SimpleText

SimpleText is the <a href="/facts/Native_(computing)/yNez4jAK">native</a> <a href="/facts/Text_editor/jPCgtbvN">text editor</a> for the Apple <a href="/facts/Classic_Mac_OS/I5fQq44K">classic Mac OS</a>. 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 <a href="/facts/TeachText/fMr68lFr">TeachText</a> that were created by various software development groups within <a href="/facts/Apple_Computer/oTJYta3k">Apple Computer</a>.
It can be considered similar to Windows' <a href="/facts/WordPad/68Dx4WF7">WordPad</a> application. In later versions it also gained additional read only display capabilities for <a href="/facts/PICT/GMlU1vYT">PICT</a> files, as well as other Mac OS built-in formats like Quickdraw GX and <a href="/facts/QTIF/mJdDT5SJ">QTIF</a>, <a href="/facts/3DMF/nrrP3D4b">3DMF</a> and even <a href="/facts/QuickTime/rA3GQp2j">QuickTime</a> movies. SimpleText can even record short sound samples and, using Apple's <a href="/facts/Apple_PlainTalk/91Y9lBI9">PlainTalk</a> 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 <a href="/facts/ResEdit/6RVV2267">ResEdit</a>.
SimpleText superseded <a href="/facts/TeachText/fMr68lFr">TeachText</a>, 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 TeachText arose after Apple stopped bundling <a href="/facts/MacWrite/8j8nUGRs">MacWrite</a>, to ensure that every user could open and read <a href="/facts/Readme/BeUhsR1I">Readme</a> documents.
The key improvement of SimpleText over TeachText was the addition of text styling. The <a href="/facts/System_7/IwLKo2sX">underlying OS</a> required by SimpleText implemented a standard <a href="/facts/Styled_text/39S6HPWI">styled text</a> 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. Like TeachText, SimpleText was also limited to only 32 kB of text in a document, although images could increase the total file size beyond this limit. SimpleText style information was stored in the file's <a href="/facts/Resource_fork/zVnSVjbb">resource fork</a> 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 <a href="/facts/Mac_OS_X/Y93vVpTm">Mac OS X</a>, SimpleText is replaced by the more powerful <a href="/facts/TextEdit/x3nW9TDD">TextEdit</a> application, which reads and writes more document formats as well as including <a href="/facts/Word_processor/qAR7lagF">word processor</a>-like features such as a <a href="/facts/Ruler/jKWAdmso">ruler</a> and <a href="/facts/Spell_checking/Dg3GUjUd">spell checking</a>. TextEdit's styled text format is <a href="/facts/Rich_Text_Format/hsVH9Jot">RTF</a>, which is able to survive a single-forked file system intact.
Apple has released the source code for a <a href="/facts/Carbon_(computing)/KAIwFWI2">Carbon</a> version of SimpleText in the <a href="/facts/Mac_OS_X_Panther/lDrnzKAe">Mac OS X Panther</a> (10.3) Developer Tools. If the 10.3 Developer Tools are installed, it can be found at /Developer/Examples/Carbon/SimpleText. Alternatively, the sample code can be found in Apple's <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/navigation/">Documentation Archive</a>: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/SimpleText_Sample/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS10000736">SimpleText Sample</a>.

SimpleText open-in-new

SimpleText