Bean Changelog

What's new in Bean 3.6.2

Oct 17, 2023
  • Changes:
  • A new text insertion point indicator is used on macOS 14 Sonoma, the color of which is set in System Settings > Appearance > Accent color (20230928-1).
  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a bug on macOS 14 Sonoma where Bean would crash when selecting View > Show Layout for a one page document (20231010-1).
  • Fixed a problem on macOS 14 Sonoma where the Edit > Word Completion command did not give the user a chance to select a completion item from the drop down menu (20231013-1).

New in Bean 3.6.1 (Aug 14, 2023)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem where removing and undoing highlight colors would fail to display properly when View > Alternate Colors is active (20230810-1).
  • Pressing the shift key at launch now temporarily prevents Bean from reopening grouped window documents, which is the expected behavior (20230810-2).

New in Bean 3.6.0 (Jul 21, 2023)

  • Changes:
  • View > Split Vertically is no longer an “alternate” menu item and is available without pressing the option key (20230708-1).
  • Added Finnish UI translation (20230708-2). Thanks, Ikemitsu!
  • Added a toolbar item to speak selected text (20230708-3).
  • Added a toolbar item to show the link editing sheet (202300708-4).
  • The initial default colors for View > Alternate Colors have changed to better match “dark mode” user interface elements (20230711-2).
  • The highlight colors (Format > Highlight Text) will now darken a bit when View > Alternate Colors is selected so that light text is easier to read (20230712-1).
  • The active document tab is now tinted with the system “Accent color” for MacOS 10.14+ (20230719-2).
  • Bugfixes:
  • Added a better check for obsolete UTIs (file type IDs) passed in by Launch Services when opening .bean files on macOS 13.1+ (20230308-1).
  • Fixed a problem where moving a split view document from a grouped window to fullscreen or to a separate widow (or vice versa) could switch the active view of the split view (20230626-1).
  • Bean will now attempt to reopen the formerly open grouped window documents on restart in case of a crash (20230629-1).
  • Fixed a problem where the Inspector’s right and center paragraph alignment buttons were misbehaving on Apple Silicon architecture (20230709-4).
  • The Find Panel now defaults to inputting smart/curly quotes and apostrophes instead of plain/straight quotes and apostrophes (20230711-1). To input straight quotes or apostrophes into the Find Panel, use the control key plus the quote/apostrophe key.
  • Fixed a problem where the menu items under Format > Line Spacing did not work for some documents (20230719-1).
  • Fixed a problem where a freshly added split view might not match the View > Show Layout setting of the initial view (20230719-3).

New in Bean 3.5.1 (Feb 26, 2023)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem where page numbering in the header and footer could not be set to begin above page number 999 (20230213-1).
  • Improved the code that automatically determines whether to use inches or centimeters after a regression in Bean 3.5.0 (20230216-1). If needed, you can manually specify inches or centimeters at Bean > Preferences… / Settings… > General > Measurement units: Metric [or] Inches.
  • Fixed a problem on macOS 13.1+ where File > Save As… and File > Save To… were saving to the default file format in Settings… instead of the format selected using the File Format: control in the save panel, despite the filename extension being changed correctly (20230221-1). Apple FB12002521
  • With macOS 13, an older version of Bean (less than version 2.9) could become “owner” of the .bean format, resulting in an outdated UTI (file content type) being reported to Bean. This would cause Bean 3.x to not recognise its own format, causing Bean to behave unexpectedly in terms of adding images, document icons, etc. Added a work-around for this (20230223-1, 2).

New in Bean 3.5.0 (Dec 20, 2022)

  • Changes:
  • File > New from Template… in the menu bar will now open .txt, .doc, .docx, and .odt file-type documents placed in the Templates folder (20221208-1).
  • Reworked some visual details of the status bar (20221209-3).
  • Added a note to the Help document explaining how to reset Bean’s preferences (or “settings” as they are now called by Apple) to factory default from the command line (20221207-1).
  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem where the “highlight” toolbar icons could be visually clipped (20221203-1).
  • Fixed a bug where pressing the tab key or back-tab could cause a list item to scroll outside of the edit view when the “Advanced > Center cursor vertically" preference setting is selected (20221205-1).
  • Fixed a bug where saving to webarchive format would cause a freeze (20221208-2).
  • Fixed a bug where only one titled document from the grouped document window would reopen when restarting Bean, rather than all of them, when the System Setting “Desktop and Dock > Close windows when quitting an application" was deselected (20221214-1). Note: reopening documents obey the Bean preference setting “General > Open documents in grouped window.”
  • Fixed a problem where the edit view of a document window could forget to automatically resize after switching from Documents > Side Bar to Documents > Tabs (20221219-1).

New in Bean 3.4.7 (Oct 21, 2022)

  • Changes:
  • The Bean Help document (in the menu bar, Help > Bean Help) was revised to increase clarity (20221008-1).
  • Apple's implementation of Cycle Through Windows (command+`, command+shift+`) was restored since the workaround code is no longer needed in supported versions of macOS (20221011-1).
  • PDFs embedded via drag-and-drop can no longer be resized or adjusted (since the new size was discarded on reopen and the adjusted file was rasterized). If necessary, use Insert > Picture to create a version of the PDF image that can then be resized and adjusted (20221014-1).
  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem where an NSTextAttachment character with no attachment attribute could cause Bean to freeze while saving a file (20221009-1).
  • Fixed a bug where the color picker wheel could not be used to apply arbitrary text highlight color because the latest versions of macOS restrict color selection to one axis of the color wheel when the shift key was pressed; we now use option+command to apply highlight instead of option+shift (20221010-1).

New in Bean 3.4.6 (Dec 23, 2021)

  • Fixed a problem where opening a document could fail because _NSViewClampSizeToLimits would cause an assertion failure at fabs(size.height)

New in Bean 3.4.5 (Aug 8, 2021)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Switched to asynchronous file saving using the saveToURL:::completionHandler method, and also restructured the code that collects extended attribute information for remembering the document UI state (20210711-1).
  • Edit > Speech > Start Speaking will now start speaking the text at the text cursor location rather than at the beginning of the document when no text is selected (20210712-1). Also, keyboard shortcuts have been added to Start Speaking and Stop Speaking.
  • Fixed a problem where creating a new document, with Preferences > View > Layout View and Preferences > General > Open Document in Grouped Window both deselected, would sometimes fail to produce a document window on the M1 mac because of an assertion failure in NSSize _NSViewClampSizeToLimits: Invalid parameter not satisfying: fabs(size.height)

New in Bean 3.4.4 (Jun 6, 2021)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Reverted from saveToURL:::completionHandler (asynchronous save method adopted in version 3.4.3) to saveToURL:::error (synchronous save method) because extended attributes that save the state of the Bean user interface for a document were not always getting written to the file in the completion handler for various reasons (20210604-2).
  • Fixed a problem where the “Margins” settings found on the Preferences… > New > New Document Template > Generic > Document Settings… sheet would not end editing after bounds correcting user input (20210604-1).

New in Bean 3.4.3 (Jun 1, 2021)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem in the Find panel where the regex/insert items popup menus were not functioning at all when localized.
  • Fixed a problem in the Inspector panel where the font style names in the “Style” popup button were not localized (20210527-1).
  • Switched to the saveToURL:::completionHandler save method (20210525-1). Also updated some other deprecated methods and eliminated some compile warnings (20210526).

New in Bean 3.4.2 (Jan 20, 2021)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem where, when View > Split View was selected, an inactive continuous text view would try to center on edited text (20201227-1).
  • Fixed a problem where selected word/character counts in View > Info Panel were not updating when jumping between split views (20210112-1).
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when deleting text that would cause a page to be removed (20210113-1).
  • Changes:
  • Added menu item Edit > Copy Special > HTML, which copies text as HTML directly to the Pasteboard. This is useful for pasting HTML into websites such as AO3 (20210118-1).
  • Added menu item Edit > Copy Special > Plain Text (UTF-8), which will copy plain text directly to the Pasteboard. This is useful for removing all styles, table and list attributes, etc. from rich text (20210118-1).

New in Bean 3.4.1 (Dec 23, 2020)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a problem seen in version 3.4.0 where some localizations were not getting copied into the app at compile time.
  • Fixed a problem where images sometimes were not resizable in layout view (20201221-1).

New in Bean 3.4.0 (Dec 20, 2020)

  • Revised the app icon to match the Big Sur icon style (20201114-1).
  • The toolbar icons are now based on Apple’s SF Font symbols. If you wish to restore the old icons, quit Bean and use this terminal command (change YES to NO to reverse the setting): defaults write com.bean-osx.Bean prefUseColorIcons -bool YES
  • Fixed various problems caused by new unified toolbar window style on Big Sur (20201205-1, 20201205-2, 20201207-1).
  • Changed the default view scale for layout and draft view to 150%.
  • Revised the file Bean_Help.rtfd (Bean’s “Help” file).

