iText Express for Mac

User Reviews

• Great little program.

  evothevothOctober 17, 2011

  Pros

  Easy to use. Am able to quickly copy and paste data from web sites and other sources.

  Cons

  None to report at this time.

  Summary

  Great little program. I like it better than TextEdit.

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• Free text ed/word processor with excellent footnoting.

  JohnMHammerAugust 19, 2011

  Pros

  Expands on TextEdit with additional features, most important of which is footnoting and endnoting. There is even a feature which allows the otherwise-proprietary footnotes to appear in other RTF reader applications, albeit at the end of the document.

  Cons

  Whenever using this app, I miss Bean's one-button alt-colors mode and Bean's really great one-button full-screen-and-alt-colors mode, which is soothing and otherwise a great writing environment. But Bean can't do footnotes at all, so...

  Summary

  The best free text editor/word processor I've ever used is Bean (bean-osx.com). It's a perfect replacement for TextEdit. Unfortunately, Bean purposely (according to its developer) has no support for footnoting or end noting; and it's just not possible to create any academic or scholarly document without footnotes. iText Express has most of Bean's functions (except the beautiful and functional alt-color and full-screen mode) and includes full footnoting support within the standard RTF format. While its true that other RTF editors cannot see the "true" footnotes, iText Express has a clever way of exporting all footnotes to the end of a document so that they can at least be read, albeit not on the same page as the reference was made. And of course, the footnotes can be seen properly on the printed page, whether that is an actual paper page or a print-to-PDF document. This makes iText Express useful for serious writing and yet you won't completely lose your footnotes if you need to - someday - continue or edit your work in another word processor. Both Bean and iText Express work under Lion, but neither has yet been updated to take advantage of Lion features such as Full-Screen (although Bean has its own full-screen mode), Versions, and Auto-Save (although both have their own simple timed auto-save function). If you don't need footnotes, go for Bean - you can't beat it in the free category, and I find it better for most work than more complex and complete (and expensive) products such as MS Word, Pages, or Nisus Pro. If you do need footnotes, iText Express is your best choice in the free category. And unlike nearly every other text editor or word processor that has footnote support in the RTF format, you can preserve your footnotes (albeit only at the end of the document) for viewing and editing in other RTF editors or importers. If the developer of iText Express adds the new Lion features (especially a scaling full-screen mode) and a simple and quick way to "alt" the colors (one-button change of background from white to black, and text from black to white), it will not only be a fine TextEdit replacement, but can take the place of Bean as well - not to mention being a perfectly usable text editor/word processor for the vast majority of people who need one. There is also an iText Pro which adds some features to iText Express. At $12 in the Mac App Store it's pricey when compared to very full-featured word processors and layout programs such as Pages ($20) and Mellel ($28). However, if the developer manages the updates and changes I noted above it might well be worth it.<br /><br /><span class='notifyMsg'> Updated </span>on Aug 19, 2011<p/>As a final note, for any Mac users running older machines with Mac OS X Panther 10.3.9 (which, while old, are still great for tasks like basic web browsing for research, email, and writing tasks), iText Express will run well on such a system. Even the amazing Bean requires 10.4.11, making iText Express one of the best choices for writing on older Mac workstations.

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• Terrific program

  rubaiyatSeptember 1, 2008

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I have this permanently open, it is so useful. I drag in clippings and links from webpages and use it to manage my DLs, I do simple DTPing to pdfs. I use it to hold and view certain audio, movies, photos, pdfs, animated gifs. In fact I keep discovering new uses for it. And that is ignoring that it is the best, simple word processor period. It is now up to version 3.1, which is excellent, but it is worth your while to upgrade to the Leopard native iText Pro '08 by the same author which has even more features and is extremely fast. I was glad to pay for the minor upgrade cost, I have got so much out of iText Express I owe him big time.

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• Hope it gets updated and lives on...

  fizikMarch 13, 2008

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Great! - it reminds me a lot of TextEdit, but with more features. Often times I need to paste graphics and text from NYT for printouts. This app allows me to remove annoying highlighting in NYT blogs with with ease -- thanks to the author.

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• Excellent!

  kristinabealDecember 31, 2007

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I absolutely love this program! It does everything I want it to do and I use it daily. When I first started using the program I kept thinking... oh well, I guess I can get by without "x" and then it would turn out the program could do whatever I was wishing for. Now my wishes are all used up and I am just enjoying using it. I tell everyone how much I like it and have made my sweetie look at how cool it is several times. At first I was wishing for some of my old features (like have a font drop down in the toolbar) but quickly I realize those were really only things I used rarely and that it was much better to have them hidden. The things I actually use frequently are all out in the open. I absolutely love the bookmark system once I realized that it took me quickly to places in my writing piece, in fact it is really what makes this a WOW program for me. Plus it doesn't have all the crap that you really don't need. Just short and sweet. I really can't say enough nice things about it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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• Excellent!

  kristinabealDecember 31, 2007

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I absolutely love this program! It does everything I want it to do and I use it daily. When I first started using the program I kept thinking... oh well, I guess I can get by without "x" and then it would turn out the program could do whatever I was wishing for. Now my wishes are all used up and I am just enjoying using it. I tell everyone how much I like it and have made my sweetie look at how cool it is several times. At first I was wishing for some of my old features (like have a font drop down in the toolbar) but quickly I realize those were really only things I used rarely and that it was much better to have them hidden. The things I actually use frequently are all out in the open. I absolutely love the bookmark system once I realized that it took me quickly to places in my writing piece, in fact it is really what makes this a WOW program for me. Plus it doesn't have all the crap that you really don't need. Just short and sweet. I really can't say enough nice things about it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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• Highly recommend iText Express!

  rubaiyatJuly 17, 2006

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I have always been a great fan of TextEdit for its simplicity and direct editing, but it does have its deficiencies. Michiaki Yamashita has nicely edited TextEdit to iText Express, a much more functional version. For a start you can adjust the print margins! ...and lots more besides. Take it for a spin, some of the features are not quite obvious but you will be well rewarded! At the price it can't be beat! We should all support this project by registering one of Yumi's other apps as compensation. Also by supplying feedback to help Yumi polish it a little more we will end up with a great Word replacent with a very small footprint. With a few changes this will be worth 6 stars!!!

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• Nice indeed

  hkimJune 16, 2006

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />This is a very nicely done word processor that is simple and to the point. It runs well and I have had no problem creating RTF files with 2-byte characters. It did seem unintuitive in how one might create a multiple column page layout or how to add footnotes. This should be made easier to figure out for the end user. Despite this, if this application gains any added features, it will be darned near perfect. iText even allows one to write from right to left or vertically, which can be useful for some languages.

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