Filed under: Software, Freeware, Open Source
Freeware Find: Bean
Departing TUAW blogger Giles Turnbull caught my attention in his recent list of favorite Mac apps. At the top of his list was an application called Bean, which had the unfortunate effect of causing me to think about Rowan Atkinson's comedy character (at right). As soon as the nausea wore off, I took a look at the app and found a lot to like.It's a rich text editor from developer James Hoover that is surprisingly powerful, very lean, and open source. It's the perfect in-between text editor, nestled somewhere east of Microsoft Word and west of TextEdit. It's small, fast, and easy to use.
Features of Bean (the app, not the Mr.) include live word count, in-depth statistics, autosaves and dated backups, page layout mode, dictionary, word completion, and in-line graphics. If you feel a need to add some functionality to Bean, the Objective-C source code is readily available.
Bean reads and writes .rtf, .rtfd, .txt, .html, and .webarchive formats, and can transparently import and export to and from .doc, .docx, .odt, and .xml formats. It can also export to .html, .pdf, .doc, and .rtf formats (the latter two with images intact).
All I can say is that I can see why Giles likes Bean. It rocks!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kris said 11:14AM on 9-12-2008
"the unfortunate effect of causing me to think about Rowan Atkinson's comedy character"
how can you not like Mr. Bean?
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caleb said 4:50PM on 9-12-2008
I've been using bean for a while. It's the best small word processor I've used on any platform.
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Chris said 11:35AM on 9-12-2008
Departing? He just showed up around here in July...
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Chris said 11:54AM on 9-12-2008
...And has added nothing but excellent, quality posts.
Red_iPhone said 11:57AM on 9-12-2008
I was about to say the same thing. Awfully weird...
mr. Obsession said 11:31AM on 9-12-2008
"Departing TUAW blogger Giles Turnbull..."
ANOTHER Mac superstar is leaving TUAW? Can we get some sort of explanation for thinning out some of the best writers you guys have?
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Eckofish said 11:31AM on 9-12-2008
@kris I second that.
Rowan Atkinson has done some great kids movies in the past. Mr Bean is good clean comedy for the masses.
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stainboy said 12:19PM on 9-12-2008
you've got to admit this is funny though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h1VQBfLDLA
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eric said 2:34PM on 9-12-2008
It's true, Bean is a little gem. Doesn't try to do everything, and does what it does well. Give it to your less computer literate family members for letters and such, they'll thank you.
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Frank said 3:26PM on 9-12-2008
mr. bean rules. that being said, i always always ALWAYS laugh out loud at this worth1000: http://tinyurl.com/3shw89. your mileage will vary.
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Frank said 3:27PM on 9-12-2008
oh -- and to keep it on topic, i love bean (the software). i haven't used that other, bloated, huge-company word-processing software in months, thanks to bean.
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