Looking for Mac equivalent for Windows notepad

Question

Looking for Mac equivalent for Windows notepad

I'm trying to write a single snippet of code for my iPhone. The directions call for using Windows notepad.

Is there a Mac equivalent for simple coding?

15" MacBook Pro, Every Mac since '85, Mac OS X (10.5.7), iPhone, iPod

Posted on Jun 2, 2009 12:11 PM

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Answer 1

Euchre

Level 4

1,275 points

Jun 2, 2009 12:15 PM in response to Bob Christensen

You can use TextEdit, just make the file plain text and save with whatever extension you need.

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Answer 2

bdmarsha

Level 4

2,580 points

Jun 2, 2009 12:16 PM in response to Bob Christensen

I thought that Notepad was a text editor in which case TextEdit should do the job (be sure to set it to plain text). If you want a more advanced text editor, I suggest Text Wrangler from Bare Bones (freeware).

bd

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Answer 3

Jun 2, 2009 12:21 PM in response to bdmarsha

Thank you both.

When I save the resulting document, what file format should it be in? Rich text, HTML, web archive, etc. ?

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Answer 4

varjak paw

Level 10

182,662 points

Jun 2, 2009 12:49 PM in response to Bob Christensen

If you're writing code to be compiled, generally you want it in plain ASCII text.

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Answer 5

Jun 2, 2009 1:03 PM in response to varjak paw

Dave Sawyer wrote:
If you're writing code to be compiled, generally you want it in plain ASCII text.

Which means that you need to convert your Rich-Text document into Not-So-Rich-Text. 🙂 This can be accomplish by selecting it from the Format menu (cmd shiftT) before saving it.

Björn

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,176 points

Jun 2, 2009 1:12 PM in response to Bob Christensen

Go to TextEdit preferences and set it to Plain Text instead of Rich Text and make sure you check the box for "ignore rich text commands in html".

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Answer 7

user1724

Level 3

535 points

Jun 2, 2009 1:24 PM in response to Bob Christensen

If you want a simple code editor for OS X, try this free editor. I used to use NotrePad++ on Windows, and this is the best replacement I could find for OS X

http://tuppis.com/smultron/

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Answer 8

BobHarris

Level 9

56,885 points

Jun 2, 2009 6:24 PM in response to Bob Christensen

You may also want to take a look at TextWrangler (free download)
<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18529>

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