Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

TextEdit

TextEdit: It’s not just for Read Me files anymore.

As always, TextEdit 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, and customized line spacing, and—get this—even save the result as a Microsoft Word document. There’s even a multiple-level Undo command. If you had to, you could write a novel in TextEdit and it would look pretty decent.

POWER USERS’ CLINICThe Hidden Stickies Commands

The casual Stickies user may miss some of the program’s more interesting commands, which are accessible only through the contextual menus that pop up when you Control- click a sticky note. Here’s what you’ll find only in the contextual pop-up menus:

Check Spelling As You Type. Turning on this spell-check option flags misspelled words the moment you type them. You must turn this option on or off for each note individually.

Speech. Don’t just read your notes—listen to them. You can use the Mac’s Text-to-Speech feature to hear your notes read aloud. Choose Speech→Start Speaking to hear the Mac read a selected portion of a note, or use the command with nothing selected to hear the entire contents of a note. The only way to stop the speech is to Control-click again and choose Speech→Stop Speaking.

(To pick the voice and speed of the reader, go to the Speech pane of System Preferences, as described in Section 14.5).

Writing Direction. This feature is intended to let you type in non-English languages. ...