New in Bean 3.3.4 (Nov 4, 2020)

  • Change:
  • Mouse/Trackpad scrolling of text in draft view now works even when the pointer is over the “buffer area” to the left and right of the text area (20201030-2).
  • Bugfix:
  • Removing the ruler accessory view by returning nil or dummy view for rulerAccessoryView stopped working consistently in Big Sur. We now swap out a new ruler view when necessary (20201030-1).
  • The “Highlight” and “Invisibles” toolbar icons now appear correctly in Dark Mode (20201031-1).
  • Fixed a problem where the Inspector was not updating the type of measurement units when Format > Units was changed in the menu bar, or when Preferences > Advanced > Use millimeters… was selected (20201101-2). Also, the Inspector is now inactive when the Preferences window is being used (20201101-3).
  • Fixed a problem where the document sidebar width was not always saved when quitting the app (20201102-1).
  • Fixed a problem where Preferences would fail to open on the first try on Big Sur (20201102-2).

New in Bean 3.3.3 (Sep 28, 2020)

  • Change:
  • View > Split Window (“split view”) now displays a text ruler in the new split view only if a text ruler was visible in the old view (20200905-1).
  • Holding down the Option/Alt key while adjusting the Inspector’s “Kerning” slider will now force larger increments of kerning when less than zero (20200904-1). This is useful for hand-kerning individual letters of large-sized fonts.
  • Bugfix:
  • Quick Look now works again for .bean files. Fixed by removing com.apple.package from UTTypeConformsTo in the export declaration of the UTI for bean documents. (A restart may be required to allow launch services to rebuild the database.)

New in Bean 3.3.2 (Aug 11, 2020)

  • Bug fix.

New in Bean 3.3.1 (Aug 10, 2020)

  • Released 10 August 2020. Bug fixes.

New in Bean 3.3.0 (Jun 21, 2020)

  • Bug fixes.

New in Bean 3.2.15 (Apr 2, 2020)

  • Bug fixes.

New in Bean 3.2.14 (Mar 12, 2020)

  • Several bugs fixed.

New in Bean 3.2.13 (May 3, 2019)

  • Not compatible with earlier macOS versions
  • Includes several bug fixes.

New in Bean 3.2.12 (Nov 2, 2018)

  • Not compatible with earlier macOS versions
  • Maintenance release for macOS High Sierra and Mojave. Supports Dark Mode in Mojave.

New in Bean 3.2.11 (Sep 27, 2018)

  • Maintenance release for macOS High Sierra and Mojave.

New in Bean 3.2.10 (Oct 14, 2017)

  • Not compatible with earlier macOS versions
  • Maintenance release for macOS High Sierra.

New in Bean 3.2.9 (Nov 15, 2016)

  • New in this version: even more bug fixes for Sierra.

New in Bean 3.2.8 (Oct 25, 2016)

  • Not compatible with earlier macOS versions
  • New in this version: more bug fixes for Sierra
  • Spanish localization (Thank you, Francisco Ramón Román)

New in Bean 3.2.5 (Mar 9, 2013)

  • Bug fix:
  • Fixed a problem with the way native rtf headers and footers were written out that could cause the document body text to appear in four columns in other apps (20130102-1).
  • Changes:
  • File > New from Template... now allows viewing the contents of folders in the Templates folder, allowing for hierarchical organization (20130211-1).
  • Added a section in the Help file (under Tips and Tricks) on how to change the default paper/page size for new documents.
  • Fixed a few object over/under release problems revealed by static analysis.

New in Bean 3.2.4 (Jan 12, 2013)

  • Bug fix:
  • Fixed a bug that prevented attachments with non-ASCII characters in their filenames to save correctly in .rtfd and .bean format files (20130104-1).
  • Altered rtf image decoding code to accommodate image hex data preceded by a newline (20130103-1).
  • Fixed a bug where, when opening .rtf files, a paragraph starting with an image could lose its paragraph attributes. For example, if a cell in a text table contained only an image, the image would be removed from the table since text tables are really paragraph attributes. (20130105-1).

New in Bean 3.2.3 (Nov 30, 2012)

  • Bug fix:
  • Reverted bugfix 120909-1 which was supposed to allow images having names containing non-ascii characters to save in .rtfd and .bean format (121129-1). The bugfix was incorrect and also caused a larger problem, preventing headers and footers to save in .rtfd and .bean documents.

New in Bean 3.2.2 (Nov 12, 2012)

  • Changes:
  • Improved and sped-up image decoding routines for .rtf format files (120930-1).
  • Bean now has improved support for embedded images in .rtf documents created by LibreOffice, Nisus Writer, Abiword, and Mariner Write. Since Bean does not support ‘floating’ images, these are loaded in Bean as in-line images in the nearest paragraph.
  • A previous version, Bean 2.x, could create pre-formatted document headers and footers on the fly, and this setting could be saved per-document. This setting was previously ignored in Bean 3, which allows free-form headers and footers. However, for increased compatibility, documents originally saved in Bean 2 will now open in Bean 3.2.2 with an approximation of the header/footer info that was created on the fly in Bean 2. But for any document that has already been subsequently re-saved in Bean 3, this old header/footer info is ignored and removed. (20121007-1).
  • Edit view can become editable more quickly after selecting View > Show / Hide Layout (20120728-1).
  • Changed the width of text in exported HTML to 600px if the browser width is greater than 600px. While this is a bit wider than the typical printed page (which is what the previous setting tried to approximate), the new setting looks better on most screens.
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a bug where, in a text table cell, any paragraph following and having a different paragraph style from the first paragraph would disappear when selecting the Add Row Above|Below, Add Column Before|After, and Delete Row|Column menu commands (20121015-1).
  • Fixed a bug where text tables nested within a text table cell would disappear when selecting the Add Row Above|Below, Add Column Before|After, Delete Row|Column menu commands (20121015-2).
  • Fixed a problem where .rtfd and .bean format documents with images having names containing non-ascii characters could omit the image files upon save (120909-1).
  • Fixed a bug where Edit > Change > Sort could cause the final item to go missing (20120922-2).
  • Selecting a document in the Finder and pressing cmd-p will now successfully print the file (20120922-1).
  • On OS X 10.7+, when System Preferences > Show Scroll Bars > Always is selected, the scroller would not hide in full screen mode. Fixed (20121016-2).
  • Fixed a problem where the vertical ruler was not activating consistently.
  • Programming Notes:
  • Bean is now built on the OS X 10.8 SDK.
  • Added -weak_library /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib to Other Linker Flags to prevent crash on 10.5 due to ‘Symbol not found: __NSConcreteGlobalBlock’ (20121108-1)
  • Renamed zh_CN.lproj to zh_Hans.lproj.

New in Bean 3.2.1 (Jul 23, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a bug where View > Zoom > Default did not center the edit view (20120712-1).
  • On Lion, when transitioning to full screen, the single document window is now closed more quickly to prevent problems (20120712-2).
  • On Lion, the grouped document window would momentarily bulge (via annoying animation) when another newly opened document was added. Fixed (20120711-1).
  • Initial View > Split Window ratio was not 1:1. Fixed (20120708-1).
  • Fixed a problem where the Show Info panel might not update its counts when shown after being hidden (20120712-3).
  • Fixed a problem where switching documents in the grouped document window could cause a visual jitter due to the toolbar separator toggling (20120707-1).
  • Fixed a problem where the Bean Help document could be exported to a location inside the app bundle. Bean now prompts the user for a location (20120707-2).
  • Fixed a problem where the grouped document window could shift position (attempting to cascade) when several grouped documents were opened at the same time on Lion (20120707-3).
  • Fixed a crash caused when the Open panel preview pane tries to show a document with an invisible table cell border (20120707-4).
  • Fixed a bug where hyperlink urls could be mangled (20120713-1).
  • Launching Bean with ‘Preferences > Advanced > Show Info Panel at launch’ could cause the Info Panel to relocate to the Inspector’s location on Lion. Fixed (20120712-3).
  • Fixed intermittent crash when opening rtf files with custom rtf data in them due to a RegExKitLite assertion failure; [NSString clearStringCache] solved the problem (20120721-1).
  • Undo registration is now disabled while loading documents (20120720-1).
  • I had thought Bean 3.2.0 was code-signed and therefore enabled to pass Gatekeeper. I was wrong. Hopefully, 3.2.1 will download and start on Mountain Lion without Gatekeeper causing problems.

New in Bean 3.2.0 (Jul 2, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed some memory leaks revealed by XCode 4 analyzer (120627-1).
  • Changes:
  • Added localization for Brazilian Portuguese (courtesy Paulo Neto), Dutch (courtesy Frans de Graaf) and improved German localization (thanks to M. Bunge for the improvements).
  • Added Developer ID, so Bean will download and run on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion without the OS complaining.
  • Starting with this version, Bean is no longer compatible with PowerPC (PPC) macs. In other words, it is no longer a universal binary. A PowerPC compatible version of Bean numbered 3.1.x will be available for download at the Bean website (www.bean-osx.com) for those who need it.

