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Panther's TextEdit to Open MS Word Files
2muchcoffeeman writes "Further signs that Jobs and Gates probably won't be vacationing together anytime soon: New Damage has what looks to be screenshot proof of Panther's TextEdit.app opening a Microsoft Word .DOC file. Panther beta users who have tried this report at MacSlash that it works, to a point. So what's next? Is Apple now going to bring back the late, great MacWrite Pro?"
Why did they use a PDF to display a screenshot, I wonder. Any ideas?
Apple could surely use code from Openoffice.org to create an LGPL component that could do the conversion for them... couldn't they? It would be so much better than firing up Oo.O for a simple Word document.
Apple has been getting bold. And I love it. I still wonder about it all though. Safari rocks. Of course MS gets scared and stops making IE for Mac. FinalCut Pro kicks ass. Now Adobe wants to stop making Premier for the Mac. Apple has Keynote to compete with PowerPoint. And PDF creation with OS X is damn simple.
.doc files made on a PC. Go Apple!
Apple is taking on all the big boys...something you just don't see these days. It's very exciting. And let's all be honest. Why do Mac users buy MS Office? Because it's good? Nope. So they can open up
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The problem with any application providing support for MS Office formats is that the format changes from version to version, therefore it is difficult to preserve the content and formatting of documents perfectly. Anybody using OpenOffice.org will notice that formatting done on MS Word is modified slightly when opened in OpenOffice.org - for documents where layouts are more complicated and space matters (e.g. CVs), this causes problems.
If Apple can create a filter that preserves complex formatting, it should be on to a winner for home users. However, I somewhat doubt that Apple can do so, when Microsoft's own versions of Office can't even cope with changes in the file format...
Here's a link to a freeware app that already enables Cocoa applications to do a similar thing, but with text only: AntiWord Service. It works on Mac OS X 10.1.5 and higher.
It works, but it's not perfect, in some of my documents there are some minor problems, mostly with escape characters. Though, more importantly the fonts are rendered beautifully, instead of the jagged fonts that one has to deal with when using Office v.X.
I have heard rumors of Apple working on an Office suite which includes a word processor called "Document" and a spreadsheet app cleverly called "Spreadsheet". It seems as though they are going to test and hopefully perfect the most important feature in TextEdit first, reading .doc files.
.doc files perfectly and resave them into Document's native XML format. Document will hopefully be available for Mac OS X and Windows.
.doc format has a death grip on the business world. Unless there is an affordable alternative that can read .doc files it isn't going very far.
Once they have the bugs worked out, they will release Document which will be able to open
Microsoft's
The word processor is the only piece of the office package that most users need. Apple should make just Document for the PC and make it affordable. It will introduce many PC users to how software should be written. Like the iPod it will be a trojan horse that will hopefully cause them to consider a Mac for their next purchase.
...Apple puts a talking paperclip into TextEdit
I just got Slashdotted.
So far, I'm holding up, thanks to Smallbits, my host. AWESOME host, also host of Bungie.org.
I am going to make a t-shirt that says: "I've been Slashdotted. Have you?"
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
It is also nice to be able to create documents and share them with those less fortunate (Windows people). There is no spreadsheet program that is near what Excel does.
Indeed. Excel vX for Mac is superior in some ways to the Windows version. Where I work at present I do not have access to any serious database and statistical analysis software, so I'm stuck using Excel to manage a list. The Mac version makes it is easy to use Excel like Access, since it includes a feature called "list manager" which allows you to filter data sets with ease. The Windows version lacks this feature completely...
Never. The other stuff aside from Darwin is closed and will likely remain so. They are reimplemented in GNUstep fairly completely today. It isn't just possible, but rather trivial to port from one to the other if that is a design factor.
Darwin, however, is both open source and Free Software.
After all, when they went to BSD, they inherited most all the apps and filters from Linux too.
