10.3 Developer Tools are installed, it can be found at . Alternatively, the sample code can be found in Apple'
Documentation Archive
See also
*List of text editors
The following is a list of notable text editors.
Graphical and text user interface
The following editors can either be used with a graphical user interface or a text user interface.
Graphical user interface
Text user interface
Sys ...
*Comparison of text editors
This article provides basic comparisons for notable text editors. More feature details for text editors are available from the '' Category of text editor features'' and from the individual products' articles. This article may not be up-to-date or n ...
References
External links
Apple Developer Connection: The Complete Guide to SimpleText
Classic Mac OS-only software made by Apple Inc.
Classic Mac OS text editors
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