New in Bean 3.1.1 (Jun 23, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • A new single document window could open to a small, unusable size. Fixed (20120614-1).
  • The ‘full format’ date item added in 3.1.0 inadvertently included time. Fixed (20120615-1).
  • Changes:
  • The jewel buttons and add document button in tab bar are now resolution independent.
  • This is the last PowerPC-compatible version of Bean. As such, Bean version 3.1.1 will remain available for download at the Bean website www.bean-osx.com) for those with PowerPC macs.

New in Bean 3.1.0 (Jun 11, 2012)

  • Changes:
  • Bean Preferences > View > Zoom Control will display a zoom slider in the status bar, like Bean 2.x (20120520-1). Bean may hide this control due to lack of space.
  • Added a note to the Tips & Tricks section of the Help file about how file management (deleting files, moving files, copying files) is done using the Finder, not Bean.
  • Added a ‘Full Format’ menu item (which includes the weekday) to the Date/Time toolbar item popup menu (20120601-1).
  • Bug fixes:
  • NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled is now set to YES for Bean (so you will see window animation in Bean even if you have the global version of this preference set to NO). This avoids a very nasty bug that crashes any non-Lion-only app that uses the popup dictionary on Lion when Lion’s window animation is disabled.
  • Fixed inconsistant drawing of document tabs (20120605-1).

New in Bean 3.0.9 (Apr 5, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Bean Preferences > New > Custom > Choose Template now defaults to the user’s Templates folder (since Lion 10.7 make is almost impossible to navigate there) (20120401-1).
  • Added live updating of text ruler offset for layout views when a window is resized (20120311-1).
  • File > Revert to Saved no longer forgets the font used with plain text files (20120317-1).
  • File > Revert to Saved is now only active when the document has changed from the saved version (20120317-2).
  • File > Revert to Saved now restores the saved typing attributes of empty documents (20120317-4).
  • File > New Plain Text Document (cmd+option+n) could fail to show the Settings menu in the main menu. Fixed (20120317-3).
  • The side bar document list (Documents > Side bar) now resolves aliases dropped from Finder (20120317-5).
  • The side bar document list now has a minimum size slightly more than zero to prevent it from disappearing completely (20120320-2).
  • Changes:
  • There is now a hidden preference to remove the gray hatched tiled pattern from the layout view background. Quit Bean, then use this terminal command (change YES to NO to reverse the setting):
  • defaults write com.bean-osx.Bean prefLayoutViewNoTexture -bool YES
  • Added Catalan localization, courtesy Toni Cama.
  • Added Italian localization, courtesy Stefano Carlini.

New in Bean 3.0.8 (Mar 9, 2012)

  • Changes:
  • The draft view now shows the resizer bars only when the view width is greater than the setting at Preferences > Size > Limit Draft View Width to ... % of Screen, or when the window width is almost equal to the screen width (20120306-1). To re-enable the previous behavior where the resizers are always visible in draft mode, use this terminal command (change YES to NO to reverse the setting): defaults write com.bean-osx.Bean prefDoNotHideDraftWidthResizers -bool YES
  • The tab bar of the grouped document window now has a ‘+’ button to easily create new documents (20120229-1).
  • Bean now opens an untitled document (if no documents are open) after being activated by a click in the dock, as this is standard Cocoa behavior (20120226-1). To re-enable the previous behavior where no document is created, use this terminal command (change NO to YES to reverse the setting): defaults write com.bean-osx.Bean prefOpenUntitledAtActivate -bool NO
  • Refined the appearance of document tabs in the tab bar (20120222-1).
  • Bug fixes:
  • File > Export > PDF could fail on PPC Macs due to uninitialized variable. Fixed (20120304-1).
  • The unused section of the document tab bar can now be used (like the title bar and tool bar) to drag/move the window (20120226-2).
  • Some graphic resources in Bean are now smaller thanks to Mike Detwiler (20120301-1).
  • Added/corrected/improved many VoiceOver labels (20120219-1).
  • The offset of the layout view text ruler now immediately updates when the window is resized (20120219-3).
  • Localized: Edit > Show Spelling and Grammar and Edit > Check Spelling While Typing
  • Insert > Line Break now uses the responder method insertLineBreak: and now also maintains the typing attributes (20120223-1).
  • In Bean 3.x, double-clicking the top or bottom margin of a page in layout view causes the header/footer sheet to show. In 3.0.8, the header text or footer text in the sheet is initially active based on which area of the layout view was clicked (20120219-5).
  • In Bean 3.x, a click in the top half of the right resizable draft margin results in a page up, while a click in the bottom half of the right resizable draft margin results in a page down. The code has been improved in 3.0.8 to reduce unintended actions (20120219-4).

New in Bean 3.0.7 (Feb 17, 2012)

  • Bugfixes:
  • Fixed a bug where cycling windows (command-~) would not hide full screen window when it was cycled out (20120203-2).
  • Saving a new document with the same name and path as an already open document in Bean is now rejected with an alert (20120204-1).
  • Style > Paste… items now more faithfully restore the text selections after acting (20120204-3).
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the text cursor to disappear due to a negative window number when moving a document from one window to another (20120209-1).
  • The scroller could incorrectly remain hidden when selecting ‘Move to Grouped Window’ or ‘Merge Document Windows’ from full screen. Fixed (20120210-2).
  • The Inspector, when snapped to a document window, no longer moves vertically when the Preference window is closed (20120212-1).
  • Fixed a bug where the Show Info window could appear when not wanted (20120212-2).
  • Changes:
  • Added buttons for bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough to the Inspector (20120203-1).
  • Added alternate [press ‘option’ key to reveal it] menu item: Insert > Date (Long Format) and Time (20120204-2).
  • Bean ordinarily reveals newly exported documents in the Finder, but now you can disable this behavior with the following terminal command (change YES to NO to reverse the setting):
  • defaults write com.bean-osx.Bean prefDoNotRevealExportedFilesInFinder -bool YES
  • For the vision impaired, Edit > Speech > Document Counts reads aloud the word and character counts, while Edit > Speech > Document Attributes describes font and paragraph attributes at the text cursor as well as indicating whether a list or text table is present (20120204-4).
  • The image resizing control now shows image size in points (20120205-1).
  • When you add a tab stop to the ruler (for example, with a mouse click), you can now change the tab stop type by double-clicking (or alternatively by option-clicking in 10.5 and 10.6) on the tab symbol in the ruler. The tab stop will change from right tab, to left tab, to center tab, to decimal tab and cycle back. OS X 10.7 Lion will provide a tab-stop popup menu when you control-click (or right-click) on the text ruler.
  • Added a context (right-click) menu to the text ruler to show and hide the ruler controls (10.5 and 10.6 only).
  • Added a menu item to the context menu of the side bar document list: Move to Separate Window / Move to Grouped Window / Exit Full Screen.
  • Bean now supplies default tab stops at 1/2 inch (U.S.) or 1 cm (metric) intervals. If you wish for your new untitled documents to have no tab stops, use the following terminal command [change YES to NO to reverse the setting] (20120215-1):
  • defaults write com.bean-osx.Bean prefNoDefaultTabStops -bool YES
  • Added French Localization, courtesy Ange Lefrère.
  • Other localizations also updated.

New in Bean 3.0.6 (Feb 3, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • The Inspector now updates more consistently (20120129-1).
  • Fixed a text field input validation bug that in rare cases could cause a crash (20120130-1).
  • Switching a document from full screen to a non-grouped window would not restore the document presentation settings. Fixed (20120130-3).
  • Fixed a regression in 3.0.5 where File > Prevent Editing setting was not maintained when switching documents between windows (20120130-2).
  • A status bar shown only to support Documents > Buttons now re-hides for other document navigation views (20120131-1).
  • Reimplemented cycle windows (command-~) since it wasn’t working correctly for some unknown reason (20120130-4).
  • Fixed the bug where a newly created text table had black borders, then added cells had gray borders (20120201-1).
  • Changes:
  • You can now select a plain text document under Preferences > New > New Document Template > Custom > Choose Template (20120131-3).
  • Updated Slovak translation, courtesy Rudolf Gavlas.
  • Added Chinese (Simplified) translation, courtesy 贺 昀轩 (He Yunxuan).