OS X is based on Rhapsody, which was Openstep 5.0, which was based on OpenStep 4, which was based on Nextstep 3.3, and all but OS X trace their lineage to BSD 4.3 (IIRC). OS X is based off FreeBSD, which too traces its lineage to BSD 4.4. The new Panther is supposedly based off FreeBSD 5.x series, which almost gives me wood. Linux never really gave much to Apple. Apple did, however, port Linux to a great many Macs though, and gave that project to the community.
Apple is indebted to the FSF for its use of GCC, like Next was before it, and generally has played really well with the community in recent years.
Of course MS gets scared and stops making IE for Mac.
Now come on. Everyone knows Microsoft dropped its support for IE because it wasn't making any money. ;-)
On a more serious note, considering that the browser was a freebie, why didn't Microsoft continue to improve it after its initial release? Does anyone remember the fancy flash animation MS produced starring "Zippy" that showed IE with a built-in media player and other nifty features? WTF?
Your point about MS Office is right on, though. Initially it seemed like a cool offering. But damn is it an annoying set of programs! I actually find it more pleasant to use Dreamweaver to make documents, and then print them into PDF files.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Aren't those the same list of things that if done by Microsoft would have you screaming bloody murder though?
No, absolutely not. The things that have bugged me have been:
All that Apple has done is to push standards, make excellent use of open standards and Open Source APIs, and apply a consistent and elegant design aesthetic to their OS and their applications. In short, they have excelled through integrity and hard work. If Apple has an unfair advantage, it is only that they have applied a greater effort than others seem to have the courage to do.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Of course Panther has built-in X11, but we don't know yet whether it will be any prettier than the X11 beta. My fingers are crossed.
-- thinkyhead software and media
pudge, fucking warm us with a [PDF] like google does when linking to shitty PDF files. Thank you.
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption
Phillip
When I first heard of Apple using display pdf for the gui and high resolution icons in something named "the dock", I was hoping that they had implemented what SGI did with their OpenGL--vector graphics on the desktop. Now, that was (is still? been 10 years, kinda hazy) an amazing desktop. each window had a thumbwheel that would continuously scale the icons in the window. the icon for the media drive would change to show empty/full/in use by overlayed animation. Eye candy, sure, but informative eye candy. Main things about a vectorized gui--clarity and speed.
Seems to me that apple has everything in place to do this--opengl and display pdf. They can go a step further to my ultimate dream--resolution independent wysiwyg. That is, system-wide, having 12 point type be 12 points high whether the display is 72ppi or 123ppi. Also, having the menu bar stay the same apparent height through resolution changes. (yes, my eyes are getting old.) Win hints at doing this with small/med/large font selections, but Apple has the technology to do it right.
Shoot me if I am being simple minded, but I think this is going to turn into a serious problem.
I think Apple is marginalising itself. The beauty of having Office v.X for the Mac is that I can handle all the files which my PC using friends and collegues send. I can edit them and send them back. (For example using "track changes" in Word.) The question them becomes: Will Apple ever be able to produce its own software which will read MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint files properly (And I mean properly, with no errors - you would be surprised how pissed off people get when there is a slight inconsistency between the platforms), provide the same functionallity as Office and so on and so forth? I somehow doubt it. This is a hard problem. The imperfections of the open source efforts is testimony to this.
I myself use LaTeX when I can since I intend to be able to read my work in 20 years time, but if it turns out that the problems mentioned above start to become real problems, I will probably be forced to switch to a PC and make it dual-boot with Linux. And that really makes me very sad because I like my Mac.
When I read the parent, it occurred to me that this is much more than TextEdit being able to read Word files.
