TextEdit - Plain Text Files That Open In Windows?

First, note that TextEdit does not create plain text files, it creates rich text files (.rtf). If you truly want plain text, try the free TextWrangler:

http://www.barebones.com/

As to the line break problem, Macs use just a carriage return as the end-of-line character, while Windows uses a carriage return followed by a line break character. At least, that's how I understand it. Most likely, whatever app you're using on Windows is dumb enough that it can't figure out what to do with the Mac line endings. TextWrangler will let you change the line breaks, so you could use it to create plain text files with Windows line breaks. Of course, that doesn't help if you didn't really want plain text (ie, absolutely no styling, just raw text).

Use Barebones http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

It has the option to save as MS-DOS text file. Select its little document icon in the toolbar and from the pulldown menu change to DOS.

Also, don't use non-English text characters as these are not standardized in ASCII.

First, note that TextEdit does not create plain text
files, it creates rich text files (.rtf).

Of course TextEdit creates plain text files. It has settings in both preferences and Format to do so. And the ability to choose the encoding as done by the OP is only available in Plain Text.

Howdy,
Welcome to discussions!

You might also want to try the text editor, Smultron which I find to be quite good:

http://smultron.sourceforge.net/

I think it has a setting under 'Advanced' to set it to always produce txt files, it might be worth seeing if the output on Smultron appears nicer on your Windows machine.

Martin BG
Life As An Apple Switcher - http://aurora7795.blogspot.com

MacBook, Intel Mac Mini, iMac G3 Mac OS X (10.4.8) Using Parallels Desktop to connect to Windows XP

I've tried saving the same document
in 4 different formats:

- Plan Text Unicode (UTF-8)
- Plain Text Unicode (UTF-16)
- Plain Text Western (Mac OS Roman)
- Plain Text Western (Windows Latin 1)

TextWrangler, as mentioned by others, is the best way to make sure line endings are compatible with whatever Windows app you are using, but you might also try saving in TextEdit as Western (DOS Latin 1) or Latin-US (DOS). You can add these to your encodings menu by going to the bottom of the list and selecting "customize."

Any other suggestions?

Is there some reason you don't want to use TextWrangler, which has already been suggested several times? It's free.

It seems clear that TextEdit can't produce the line endings required by Windows. There's no connection with either Plain Text or encodings.

PS OS X and Unix use LF (Line Feed, 0A) for line endings, while Windows wants to see CR (Carriage Return) plus LF (0D 0A). Just a difference in conventions among platforms. Perhaps Apple should add the ability to choose to TextEdit like TextWranger has it.

If you have Graphics Converter you can use it to convert text line-endings. Use "Convert & Modify" from the file menu. Set "Function" to "Convert Text". Use the "Prefs..." button and choose the file types in the "Convert Text" preference. It can convert a batch of files at once.

But can I make simple text files? Nope.

The Mac has no trouble making "simple" text files. The problem is that the software you are using on Windows has trouble reading simple text files. The Windows software requires two characters to end every line, even though one would suffice. The Unix convention was a de facto standard years before MSDOS was created.

A "make Windows-version" feature in TextEdit might be useful, but there should be -- and probably is -- software on the Windows side that can use and/or translate Unix line endings to the DOS convention.

Wikipedia has an article with more than you probably want to know about line endings <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_endings>.