New in Bean 3.0.5 (Jan 27, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Added a work-around to avoid crashes on Leopard involving fontSetChanged message (20120112-1).
  • Lion’s dictionary popover can become stuck when a full screen window is closed or switched away from, causing a crash. Fixed (20120124-1).
  • Attached sheets (Save panel, etc.) can become ‘lost’ when a full screen window is closed or switched away from. Fixed (20120108-1, 20120122-1).
  • Replaced _blinkCaret override with yet another fix when moving text views between windows (20120112-2). This might also fix the mysterious ‘missing text cursor’ problem.
  • Paste Font Family & Ruler menu item now enables itself correctly (20120108-2).
  • Fixed a regression in Bean 3.0.4 where ‘Review Changes before Quitting > Discard Changes’ could momentarily show a ‘Do You Want to Save the Changes You Made in the Document?’ alert on one document (20120123-1).
  • Fixed a bug where the Show Info panel could reappear unexpectedly when switching document windows after its being closed with the close button (20120126-1).
  • Changes:
  • ‘Undo’ now restores paragraph attributes changed after a deleted paragraph break (20120119-1).
  • The Inspector’s font popup menu now reloads when the available fonts change (20120122-2).
  • The Inspector now shows the typing attributes at the text cursor (i.e., the text attributes to be applied if text is typed there) rather than the attributes of the character following the text cursor (20120125-1).
  • Added Polish localization.
  • Note on the Dictionary Popup Crash under Lion
  • An OS X bug causes the dictionary popover in Lion to become stuck when the user preference controlling the ‘zoom-open’ window animation is turned off, followed by an immediate crash (but only on apps not compiled for Lion only). The following terminal command fixes the problem, but also re-enables the animation (change YES to NO to disable it again):
  • defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool YES

New in Bean 3.0.4 (Jan 6, 2012)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a problem where help files would not display for some users (20120102-1).
  • Fixed a problem where Styles > Paste Font & Ruler into a zero-length selection just ahead of paragraph break would lose typing attributes (20120103-1).
  • Localized the “Do you want to save the changes you made to the document?” alert panel and fixed a few other localization issues (20120102-4).
  • Changes:
  • Opening Bean’s help files no longer causes the initial unchanged Untitled document to close (20120102-2).
  • Increased area that triggers visibility of scroller in full screen mode (OS X 10.5-10.6) (20120102-3).
  • Additions:
  • Added ‘Styles > Paste Font Family & Ruler’ menu item (this retains italic, bold, etc. if possible) (20120103-2).

New in Bean 3.0.3 (Jan 3, 2012)

  • Changes:
  • Replaced the toolbar icons with a more colorful set.
  • Added Slovak localization. Special thanks to Rudolf Gavlas for helping to debug the localization process for Bean 3.

New in Bean 3.0.2 (Dec 28, 2011)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a problem where text fields did not accept digits after ',' used as a decimal.

New in Bean 3.0.1 (Dec 27, 2011)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a problem that prevented drag-resize of view width in draft (non-page layout) view.

New in Bean 3.0.0 (Dec 27, 2011)

  • Bug fixes:
  • The document background color (not View > Alternate Colors) now prints (20111029-2). You can set the background color using the button in the font panel that looks like this: Pasted Graphic.jpg
  • The ‘About Bean’ and ‘Help’ documents now always open in separate windows. These can be made to ‘float’ above other window with Documents > Window > Float Window.
  • Rewrote toolbar code so that 1) the grouped document window now better maintains its toolbar visible state 2) Bean Preferences no longer incorrectly responds to View > Hide Toolbar 3) removing toolbar items from the grouped window toolbar no longer causes a crash on Leopard 4) resizing the grouped document window no longer causes icon position problems when subsequently switching between grouped documents on Leopard.
  • Fixed a problem where File > New from Template could show an Open panel that was not set to the Templates folder. Also fixed a problem where if you navigated to the Templates folder in an Open panel, the Open panel would show the Templates folder the next time File > Open was chosen, which is undesirable. We work around this by changing the value of NSNavLastRootDirectory before running the panel, then reinserting the previous value after running the panel (20111103-1).
  • Fixed a problem where, under Lion, Correct Spelling Automatically could leave orphaned spelling suggestions that were unable to be dismissed. Note: Correct Spelling Automatically may be entirely disabled in a future release, as it tries to second-guess the user far too often and far too late for the user to take notice (20111128-1).
  • Fixed a problem on Lion where Lion’s ‘Resume’ feature was trying to encode the Find panel, resulting in the error [TextFinder encodeWithCoder:]: unrecognized selector.
  • Fixed a problem where the layout view background could incorrectly draw the document background color instead of its own color (20111029-1).
  • Improved setting and maintaining document background colors vs. alternate colors (20111029-3).
  • Fixed a problem where empty template documents would open without their saved typing attributes (20111121-1).
  • Fixed a bug where the inspector’s position could change when other utility panels were moved around (20111125-2).
  • Removed override of private method _blinkCaret.
  • Added a small delay when unhiding the scroller in full screen to avoid it flickering to life then just as suddenly disappearing as the mouse cursor passed over it (Leopard and Snow Leopard). Under Lion, the scroller’s native auto-hiding behavior is used.
  • The menu item View > Alternate Colors now validates correctly.
  • The Save panel now drops from below document tabs in the grouped document window (20111115-1).
  • Improved the appearance of Documents > Buttons navigation buttons.
  • Changes:
  • Formerly, grabber buttons were provided above and below the vertical scroller for widening/narrowing the draft view edit area. Lion OS X 10.7 wants to hide the scroller when not in use, which it can’t do with grabber buttons added, so vertical grabber areas are now provided just to the left and right of the draft view edit area.
  • Reorganized the File menu. A reminder: the ‘option’ key can be used to reveal alternate menu functions.
  • The draft view (shown when layout view is hidden) now has some padding around text to allow for easier reading and text selection (20111119-1).
  • The default colors used for View > Alternate Colors are now the same as for version 2.4.5. (People liked them better.)
  • The Format > Margins and Columns… sheet has a new button in the middle that shrinks all margins to their smallest value (which is either the smallest printable margins, or zero if the option key is pressed when the button is clicked). This maximizes the space for text and is useful for example when making signs (20111120-1).
  • Added some textures to the user interface.
  • Plain Text Editing:
  • By popular demand, plain text editing has been added to Bean. When editing a plain text document, the Font, Format, and Style menu bar items will be replaced by a Settings menu bar item. Menu items under Settings allow the user to change: the display font (which is then remembered as the user’s preferred plain text font), the line spacing (also remembered as a user preference), the writing direction to accommodate right-to-left languages, the file encoding
  • To change the text size when editing a plain text document, use the View > Zoom controls. You can use View > Alternate Colors when editing a plain text document, but you cannot apply colors directly to the text using the color picker.
  • The text encoding being used is shown in the status bar label whenever a plain text document is front-most and the status bar is up.

New in Bean 2.4.5 (Dec 15, 2011)

  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a problem where the Full Screen menu item did not work under 10.7 Lion.

New in Bean 2.9.8 Beta (Nov 7, 2011)

  • Removed some code added in 2.9.7 that could cause a crash on OS X 10.7 Lion; Bean no longer crashes when saving non-ASCII characters in headers and footers.

New in Bean 2.9.7 Beta (Oct 17, 2011)

  • many bugfixes

New in Bean 2.4.4 (Jul 13, 2011)

  • A bugfix release and is the last version of Bean intended to be compatible with OS X 10.4 Tiger (unless a bugfix release for the Bean 2.4.x series is required for compatibility with 10.7 Lion).
  • Bug fixes:
  • Fixed a problem where Find Next in the Find panel could misbehave due to some missing brackets in the TextFinder class code. This fix has been noted in the code as well.
  • Corrected tab order of controls in Find panel.
  • Removed various non-functional help buttons (they stopped working when I had to restructure the help system to work with localizations under 10.6).
  • Fixed a problem with saving to the WebArchive format where saving with a white background, or no background, could produce a black background.
  • Fixed a problem with toolbar icon validation (Thanks, CF) and a few other small code problems noted in the code.
  • Changes:
  • Files in the .bean format can now be searched with Spotlight for content and keywords.
  • Edit > Paste & Match Style now also responds to standard Apple keyboard shortcut.
  • Bean no longer automatically associates .rtf and .rtfd files with Bean.app using the circuitous mechanism provided by the Finder. This association could only be done using an Applescript, and Bean could crash if the app was quit quickly after an initial save (while the Applescript was loading into memory). There is a hidden preference setting which restores the old behavior: quit Bean and paste this command into a Terminal.app session (change YES to NO to un-enable the old file association behavior again): defaults write com.SevenYearsDreaming.Bean prefShouldAssociateFileWithBean -bool YES

New in Bean 2.9.6 Beta (Apr 19, 2011)

  • Added missing PPC compatibility

New in Bean 2.9.5 Beta (Mar 29, 2011)

  • Switching tabbed documents no longer removes focus from text. Fixed some problems affecting localization.

New in Bean 2.9.2 Beta (Mar 12, 2011)

  • Fixed a bug involving Show Invisible Characters that would cause a crash.

