TextEdit was the name of a collection of
application programming interface
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...
s (APIs) in the
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. The ...
for performing text editing.
These APIs were originally designed to provide a common text handling system to support text entry fields in
dialog box
The dialog box (also called dialogue box (non-U.S. English), message box or simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response.
Dialog boxes are ...
es and other simple text editing within the Macintosh
GUI
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
. Over time, they were extended to provide more advanced text editing features, but its limited original scope led to fundamental limitations. Apple repeatedly stated that TextEdit was not a
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 ...
, and therefore providing rich text editing was always left to third-party developers.
Basic limitations of TextEdit include:
* only provides support for 8-bit
character sets
* 16-bit internal indexing limits text to a maximum length of about 32,000 characters
* use of
QuickDraw for glyph rendering limited the maximum height of a text block to 32,767 pixels - this could be encountered well before the character limit was hit with larger font sizes.
The first incarnation of TextEdit provided support for only a single style of text, which was applied to all text in the block. This was more than adequate for its intended use, supporting text entry fields. Later, support was added for styled text so that TextEdit could be used for more complex text editing tasks, such as text editing areas in web browsers, etc.
TextEdit remains part of the
Carbon API
Carbon was one of two primary C-based application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Apple for the macOS (formerly Mac OS X and OS X) operating system. Carbon provided a good degree of backward compatibility for programs that ran on Mac ...
on
macOS
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 ...
, but has been superseded by numerous other solutions including
ATSUI
The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) is the set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text introduced in Mac OS 8.5 and carried forward into Mac OS X.
It replaced the WorldScript engine for legacy encodings.
Obsolescence
A ...
in Carbon, the third party
WASTE text engine
The WASTE (an acronym for WorldScript-aware styled text engine) is an Apple Macintosh text editing software library. WASTE helps Macintosh programmers include advanced text display and editing in their applications.
WASTE is a memory-based edito ...
, as well as NSText and related classes within
Cocoa
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Textedit (Api)
Macintosh operating systems APIs
TextEdit