The other day, I had a Rich Text formatted text doc open and there was some menu command (I believe) that allowed me to view the document that also showed all the formatting "tools" or whatever they might be called - now, I can't find anything that will do that.

I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a word-processing app, as I havent installed any yet on my drive since I got my comp back from shop (new logic board).

Any thoughts? Probably more than one; maybe many. It's bugging me not being able to find it, though.

Thank for any help offered.

It sounds like you are describing the raw RTF codes.

RTF files are plain ASCII text files with the RTF formatting codes interspersed with the text. Too see the raw text you need to open the file with a text editor. BBEdit is a good choice for that if you have it. TextWrangler is a free alternative. Emacs is already installed in OS X and is a good choice if you know how to use it.

TextEdit can do it but you have to change its default settings. In the TextEdit Preferences, check the box for "Ignore rich text commands in RTF files". Then open the RTF file.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2006 10:30PM by TheTominator.

Emacs is already installed in OS X and is a good choice if you know how to use it.


How do you access it?

ka jowct Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Emacs is already installed in OS X and is a good
> choice if you know how to use it.
>
>
> How do you access it?


I want to know the answer to that one as well.

ka jowct Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Emacs is already installed in OS X and is a good
> choice if you know how to use it.
>
>
> How do you access it?

Open the Terminal and type 'emacs'.
Terminal is located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder.

If you know 'vi' you can use that from the command line too.

/usr/bin/emacs

if /usr/bin is in the PATH (search path) environment variable, then

$ emacs

will let the command shell locate and run the emacs editor executable.

To see the PATH variable value, use

$ echo $PATH





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2006 10:31AM by Donkey Hotay.

Tominator,

Your answer in your first reply was very helpful. I was thinking that TextWrangler might be a possibility, even though I don't yet have it installed, SO, it wasn't what did it when I "accidentally" discovered this.

Using TextEdit as you described did exactly what I was looking for, at least in the way the doc is displayed.

Guess I'll never know how I did it the other day. That's not important, though, and I thank you very much, Tominator, for your answers, all of them; I got a lot of good info from them all, re other apps that will work, and maybe re emacs also.

Thanks again - much appreciated.

Open the Terminal and type 'emacs'.
Terminal is located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder.

If you know 'vi' you can use that from the command line too.


No wonder I've never used it…

TextWrangler is more my speed.