New in Bean 2.9.1 Beta (Mar 11, 2011)

  • Fixed a potential crash when closing non-grouped document windows.
  • New Features:
  • tabbed documents
  • free-form headers and footers
  • the .rtf and .doc formats save images
  • document templates with boilerplate text and auto-updating dates
  • split screen editing
  • 2-up layout view
  • full screen improvements
  • advanced selection by styles
  • auto-capitalization
  • improved interface
  • other added features

New in Bean 2.4.3 (Feb 27, 2010)

  • Changes:
  • Edit > Paste & Match Style has a new, friendlier (albeit non-standard) keyboard shortcut (Shift + Cmd + v) (user suggestion)
  • Print... is now the last item in the File menu
  • The Replace and Replace All commands in the Find/Replace panel now maintain the text selection after replacement occurs. (user suggestion) There is a hidden preference setting which restores the old behavior where no text remains selected after Replace/Replace All: quit Bean and paste this command into a Terminal.app session (change YES to NO to re-enable the new behavior): defaults write com.SevenYearsDreaming.Bean prefNoSelectionAfterReplace -bool YES
  • The left hanging margin in text list items now equals the text offset, so that text wraps properly (user suggestion)
  • The ‘Float’ toolbar icon now has an orange halo when active (the blue halo looked too much like the UI’s ‘focus ring’)
  • File > Export > To HTML now exports to HTML 4.0, not XHTML (user suggestion)
  • The Applescript code that makes Bean the default application for opening RTF and RTFD format files that are saved in Bean under Snow Leopard is now compiled and is much faster (there was a noticeable pause while the script compiled for the first time under Bean 2.4.2)
  • Big fixes:
  • Addressed a bug that could cause a crash when the insertion point tries to draw to a just-hidden document window
  • Code/Localization:
  • Bean 2.4.3 includes a new Czech localization and a revised Danish localization
  • Note to localizers: there are no significant changes to the user interface in Bean 2.4.3; it is a bugfix release.
  • Another note to localizers: nib files are now compiled upon building the app, which means you cannot directly edit the .nib files found inside the released app bundle anymore (this is Apple’s doings). Instead, download the Bean source code from http://www.bean-osx.com/source/Bean-Source.zip and use the .nib files found inside the English.lproj folder for your translation.

New in Bean 2.4.2 (Nov 30, 2009)

  • Changes (to accomodate OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard)
  • Under Snow Leopard, Bean by default now does automatic text substitution (for example, substituting 'the' for 'teh' or changing (c) to ©). Text substitutions are controlled at System Preferences > Language & Text > Text > Symbol and Text Substitution. Substitution can be turned off during an editing session by unchecking Substitutions > Text Replacement in the context menu of the document. There is a hidden preference setting which disables text substitutions for all documents: quit Bean and paste this command into a Terminal.app session (change NO to YES to re-enable it):
  • defaults write com.SevenYearsDreaming.Bean prefTextReplacement -bool NO
  • Similarly, under Snow Leopard, typographic dash substitution (off by default) can be enabled by using this command:
  • defaults write com.SevenYearsDreaming.Bean prefDashSubstitution -bool YES
  • Under Snow Leopard, when you double-click a document icon in the Finder, the filename extension determines what application opens the file. This means that an .rtf or .rtfd document created in Bean opens (by default) in Text Edit. Since this is probably not the expected behavior, I've changed the code so that .rtf and .rtfd files saved in Bean now open in Bean (by using the Finder's 'Open With…' override). Files in other formats saved by Bean will still open in the default application associated with that file (usually, Text Edit). To disable this behavior, quit Bean, and paste this command into a Terminal.app session (change NO to YES to re-enable it):
  • defaults write com.SevenYearsDreaming.Bean prefAssociateDocumentWithBean -bool NO
  • Note that you can associate all document files of a particular type (that is, having the same filename extension) with a different default application by using the 'Change All...' button in the Finder's 'Get Info…' panel.
  • Services:
  • Under OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, you must enable the individual Services offered by Bean if you wish them to appear in the Services menu and the document's context menu (see System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services). To review, Bean offers the following services: New Bean Document Containing Selection, Paste Selection into Current Bean Document, HTML Snippit from Selection, HTML+CSS Snippit from Selection, Recover Text from Selected File.
  • The 'Lorem Ipsum' service, although useful in concept, no longer works correctly under Snow Leopard and has been removed. This is apparently due to a Snow Leopard bug which prevents an app from vending a text-transformation service to its own documents, resulting in a freeze (rdr://7355325).
  • Bugfixes:
  • Spotlight now indexes the contents of .bean format files.
  • Fixed a bug where the preference 'Suggest filename at first save' did not work under Snow Leopard.
  • Fixed a bug where resizing an image would temporarily blur it under Snow Leopard.
  • Fixed some leaks revealed by Static Analysis.
  • Fixed a problem where the List Marker… panel could appear on the Find/Replace window instead of a document window.
  • Tried to fix internationalized help files...it seems like sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, even when the help caches cleaned
  • Fixed a permissions glitch that could cause the Italian localization not to work.
  • Fixed a problem with alternate colors that could cause erratic behavior in Bean and produce '-redComponent not defined' console error message.
  • Code/Localization:
  • Because this is a bugfix release, no changes were made to the user interface in this version that require changes to the included localizations.
  • Changes:
  • Slightly revised Danish, Slovak translations.
  • Renamed Italian localization folder for Snow Leopard compatibility.

New in Bean 2.4.1 (Oct 3, 2009)

  • Enhancements:
  • The most current version of Bean should now always work with CopyPaste Pro. Note: the CopyPaste Pro command Open Selection in Editor will start the most current version of Bean present; Open Editor however starts whatever version of Bean is contained within the CopyPaste Pro bundle. Thanks to Peter Hoerster for the code.
  • Added up-to-date French localization (thanks to Daniel Elmiger) and a new Italian localization (thanks to Stafano Carlini)
  • Notes:
  • Users have reported that Bean runs well on Snow Leopard, except for Preferences > Advanced > Interface > Suggest filename at first save. I believe there is a new API for that in Snow Leopard, so that will be fixed whenever I can do the first Snow Leopard build. My Powerbook G4 (not Snow Leopard compatible) somehow knew its days were coming to an end; it died. Happily, I now have an Intel-based Apple and will be installing Snow Leopard soon.

New in Bean 2.4.0 (Aug 31, 2009)

  • Enhancements:
  • the color, shape and the blink behavior of the text cursor can be altered using the controls found under Bean Preferences > General > Text Cursor (user suggestion)
  • added File > Print Selection which will print only the selected text in a document. Multiple selections in a single document are merged, unless ‘Bean Preferences > Advanced > Document > Print Selection… separates multiple selections’ is enabled.
  • Print Selection… is also available in the context menu (which appears when you right-click or control-click in the document area)
  • the context menu for the document area and the Find/Replace fields now has an Insert menu that allows easy insertion of tabs, paragraph breaks, page breaks, line breaks, and non-breaking spaces
  • Edit > Insert > Note (shortcut: Ctrl+Cmd+n) will insert a note in the document using the font, size, text color and highlight color set under Bean Preferences > Advanced > Notes Mode. Preferences for notes include automatically adding brackets and starting a new paragraph.
  • Font > Notes Mode turns on *continuous* notes mode. Wherever the text cursor is placed, text typed there will start a new note. De-select Font > Notes Mode to return to normal editing. This is meant to be used like a ‘teacher’s red pen.’ Choose a distinctive font (example: Marker Felt) and color (red, or black with yellow highlight) that will make your notes stand out from the rest of the text. That way, you can later use Style > Select by > Font Style / Color / Highlight Color to select all notes and remove them. Notes cannot be hidden.
  • added File > Show in Finder menu item. Hint: Cmd-click the title of a saved document in the title bar of its window to see its location.
  • Changes:
  • File > Special New > With Current Selection can now use multiple text selections
  • .doc and .odt files now use the default paper size found under System Preferences > Print > Default Paper Size (since Apple’s file conversion filters do not read in the paper size for these formats and users expecting A4 were getting U.S. Letter) (user suggestion)
  • added a Header type: Title, Author page# (user suggestion)
  • removed the Close button from the bottom of the Preferences window (because the window already has a close button in the upper left) (user suggestion)
  • page breaks now display as a diamond when View > Show Invisibles is selected (user suggestion)
  • Bug Fixes:
  • the display bug where the text cursor would leave little dots behind it is, I hope, now fixed (user reported)
  • fixed a problem where memory wasn’t released when sheets were dismissed
  • Edit > Insert > Signature Line works better now
  • fixed a problem where the scrollbar would sometimes jump erratically when editing the middle of a long document with Center Cursor Vertically enabled
  • fixed a bug where File > Special New > With Current Selection could create an untitled document that was erroneously assigned to plain text type before saving (user reported)
  • fixed a bug where the type of measurement units initially used in the Bean Preferences > Style pane could be reported incorrectly as inches instead of centimeters (user reported)
  • Edit > Remove > All Text Tables now works
  • fixed a bug where unsaved and unedited documents created with File > Special New > With Current Selection would close without a save prompt
  • Code:
  • UI tweaks, improved menu validation, cleaned up some code, documentation updated
  • removed GPL legal language from JHFindPanel.[mh] (all files directly related to the Find Panel and its regular expression functions are covered by BSD or similarly permissive license)

New in Bean 2.3.1 (Jun 20, 2009)

  • Bug fix - Fixed UI glitch: Bean Preferences > Style > Line Spacing now assigns line spacing correctly (user reported).