/Developer/Examples/AppKit/TextEdit
TextEdit is a very simple program. Apple even supply the full source for it in the developer tools under
All the real work is done by standard Cocoa classes NSTextView and NSTextStorage. If TextEdit understands Word files, it means that they have added the support to these standard classes. That means that *ALL* cocoa applications will inherit this functionality.
no of course not
:)
syntax coloring is for people who make mistakes
Latewire
You can actually define your own screen capture key-combos in Panther yourself (ain't that nice ;-)
But here are the defaults:
COMMAND + SHIFT + 3
capture whole screen and save on desktop
COMMAND + CONTROL + SHIFT + 3
capture whole screen and save in clipboard
COMMAND + SHIFT + 4
capture selection and save on desktop
COMMAND + SHIFT + 4 (+ CONTROL when releasing mouse)
capture selection and save in clipboard
COMMAND + SHIFT + 4 + SPACE
capture the window you click on and save on desktop
If you hold CONTROL while clicking it'll save the image in the clipboard.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
WordPad, bundled with Windows (at least it's in Win2K, I don't have an XP box to check) will open basic Word documents just fine. I'm still waiting for my Panther CD's so I can't check the limits of TextEdit.
So, OS X will now have some basic functionality built into it that Windows does. That's good, but I don't think it's the end of MS Office.
Yeah, too bad that Apple doesn't have some technology for managing calendars and synchronizing them with other networked sources that they could build upon...
Oh, wait! ;)
If Apple is pursuing a strategy of replacing Microsoft technology wholesale, then I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find an update to iSync that knows how to push bits between an Exchange server and iCal.
Seems to me that's a better rationalization for iCal's existence than trying to push Palm out of the Palm Desktop business... even if Palm Desktop for Mac could use the competition.
Sure, but does it support the neato macro virii that help make office life so much of an edge-of-your-seat experience?
You know what?
One of Apple's best kept secrets is that there is a version of AppleWorks for Windows. It is only available to education customers however. You get both the Mac and Windows versions on one CD for $39!
From Apple's site:
System Requirements
AppleWorks 6.2 for Mac OS X
An iMac, iBook, Power Mac G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, PowerBook G3, or PowerBook G4
128MB of physical RAM
Mac OS X, v10.0 or later
A CD-ROM drive (for installation)
An Internet connection*
QuickTime 5 or higher (included on CD)
To use Mac OS X, you will need a computer with at least 128MB of physical RAM.
AppleWorks 6.2 for Mac OS 8/9
An Apple computer with a PowerPC processor
24MB of physical RAM with virtual memory set to at least 25MB
Mac OS 8.1 or later
A CD-ROM drive (for installation)
An Internet connection*
QuickTime 4.1.2 or higher (QuickTime 5 included on CD)
AppleWorks 6.2 for Windows
A PC with a Pentium processor
32MB of physical RAM
Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 and XP
A CD-ROM (for installation)
An Internet connection*
QuickTime 4.1.2 or higher (QuickTime 5 included on CD)
Internet Explorer 5 (included on CD)
What's truly funny is that I remember that TextEdit in the very first public beta of OSX (a few years back) was already able to open Word docs. This feature never made it to any of the current upgrades though. I guess they had planned for this for a while, but MS b*tched at them a little too loud at the time. Now the question is: is this gonna make it in the released version this time around?!?
Quartz is not "Display PDF". Don't know where you saw or why you decided to make up that retarded name. Quartz uses the Generic PDF format as an engine to Quartz. This was chosen over Display Postscript for more reasons than simply licensing costs. Apple had considered using the full PDF format, but the costs were higher--generic PDF is free to implement. They (Apple) did not invent generic PDF, Adobe did.
NSText already supports RTF
.doc files
- (BOOL)writeRTFDToFile:(NSString *)path atomically:(BOOL)flag;
- (BOOL)readRTFDFromFile:(NSString *)path;
It's not a lot more esoteric to add support for
There's one way of finding out.
Anyone with access to Panther want to run class-dump on TextEdit and see what's in it?
I went one better for you. I compiled and ran the version of TextEdit supplied as example code with XCode on Panther. It was able to open a .doc file. I can confirm that it is using NSTextView and NSTextStorage (not custom subclasses) to do this. So it looks like all Cocoa apps using text views will be able to provide basic .doc file handling for free. Very nice :)