One of the primary purposes of your Mac is likely to compose or view various text-based documents, and in doing so you may find yourself needing to quickly navigate through them. Of course, the primary method for doing this is to use your trackpad or mouse, where Apple’s multi-touch input options provide intuitive and quick ways of scrolling and placing your cursor; however, you also have a number of options available with your keyboard, which can be just as quick, especially if you are in the middle of typing. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Text
How to edit files in TextEdit from the OS X Terminal
If you are a Terminal user, then you very likely spend a fair amount of time editing various text files, be they configuration files, scripts, or data files you might use for your work. For a seasoned Terminal veteran, the various text editors like vi, emacs, and nano, may offer all the tools needed for getting the job done, but for those less familiar, managing these tools can be cumbersome. Luckily, in OS X there is a quick way to make use of GUI-based programs for handling pretty much any document you might encounter in the Terminal. Continue reading
How to prevent OS X from replacing text you type
There may be times in OS X where in typing an e-mail, paper, or other body of text, you may find some characters you type be immediately replaced by some alternative text. While useful in some instances, such behaviors can be a burden in others. For instance, if you write papers and find the system is automatically switching the sequence “^2” into a superscript 2, this may be to your liking but this will also prevent you from using Spotlight as a quick way to calculate the square of a value. In other situations you might similarly find yourself deleting the substitution. Continue reading
Access QuickType suggestions in OS X Yosemite
If you have used Apple’s iOS 8 and have enjoyed the new QuickType keyboard that is included with it, then you might be happy to know a similar service that is available in OS X has gained this function in OS X Yosemite.
QuickType is a word suggestion feature that allows you to quickly complete sentences by tapping on one of three suggested words. Continue reading
Six useful text management panels in OS X
When typing out documents in OS X you might resort to the services offered by Microsoft Word and or Apple’s Pages, as these have convenient tools for adjusting the type face, accessing special characters, and otherwise manipulating your text; however, in addition there are a number of built-in panels in OS X that can give you similar access to features like special characters, word suggestions, and dictionary lookup of word selections. Being built-in, these can work even in programs that do not have their own obvious text manipulation controls. Continue reading
How to disable smart quotes in OS X
Whether it is composing an e-mail, writing a small note in a TextEdit document, or entering text in a field in Safari, you might run into OS X using smart quotes, where the system will replace single or double quotation marks with directional ones that encompass a phrase or word. These can be useful for readability, but sometimes you might simply not want an auto-substitution, and instead prefer the straight quote marks you entered. Continue reading
Convert various text file formats in the OS X Terminal with textutil
There are a number of ways you can convert a text document to another format, by simply opening it in a text editor like TextEdit and then choosing Save As from the File menu to export it. With TextEdit, you can choose Word, Rich Text, Plain Text, and OpenDocument Text, among others, as the formats in which to save your current file; however, if you are a Terminal user then you might enjoy knowing you can do this right from the command line. Continue reading
Get word and character counts for any selection in OS X
If you regularly need to count the words in text that you are composing or otherwise managing, then there are several approaches for doing this. A common one is to simply copy whatever text you are interested in and paste it in a Word or Pages document, and then use the word counting features in there to count your words; however, if you find yourself doing this frequently then you can create a special service for counting words. Continue reading
How to find special characters in OS X
When composing word processing documents, or otherwise handling text on your Mac, you might find yourself needing to use special symbols, be it something simple like a star, bullet, or check, or perhaps something more unique like a math symbol or foreign language character. To provide you with this, OS X supports a full set of unicode fonts, and if special characters are needed then there are a couple of quick ways to access and manage them. Continue reading
Enable text selection in QuickLook
Apple’s QuickLook feature in OS X is a convenient option to have when browsing for files on your Mac’s hard drive. By simply pressing the space bar with an item highlighted, you can view information about it, or see its contents. If you use this to preview the contents of text files, then you might find some added convenience from the hidden option of being able to select and copy text from within the QuickLook window. Continue reading