New in Bean 2.3.0 (May 31, 2009)

  • Enhancements:
  • added Date/Time toolbar icon, which inserts date/time (select the date/time format from the icon’s popup menu) (user suggestion)
  • Option key + view scale slider will now change view scale in rounded 25% increments; use this for example to set the view scale at exactly 100%
  • Shift + Enter is now the keyboard shortcut for inserting a ‘line break’ (a soft return) which causes a new line of text without creating a new paragraph (user suggestion)
  • Changes/Bug Fixes:
  • Highlight toolbar icon now has ‘None’ option (that is, remove highlight) in icon’s popup menu (user suggestion)
  • the method for applying a custom highlight color to selected text has changed: use Shift + Option + select a color from the color panel (instead of the previous Option + select a color from color panel). This makes a bug less likely where the highlight color becomes the same as the text color, making text illegible. (user reported)
  • Text List improvements/fixes:
  • Format > List > Numbered/Bulleted can now create lists without a text selection (user suggestion)
  • font changes applied just after the text list marker are no longer rejected, and new list items created with a Return now inherit their font from the tail of the previous list item (and from the preceding tab thereafter). This avoids the Cocoa text system inconvenience where a cached font used for creating the list markers spills into new text list items (compare Text Edit). Note: under Tiger, the old behavior of restricting font changes after the marker remains as this works around a more severe bug where the font Lucida Grande appears in text list items when it shouldn’t. (user reported)
  • Format > List > Indent/Unindent now works with multiple selected list items and in multiple selection ranges (user suggestion)
  • re-enumeration of list markers is attempted when a list item is cut or deleted
  • Format > List > Move Item Up/Down behavior is less buggy (Leopard only)
  • Find/Replace panel improvements/fixes:
  • the text of a found match can now be referred to in the Replace text field as (that’s the digit zero, not the letter ‘oh’) when Match Patterns (Regex) is active; in other words, the text of the found match will be substituted for its symbol in the text to replace it. For example, Find: bad; Replace: not at all; Result: not bad at all.
  • Find All/Replace All (in Selection) now works on multiple text selections, not just the first text selection (user suggestion)
  • fixed a bug where Replace would replace the next found match if the current text selection did not match the Find field text. Instead, Replace now highlights the next match without replacing it; click Replace again to actually replace the found match.
  • fixed a problem where inserting large images into a paragraph with line spacing greater than 1 in layout view would cause subsequent text to ‘disappear.’ (Text Edit also has this problem.) Incidentally, note that you can use the Inspector’s Force Line Height / At Most control to limit the space above inline images to a reasonable amount (otherwise, double-spaced text, for example, will create a line spacing that is double the height of an inline image, which may be too much). (user reported)
  • Center Cursor Vertically is now disabled when Layout view is hidden in OS X 10.4 (Tiger); this is because there was a bug under Tiger that caused the scroller to misbehave that I could not fix
  • fixed a bug where Font > Strikethrough would sometimes not work (user reported)
  • fixed a bug where the File > Special New > Plain Text / Plain Text from Pasteboard commands would not work in localized versions (user reported)
  • fixed a bug where a document could be saved in full screen mode with alternate colors on, even though that document should open in windowed mode with alternate colors off (user reported)
  • fixed a bug involving undoing a change of margins with layout mode off
  • Code:
  • fixed code so the final dummy item in the Find panel’s patterns menu is no longer required
  • (UI) Page Up/Page Down buttons below scroller at last have their own subview

New in Bean 2.2.0 (Mar 8, 2009)

  • Enhancements:
  • New Find/Replace panel.
  • Pattern matching (regular expressions) allows easy searches for text that contains tabs, returns, pagebreaks, images, word boundaries, etc. Also search for text using character and digit wildcards, beginning and ending of line symbols, alternate spellings, etc. Complex search patterns can be created by combining these symbols. Tutorials on the use of regular expressions can be found on the internet.
  • Patterns… drop down menu in Find panel inserts pattern matching symbols
  • Select All, Replace All (In Document/In Selection Only) functions are better exposed than before
  • Invisible characters (tab, return, space, non-breaking space) are visible when editing search fields
  • File > Export > to HTML without Styles will export a file to pure HTML, with no embedded CSS styles (for when you have a separate style sheet)
  • Services > Bean > HTML Snippit with/without Styles from Selection converts selected text from a word processor or web browser etc. to an HTML snippit. ‘With styles’ includes styles as inline CSS, while ‘without styles’ omits all CSS, leaving pure HTML. Note: new Service menu items appear after logging out and logging back in again.
  • Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed a bug that could cause window display problems: minimum document window size is now set programmatically (nib setting kept disappearing)
  • Fixed many localization issues. Special thanks to Patrick Scheips for his help here.
  • Revised localization instructions (contrary to the first version, MainMenu.nib should be localized)
  • Code:
  • TextFinder.[hm] class (along with the Find Panel interface files) is BSD license, in keeping with more permissive licenses of previous modifications of TextFinder by other programmers and of RegExKitLite and ICU, which Bean’s Find panel uses for regular expressions.
  • Localizations added:
  • German
  • Chinese (Simplified).

New in Bean 2.1.0 (Jan 27, 2009)

  • added 'help' buttons in Preferences tabs; removed redundant tooltips

New in Bean 2.0.5 Beta (Jan 24, 2009)

  • Bug Fix - fixed a problem introduced in 2.0.4 that prevented the visible text range from being restored when entering full screen mode.

New in Bean 2.0.4 Beta (Jan 7, 2009)

  • Changes:
  • View > Show Invisibles now outlines text table cells that have a border width of zero; this is useful to reveal such ‘hidden’ text tables in content pasted from webpages (user suggestion)
  • Bug Fixes
  • Fixed a problem where using the Option key to insert special characters (ex: Opt+8 = bullet) could change the text background color to match the foreground color (reported by user)
  • Fixed a problem where a document window would not fade back into view when full screen was exited (Tiger only)
  • Fixed a problem where the Columns sheet would not dismiss when Apply button was clicked (Tiger only)
  • New Localization System:
  • Translators should no longer need to edit nib files directly for each new version. All strings are now loaded into labels, buttons, etc. at runtime from the localizable.strings file. See details here. Note: tooltips are NOT loaded at runtime; although I did not remove the English ones from the nibs in 2.0.4, most of them will probably be deleted before the official release.

New in Bean 2.0.3 Beta (Dec 23, 2008)

  • Fixed a problem that caused Bean to crash when dead keys were used to type accented characters.

New in Bean 2.0.2 Beta (Dec 23, 2008)

  • Fixed a noticeable slowdown in the layout manager when the page layout view is hidden.
  • Fixed a problem where View > Fit Page Width / Fit Page were not set correctly when reopening saved documents.

New in Bean 2.0.1 Beta (Dec 22, 2008)

  • Fixed a permissions problem with defaults.plist file.

New in Bean 2.0 Beta (Dec 18, 2008)

