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Ted 2.5, an easy to run and easy to install Rich Text
Processor for Linux/Unix
released under the Gnu Public License.
Utrecht, July 31, 1999
Announcement
Mark de Does released version 2.5 his wysiwyg rich text
processor Ted for Linux under the GNU/General Public License. With this
release he wants to contribute to the personal productivity of Linux
users. The software shows that appealing Linux software that is easy to
use and easy to install indeed exists. Ted is available for download
from ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/editors/ted.
The Ted web site is http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted.
Description of Ted
About two years ago Ted was started as an operating
system accessory like Wordpad for Linux. Compatibility with Macintosh
and Windows word processing applications played an important role in
the design of Ted. Every document produced by Ted is a legal
something.rtf file for Word without any loss of formatting or
information. In the other direction, compatibility with Word is not
perfect, but a major part of the functionality of Word is supported.
Although from the point of view of technical elegance, RTF is far from
ideal, the fact that RTF files can be exchanged between so many word
processing programs was conclusive in the choice of a file format.
History and motivation
Mark de Does is a professional software developer working
on more computer platforms than just Windows. He was annoyed by the
fact that every time he had to make a presentable text, he had to boot
Windows to type and format it. About two years ago, he decided that the
only way to provide what he was so dearly missing, was to build a
simple word processor himself. The primary source of inspiration was
the 'Edit' application under NextStep. The project required much more
work than he ever expected. Ted contains some nice pieces of
craftsmanship. For instance the use of finite automata for spell
checking and image rendering code that uses a single loop for scaling,
anti-aliasing, and dithering. However the main ingredients of Ted are
hard work and perseverance.
In Marks opinion, the force of Microsoft lies in the
simple and appealing applications that run on the Microsoft operating
systems. While the rest of the world is discussing principles and
quarreling about standards and architecture, Microsoft builds
applications that people can use. Ted is an attempt to make something
easy and useful for Linux.
Versions
The first version of Ted that was widely available was
version 2.0. It dates from November 1998. Since then, improved versions
have appeared every few month. The most important changes since Ted 2.4
are the following:
- The layout of the text on the screen is no longer
independent of the PostScript layout. Whenever possible, the PostScript
layout is used on screen. The change incorporates bug fixes in the
handling of tabs in printing, and support for right aligned and
centered text.
- Selections ending at the end of a line were
occasionally displayed in a silly manner.
- The PostScript Ted saves to file contains so-called
pdfmarks to keep the links and bookmarks when they are converted to the
Acrobat PDF format.
- Use the new German orthography in the spell checker,
thanks to Joerg Jacke.
- Added a Polish spell checker.
Future developments of Ted will include the support of
more languages and scripts, more features to control the vertical
layout of the text, and probably a move from the Motif widget set to
GTK.
Features
Teds features include the following:
- Wysiwyg rich text editing. You can use all fonts
for which you have a .afm file and that are available as an X11 font.
Ted is delivered with .afm files for the Adobe fonts that are
available on Motif systems and in all postscript printers: Times,
Helvetica, Courier and Symbol. Other fonts can be added with the normal
X11 procedure. Font properties like bold and italic are supported; so
is underlining.
- Ted uses Microsoft RTF as its native file
format. Microsoft Word and Wordpad can read files
produced by Ted. Usually Ted can read .rtf files from
Microsoft Word and Wordpad. As Ted does not support
all features of Word, some formatting information might be lost.
- In line bitmap pictures.
- PostScript printing. Saved PostScript files contain
pdfmarks to keep links when they are converted to Acrobat PDF.
- Spelling checking in twelve Latin languages.
- Directly mailing documents from Ted.
- Cut/Copy/Paste, also with other applications.
- Find/Replace.
- Ruler: Paragraph indentation, Indentation of first
line, Tabs. Copy/Paste Ruler.
- Page breaks.
- Tables: Insert Table, Row, Column. Changing column
width of tables with their ruler.
- Symbols and accented characters are fully supported.
- Hyperlinks and bookmarks.
- Saving a document in HTML format.
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