Introduction
Style is a scriptable text editor for the Macintosh that picks
up where SimpleText leaves off, adding some powerful formatting capabilities that make it an ideal mini-word processor. Style handles formatted text, in which each character can have its own font, size, style and color, and each paragraph can have its own alignment, line spacing and margins. It also lets you embed pictures and sound within the text. Unlike SimpleText, Style documents aren't limited to 32K but only to available memory.
Style is also fully scriptable, so you can add your own commands by writing scripts (or having Style write them for you). Scripts can be used to automate basic actions (like capitalizing bold text) or to accomplish complex tasks (like turning any document into a web page).
Style is distributed as
shareware
(US$12). Credit card owners can
register online.
Feature Overview
Style includes the following features:
- Outstanding AppleScript support. Style is scriptable, recordable and attachable and supports most of Apple's Standard Suite and Text Suite of terms, with several additions.
- Built-in hierarchical script menu for convenient access to your favorite scripts.
- Unlimited multiple undo/redo.
- Support for reading and writing documents in RTF for easy interchange with Microsoft Word and other word processors.
- Support for Unicode (UTF-16) text files for easy interchange of multilingual text documents with other Unicode-aware applications and operating systems.
- Drag-and-drop text editing, with optional translucent text drags.
- Optional WYSIWYG Font menu.
- Ability to create stand-alone “AutoViewer” documents.
- Support for Sherlock's Find by Content searches.
- Multilingual editing: Style can handle multiple languages and writing systems in the same document, such as Japanese and Arabic, provided you have the necessary language kits and fonts installed.
- Inline input (TSM) support for users of Far East script systems.
- Transparent line break conversion for Windows and Unix text files.
- Interoperability with ftp applications such as NetFinder.
- Word Services support for interfacing Style to external spell checkers.
- Basic support for MPW Projector-compatible version control systems.
- HTML generation script supporting modern W3C standards (XHTML 1.0, UTF-8 charset, PNG images).
- Support for legacy file formats such as MacWrite and MacWrite II through the use of Claris XTND translators.
- Balloon Help for all interface items.
- Internet Config awareness.
- Appearance-savviness, including support for non-Platinum themes.
- Basic contextual menu support.
- Support for proxy icons.
- Support for proportional scrollbars.
- Support for Marc Moini's Smart Scroll control panel.
- Support for Frontier menu sharing.
- Support for extended print records (requires LaserWriter 8.4 or newer) for having all of your print settings stick with documents.
Here's a screenshot of Style converting a multilingual document into HTML.
System Requirements
Style 1.9.1 requires Mac OS 8.1 and a PowerPC-based Macintosh. Mac OS 9.1 or newer is recommended to take full advantage of its features.
Users of older versions of the system software (all the way back to System 7.1) may use Style 1.7 if they have a PowerPC-based machine, or Style 1.6.1 if they have a 68K-based machine.
A separate version of Style is available for users of Mac OS X.
Where Can I Find Style?
The latest version of Style for Mac OS 9 is 1.9.1, while the latest version for Mac OS X is 1.9.2.
Style 1.9.1 for Mac OS 8/9 is distributed as a StuffIt 5 archive. To decompress this archive, you need version 5.0 or newer (5.5 recommended) of StuffIt Expander, a freeware compression utility published by Aladdin Systems.
The Mac OS X distribution contains the Style application only. Additional stuff (documentation, sample scripts) can be found in the distribution for Mac OS 8/9.
What's New in Style 1.9?
-
New menu layout: several new menu items have been added to access features previously only available through scripting:
- A Hilite Color submenu allows you to mark any text range with a hilite color, as if using a hiliter.
- Three new items (Normal Baseline, Superscript and Subscript) allow you to raise and lower the selection relative to the default baseline.
- Indent and Outdent let you increase and decrease the left indent of the selected paragraphs.
- A Bottom Border submenu lets you add border lines to the bottom of paragraphs (useful for titles, headers, etc.)
- Copy Format and Apply Format let you quickly transfer a whole set of formatting attributes from one spot to another.
- You can resize pictures with Scale Graphics.
- You can set a background color for the entire document with Background Color.
- Style 1.9 comes with More Text Extractors, a set of Find By Content plug-ins that help Sherlock understand and index documents created by Style.
- A new Reindex on Save feature can update your Sherlock Find by Content index as soon as you save a document.
- The usual slew of smaller bug fixes and enhancements.
Style 1.9.1 is a minor update to version 1.9 which adds:
- An enhanced WASTE text engine, featuring, among other goodies, real tabs.
- Better RTF roundtripping.
- Page numbers.
- Support for the EGO (Edit Graphics Object) inter-application communication protocol. This protocol, based on Apple events, allows certain applications (mostly equation editors, like Expressionist or Graphing Calculator) to function as external editors for word processors.
What's New in the Latest Beta?
The latest beta of Style for Mac OS X (1.9.2b3) features:
- Jaguar compatibility.
- Quartz text anti-aliasing (requires Mac OS X 10.1.5 or newer).
- Mouse wheel support.
- Assorted bug fixes.
There are no public betas available for Mac OS 8/9 at the moment.
Style Users Mailing List
A mailing list for Style Users is hosted by Yahoo! Groups. This unmoderated, open-membership community is the right place to ask questions, share tips and scripts, and make suggestions for future versions of Style.
To subscribe, send a message to StyleUsers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, or click here and follow the instructions.
By the way, the old “Style Discussion” mailing list hosted by listbot.com has been discontinued.
Miscellaneous Links
MacUser's rating:
five out of five mice.
Style 1.4 was reviewed in
TidBITS 327
by
Sean Speisert
.
1996 MUT Shareware Award Winner.