  • Enhancements:
  • new feature: Format > Columns... allows you to format the text of your entire document in 1 to 5 columns, with an adjustable gutter between columns. Note that the columns setting is Bean-only; the columns will not appear in other applications that read rich text formats. The default gutter width is changed at Preferences > Advanced > Document > Default gutter.
  • new feature: Format > Header/Footer... > Lock Header/Footer Style will ‘freeze’ the document’s header/footer settings and cause them to be saved with the document (typically, a change in the header/footer preferences effects all open documents in Bean)
  • text position is now restored after the layout view is toggled or when the window is resized or fullscreened (formerly, the blinking text cursor would scroll to the middle, which may not have been the section of text the user was looking at before the change)
  • added an option to choose the new document’s template file (Preferences > Documents > New document template). Only a locked file may serve as the new document template. To lock a file, use File > Make Template in Bean, or File > Get Info > Locked in the Finder. (user suggestion)
  • added option to allow change of document background color (which formerly wasn’t allowed) at Preferences > Advanced > Document > Allow change of document background color (user suggestion)
  • added option to paste a separater line before pasting the pasteboard text for Services > Bean > Paste Selection into Current Bean Document; this visually separates multiple pasted sections of text. (Advanced hint: the divider is a string of characters that can be altered; the string is found in defaults.plist under the key prefPasteSelectionDividerString.) (user suggestion)
  • the page break character now displays as a graphic line when layout view is off
  • Preferences > General > Center Cursor Vertically now works in continuous text view mode as well as layout view mode
  • new toolbar item for applying bold, italic and underline styles (user suggestion)
  • new toolbar item for highlight color (click and hold for a popup menu of different colors) (thanks to Keith Blount for KBPopUpToolbarItem class) (user suggestion)
  • highlight with any color: press the Option key while picking a color from the color panel to highlight selected text with that background color
  • new menu item File > Special New > Plain Text creates an empty plain text document (which defaults to a .txt filename extension at save)
  • new menu item File > Special New > Rich Text from Pasteboard creates a new document and inserts the rich text contents of the pasteboard
  • new menu item File > Special New > Plain Text from Pasteboard creates a new plain text (.txt) document and inserts the plain text contents of the pasteboard
  • new menu item File > Special New > With Current Selection copies selected text from the frontmost Bean document, then pastes it into a new rich text document
  • new menu item File > Make Template will lock the document’s file; the document will reopen in Bean as an untitled copy of the original and can optionally be used as the new document template
  • Bean now attempts to read plain text files first as Unicode, then with the file system hint, then as ISOLatin1; finally, if these fail, a sheet will appear prompting the user to select an encoding (user suggestion)
  • tabstop alignment can be changed for a text selection by double-clicking (or option-clicking) on a tabstop in the ruler
  • changing the page layout (page size, orientation) is now undoable
  • the color for revealed invisible characters can now be specified at Preferences > View > Invisible Characters > Color (user suggestion)
  • a wider (easier to see) blinking text cursor can be activated at Preferences > General > Wide cursor (user suggestion)
  • added option to show vertical ruler at Preferences > Advanced > Interface > Show vertical ruler; this is allowed for OS X 10.5+ only because it causes an error under 10.4 (user suggestion)
  • added option to suggest a filename when first saving a file based on the first 40 characters or so of the text at Preferences > Advanced > Interface > Suggest filename at first save; this is allowed for OS X 10.5+ only because the view hierarchy for of the save panel is different for 10.4 (user suggestion)
  • added option at Preferences > Advanced > Document > Respect Antialiasing Threshold... to respect the antialiasing threshold set at System Preferences > Appearance > Turn off font smoothing for font sizes .... and smaller. Important note: activating this option turns off fine kerning (intelligent characters spacing) and so is not recommended! (user suggestion)
  • Changes:
  • full screen can now be exited using the Escape key; the status bar Exit button has been removed (user suggestion)
  • added shortcuts to Edit > Insert > date stamps (user suggestion)
  • added Cocoa autosave (Bean Preferences > Documents > Autosave documents...) which autosaves all documents opened after autosave is activated at the interval you specify
  • the old per-document timed backup function, previously called ‘autosave,’ is now found here: View > Get Info... > Backup every [...] minutes; it works so differently from autosave (for example, the backup files are persistant and never overwrite the original) that it remains in Bean
  • Cmd+ (along with the usual Cmd=) now increases the font size of the selected text (user suggestion)
  • change encoding for plain text files is now undoable (and the prompt to optionally back up the file beforehand has been removed)
  • Preferences > General > Use “Smart Quotes” now has an option to choose Leopard’s native Smart Quotes implementation (which may work better for some languages and purposes)
  • the page number that headers and footers start printing on can now be specified at Preferences > Printing > Begin on page... (page numbering in the header or footer starts on that page) (user suggestion)
  • added an option to specify default use of U.S. or metric measurements at Preferences > Advanced > Interface > Measurement Units (formerly this was automatically set, based on System Preferences > International > Formats > Measurement Units) (user suggestion)
  • added option to turn off restoration of text cursor position when opening documents (which can result in faster load times) at Preferences > Advanced > Interface > Restore cursor location… (user suggestion)
  • the visible page number range and total number of pages is now reported in the status bar when both the layout view and the live word count are active. You can disable this or enable the old method (which indicated the page number above each page in layout view) under Preferences > Advanced > Interface. (user suggestion)
  • status bar now matches Leopard UI (Leopard only) (user suggestion)
  • ruler widgets now will match the color theme at System Preferences > Appearance > Appearance > Blue / Graphite (thanks to Keith Blount)
  • images are now automatically scaled in layout mode to prevent their overspilling a page or column (however, large line spacing will still cause an image to be ‘bumped’ off the page)
  • the ‘find indicator’ (saffron-colored lozenge) indicates the location of the text cursor when the view is changed (Leopard only)
  • Bug Fixes:
  • fixed a problem where a document window could be closed without prompting to save changes due to a bad change count (and Save toolbar icon now enables/unenables more correctly) (reported by user)
  • fixed a bug where opening a saved document would fail when several untitled documents were already open
  • fixed a problem that could cause duplicated overlaid text in multiple containers due to a bug in Leopard’s glyphRangeForBoundingRect:inTextContainer: (thanks to Martin Wierschin)
  • fixed a bug where non-active documents would scroll when the active document text cursor was at index zero (reported by user)
  • MS Word’s ‘Automatic’ font color now alternates in alternate colors mode (its ‘black’ is slightly lighter than pure black!)
  • when attempting to save a file that has been saved by another app since being opened by Bean, Bean will no longer present two warning sheets on Leopard (its own and the new native Leopard one)
  • fixed a problem that would cause Bean to crash when resolution independence was used in quartz debug (involving the ruler widgets not having a name when created with xml language)
  • tabbing through text fields in the Inspector no longer commits changes and creates needless undo actions
  • Smart Quotes now work inside parenthesis and brackets (user suggestion)
  • Code:
  • Refactored all classes to better compartmentalize and objectify Bean’s components (...still a ways to go on this task!)

New in Bean 1.3.3 (Jun 20, 2008)

  • Fixed a severe bug that would crash Bean when editing text lists in Alternate Colors mode (the bug originated in the new Alternate Colors code added in 1.3.1); this same bug would crash Bean when various dead keys were used for adding accents in Alternate Colors mode
  • Added LSHandlerRank=alternate to Word 97 info.plist section (it had been omitted by mistake); this should distance Bean�s association to the .doc format a bit more (giving priority to MS Word)

New in Bean 1.3.2 (Jun 11, 2008)

  • Kerning in Bean is now much improved, thanks to some help from Apple. Since I can't find it documented anywhere else, I'm documenting this here: call [layoutManager setUsesScreenFonts:NO] to produce better, more TeX-like kerning in an NSTextView object (as well as to force antialiasing). Without this, the layout manager will not let glyph rectangles overlap, which they must for properly kerned output. Wish I�d known about that a year ago�

New in Bean 1.3.1 (Jun 10, 2008)

  • View > Alternate Colors mode now substitutes the alternate text color for black text only; fonts with other colors display as they are (in previous versions, all text was colored using the alternate color).[1] (user suggestion)
  • added symbol for non-breaking space when View > Show Invisibles is active (user suggestion)
  • added option Header: Title; Footer: Page # of ## (user suggestion)
  • Inspector�s First Line and Left indention controls now change in unison when you hold down the Option key; this does not work yet when dragging the ruler widgets (user suggestion)
  • Optimized layout view code; scrolling is much snappier for long documents
  • Superscript and Subscript now �shrink� the selected text (like many other word processors do) to prevent irregular line spacing.[2] Font > Super/sub > Raise / Lower still adjusts the baseline without changing the size of selected text. (user suggestion)
  • Header text now aligns to left and right margins (user suggestion)
  • refined how the zoom slider�s label reports the zoom amount; you can now set the slider to exactly 100% (user suggestion)
  • added an overview to the File Formats page of Bean Help suggesting that users use RTF format as their everyday format (because RTF is Bean�s native format, and is therefore safer than .doc, which is always imported and exported through conversion filters).[3] File > Export > to DOC (with pictures) is ideal if you need to share a file with Windows users; it now works even when there are no images.
  • removed attributed labels under Font menu (for instance, the Italic menu item is no longer italicized) because the extra visual clutter was not helpful (user suggestion)
  • fixed an annoying problem where documents would open in MS Word in outline view when they were saved in Bean with View > Fit Page Width / Fit Page turned on (user feedback)
  • fixed a problem where empty plain text files would not open correctly. You can now save an empty plain text file as a template (Get Info... > Locked File/Template); this template will open in Bean as an Untitled UTF-8 plain text file. (user feedback)
  • fixed a problem where URLs in links (to the internet or to a local file) were not working when they contained accented characters (user feedback)
  • fixed a menu item validation problem for Style > Select by > Font Style
  • information in the Header now updates more quickly after saving the document with a new filename or changing the document�s properties
  • fixed a problem where the position of the vertical scroller knob was not updated after showing Layout view (user feedback)
  • fixed a problem where tabs couldn�t be positioned beyond 14 cm using Format > Tab Stop... (user feedback)
  • fixed a problem where some Inspector controls did not change the textView�s typingAttributes
  • fixed a problem where Preferences could override a saved document�s setting when determining whether to use alternate display colors

New in Bean 1.2.0 (Apr 30, 2008)

  • images now indicate when they are selected with a selection-colored box (user suggestion)
  • added a small �EXIT� button in the status bar as a hard-to-miss way to exit full screen mode
  • Find > Define Word now accepts multiple word selections, like �local time,� or �turn on the charm�
  • added Style > Select by > Font Style/Ruler
  • added Style > Select by > Font Family/Ruler (like above, but selects italics, bold, etc. variations)
  • Changed the factory default rich text font to Times New Roman instead of Times. Text lays out up to three times faster using Times New Roman, despite the fact that the two fonts are nearly identical!
  • new keyboard shortcut for Format > Justify: Cmd- (the old one stopped working after the move to the 10.5 SDK)
  • Style > Select by... menu now contains all select-by-style actions
  • restored show/hide Font Panel action to Cmd-T (toggle function disappeared after the move to the 10.5 SDK)
  • fixed a problem where Inspector wouldn�t display correct initial settings for any document opened with the cursor at the start of the document
  • file links containing spaces now open immediately
  • fixed minor ruler widgets drawing problem

