. TextEdit TextEdit: It's not just for Read Me files anymore. TextEdit (Figure 10-22) is a basic word processor—but it's not nearly as basic as it used to be. | . TextEdit TextEdit It s not just for Read Me files anymore. TextEdit Figure 10-22 is a basic word processor but it s not nearly as basic as it used to be. You can create real documents with real formatting using style sheets colors automatic numbering and bullets tables and customized line spacing and get this even save the result as a Microsoft Word document. There s even a multiplelevel Undo command. If you had to you could write a novel in TextEdit and it would look pretty decent. Figure 10-22. The text ruler gives you control over tab stops line spacing paragraph justification and so on. Pressing -R makes it appear and disappear. The Style pop-up menu lists canned sets of character and paragraph formatting so you can apply them consistently throughout a document. . TextEdit s Two Personalities The one confusing aspect of TextEdit is that it s both a plain text editor no formatting globally compatible and a true word processorfonts sizes styles compatible with other word processors . You need to keep your wits about you as you edit because the minute you add formatting to your document TextEdit no longer lets you save it as a plain text file. Here s the scheme You can change a plain text document to a formatted one by choosing Format Make Rich Text. The ruler appears automatically to remind you that a new world of formatting has just become available. Conversely you can change a formatted document a Word file you ve opened for example to a plain text document by choosing Format Make Plain Text. An alert message appears to point out that you re about to lose all formatting. If you know what kind of document you always want to open go to the TextEdit Preferences dialog box on the New Document tab select Rich Text or Plain Text. That s what you ll get each time you choose File New. . Working in TextEdit As you begin typing all the usual word processing rules apply with a few twists Choose Bold Italic and font sizes using the Format Font submenu
