News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 29, 2007

software

Bean streamlines my daily grind

Posted May. 29, ’07, 9:25 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

BeanFor me, the vast majority of every day is now spent processing words, you might say. Reading them, writing them, inventorizing them. It’s words from the moment I roll out of bed and fire up my email to the moment I close my book and turn out the light at night.

You’d think I’d get tired of them, and, well, from time to time I do. “Couldn’t we just use numbers instead?” I wonder on occasion. “What if I just put up a post reading 35987201047. Wouldn’t everybody know what I mean?”

Oh, well, words it is, then. As longtime readers of the blog no doubt are aware, I’ve been engaged in a seemingly endless quest to find a replacement for the venerable AppleWorks, which still occupies a soft spot in my Dock. I’ve interviewed a number of promising candidates without finding a suitable app. Until, perhaps, now.

Bean is a small, lightweight, and best of all free word processor. It doesn’t have the bells, whistles, or corkscrews of Microsoft Office, but what it does have is a clean, no muss interface that lets you get straight to the business of putting words down.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have features. Like TextEdit, you can control the typeface, and text styles, and it also adds a zoom slider, live word count, and the ability to define alternate colors (say, green on black for that old time terminal feeling) and switch to them with a keystroke or toolbar button. The app also deals with Word files (97 and 2003 XML format), RTF, text, web archive, and its own Bean format (which looks to be just a wrapper for an RTF document).

Bean’s one of the most promising word processors I’ve seen in recent memory, and while it still lacks a few features that I’d love to have (sections, for instance, and headers and footers), I value the simplicity more. If you’re looking for an easy to use, clutter-free word processor, Bean might be right up your street.

[via Low End Mac]


1 Comments

Omer said:

If you could be bothered with an expanse of up to $50, I would highly recommend Mellel or Nisus Writer. Mellel has, for my opinion, the most effective interface for text editing: every tool in one big inspector that floats near the document. Even better, you can seperate every little inspector (or a series of them) to different windows. On the other side it's not very aqua-like(unless you still consider brushed metal as aqua. then, it's fine).
Nisus is much better with languages (even though Mellel claims to handle right to left languages, after you open a file from Office you'll need to adjust the screen and layout to make things right) and has a footprint similar to Apple's Pages. It's also much better in opening files exported from Office.
I don't like the fact that tools are viewed in drawers, but again, if you're into it, it could be a great writing tool.

I used them mostly for school work, which means I also use them a lot as viewers. Nisus is a little nicer to look at, but you can print to PDF anytime to make text viewing easier.

They're both around $50. Plus, i'm sure that if you dig deep enough they offer a famous blogger discount. If not, send one of your student bloggers for a discount ;)

May 29, 2007 9:58 AM

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