New in Bean 1.1.0 (Apr 18, 2008)

  • added OpenDocument and Word 2007 file format support (in OS X 10.5 Leopard only)
  • shrink the Inspector: click the disclosure triangle to hide all Spacing controls
  • added Edit > Insert > Signature Line menu action (user suggestion)
  • added new header option: Subject (from Get Properties...)
  • new toolbar items: Full Screen, Get Properties..., Show Invisibles (I�m to blame for the icons for these - JH)
  • Inspector controls now work even when a document is empty
  • updated the Help file (the File Formats page describes the new formats)
  • the context menu you see when double-clicking a page�s margin in layout view is now localizable
  • removed some stray NSLog debug messages!
  • various fixes to help the Inspector follow changes better

New in Bean 1.0.1 (Mar 27, 2008)

  • fonts in Inspector�s popup menu were not sorted a-z on Tiger (but were on Leopard!), now fixed
  • disabled font controls in Inspector when there is no text

New in Bean 1.0.0 (Mar 26, 2008)

  • added Help file for all menu commands
  • link sheet now removes any previous link from text when link URL is left empty
  • new option: Preferences > View > Show invisible characters> Omit spaces (user suggestion)
  • new icon for Cut in toolbar
  • added Please Wait... sheet which appears when Bean is paginating long documents
  • added Preference to paginate in the background while typing (General > Use background pagination). This is recommended only for fast (i.e., Intel) processors!
  • headers and footers now appear in Layout view when enabled
  • if you click on the page margin in Layout view, a context menu pops up with various useful options (such as quick access to the header/footer controls)
  • added value of 1.2 to line spacing options, commonly considered the most readable setting for most fonts (user suggestion)
  • exiting full screen will now restore Layout view if necessary
  • fixed a (recent) major bug where opening a file type not supported by Bean would appear to produce an open, empty document
  • rewrote the Format > List > Move Up / Move Down code to be more reliable
  • fixed some problems with the bindings for full screen preference controls
  • fixed a problem where Check for Updates... would fail silently on Leopard if no network was found
  • fixed a bug where zooming in or out using shortcut keys just after opening a document would fail

New in Bean 0.9.12 (Mar 14, 2008)

  • added Full Screen mode (View > Full Screen), and Preferences for Full Screen mode - this works better under Leopard than Tiger; under Tiger the title bar refuses to hide
  • added Preferences for new window size, zoom amount, and whether window should be centered
  • added Font and Font Size controls in the Inspector (check �Preview Fonts in Menu� to enable live preview)
  • added improved control over Headers and Footers (MLA, APA, etc.) in Preferences
  • added menu commands and shortcut keys to quickly move list items north or south in list (Format > List > Move Up/Down)
  • added keyboard shortcut for show/hide toolbar (Ctrl Shift T)
  • added Preference to un-enable Cocoa�s �smart cut and paste� (which adds or removes spaces for double-clicked text selections)
  • added new menu item: Font > Strikethrough (shortcut: Shift Cmd U)
  • added new Service menu item: Paste Selection into Current Bean Document
  • added new Service menu item: Insert �Lorem Ipsum� (which is mock-latin text used as filler for trial text layouts or templates)
  • Bean can now save �empty� documents (for templates and so on)
  • new menu items Edit > Remove > Text Tables / List Markers / Attachments from Selection / All - when webpage text is copied and pasted into Bean, text tables in particular (which are used just for text layout) can screw up the output in layout mode and in PDFs (thanks to a bug in Apple�s code, which I�ve filed a bug report on [5650712]); you can remove tables, problem list attributes, or even all attachments at once using these new menu items
  • added Style > Remove All Styles menu item - this is equivalent to the Make Plain Text followed by Make Rich Text menu item sequence in Text Edit, which people say they miss in Bean; use it for example to strip web text of all font and paragraph styles, and all tables and attachments
  • added Style > Match > to Default Style which will match the selected text (or the whole document if no text is selected) to the default style as defined in the Preferences
  • added Style > Match > to Most Common Style which will match the selected text to the most common font and paragraph styles found in that selection; if no text is selected, all styles in the document will be �flattened� to the most common style
  • added Style > Match > to Style at Text Cursor which will propagate the style found at the blinking text cursor throughout the selected text, or throughout the document if no text is selected
  • added toolbar item for �Cut�
  • added menu item Format > Paragraph > Allow Hyphenation (for selected text)
  • added menu item Format > Paragraph > Right to Left Direction (for paragraphs of Arabic, Hebrew, etc.)
  • drag and drop of attachments from open Bean documents works better (JPGs instead of clippings, etc.)

New in Bean 0.9.11 (Jan 7, 2008)

  • new and improved method for screening out Leopard�s unnecessary screen updates - should eliminate the last traces of slowness due to this reason
  • backed away from paginating in the background as version 0.9.10 did; we now paginate while opening the document (slower to open, but more responsive once opened)
  • new 512 x 512 icon, courtesy Laurent Baumann -- thank you again, Laurent! (you can see the improvement in detail using coverflow under Leopard)
  • some tweaks in the document window�s UI and minor changes in the help files
  • changing a document property (View > Get Properties...) now marks a document as needing to be saved
  • Quick Look now works with .bean files (10.5 Leopard)
  • added benefit: Text Edit on 10.5 Leopard now understands .bean files, since their UTI superclass is com.apple.rtfd
  • moved UTF-8 to third position in encoding list for convenience; this is the modern format for conversion from legacy encodings
  • fixed bug where the color panel could set an alternate color in Preferences while changing the color of a document�s selected text at the same time
  • rewrote much of the View > Alternate Colors code to fix some problems
  • removed some dead code

New in Bean 0.9.10 (Dec 19, 2007)

  • fixed bugs causing severe slowdowns (only a problem on OS X 10.5 Leopard):
  • o PageView class under Leopard is getting many more drawRect messages than it ever did under Tiger; it is now optimized to ignore most of them, and objects used in drawRect are cached; also, we draw the insertion point cursor to eliminate some extra drawRect messages
  • o addTemporaryAttributes (=Alternate Text Colors) is now part of NSTextStorage�s processEditing method (the only place where it seems to work without a slowdown)
  • o pagination now occurs in the background when documents are loading (instead of forcing completed layout, as we did formerly, since Leopard is very slow at paginating); also, Bean now ignores redraw messages sent while a document is paginating
  • fixed Leopard-only bug where opening a document and typing at index 0 would give you default type (Helvetica 12) instead of type matching subsequent text
  • fixed Leopard-only bug where the blinking insertion point could disappear (due to a low lineFragmentPadding value); widened the insertion point cursor for visibility
  • fixed Leopard-only bug where resizing an image using the slider would cause a weird effect (due to the selectedRange being continually reset)
  • fixed bug that could cause Get Info... to give incorrect plain text encoding after saving a document with different encodings in one session
  • fixed bug where selected word count in status bar would not be reset when Live Word Count was off
  • fine-tuned some user interface elements in JHDocument.nib; consequently, localizations will not work for tooltips in the document window of Bean Multilingual Edition 0.9.10 (when it is released)
  • worked again to fix the problem where the Page Up and Page Down buttons sometimes disappear
  • replaced black ruler markers with aqua ones
  • added Services menu item �Recover Text from Selected File� which attempts to salvage text from corrupt Word 97 files and from old legacy formats (such as WriteNow files); note that you have to log out and log back in to refresh the Services menu
  • the �tab� key now indents individual list items when a list item is being edited, instead of inserting a tab
  • added keyboard shortcuts for creating numbered and bulleted lists

New in Bean 0.9.9 (Oct 15, 2007)

  • Fixed a bug that prevented plain text format documents from being Default Save Format
  • Document background color control in Font Panel is now hidden (Bean doesn�t use it)
  • The Link... sheet remembers the last type of link chosen
  • Fixed annoying List... bug that would change the font to Lucida Grande (thanks, Philip Dow, for the code fix)
  • Fixed a bug where, for example, a .5 margin would yield .57 on the ruler (due to non-zero default textContainer:lineFragmentPadding setting)
  • Fixed a bug where input into any document would cause a beep when a read only document was open
  • Got rid of system beep upon attempted input to read only documents...didn�t like it
  • added validation for menu items, toolbar, and Inspector when focused on a read only document
  • List > Numbered and List > Bulleted now removes first line indent attribute for selected text, which NSTextList�s initWithMarkerFormat:options: also does

New in Bean 0.9.8 (Sep 20, 2007)

  • Fixed Check for Updates -- this did not work correctly until 0.9.7.1
  • Localization string fixes (0.9.7.2, 0.9.7.3, 0.9.7.5)
  • Fixed crash involving textStorageWillProcessEditing out-of-bounds error (0.9.7.4)
  • Fixed a bug where Bean would crash if you overtyped a single, selected smart quote (0.9.7.6)
  • Fixed ‘nil value’ bug involving editing picture as initial character in a document (0.9.7.7)
  • Fixed a problem with Get Info... numbers being formatted incorrectly (0.9.7.8)