Bean (software)
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 Screenshot of Bean on Mac OS X |
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| Developer(s) | James Hoover |
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| Initial release | May 1, 2007 |
| Stable release | 3.0.1 (December 24, 2011) [±] |
| Written in | Objective-C |
| Operating system | Mac OS X |
| Type | Word processor |
| License | Bean Word Processor Software License |
| Website | www.bean-osx.com |
Bean is a word processor currently available for Mac OS X only. Up until version 3, Bean was free and open source software, but has since become closed source. Bean is still free of charge however, although this might change.[1] According to its creator James Hoover, it is not meant to replace Microsoft Word, but to be a lean word processor that was beautiful and user friendly. Many of the operations of Bean are carried out by the underlying Cocoa framework of Mac OS X; the name Bean is a play on Cocoa and Java, two popular programming frameworks.
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[edit] Features
The design of Bean was heavily influenced by Marten Van De Kraats' article "Lean Word Processor Specifics".[2] It is especially suitable for note taking or writing short articles because the program is highly responsive and starts almost instantly, while full-featured office suites take a much longer time to boot. While Bean is not designed to compete with programs like LibreOffice Writer, OpenOffice.org Writer, or Microsoft Word, its feature set is complete enough to cover the needs of most casual users. Starting with version 3, Bean has a completely new user interface with an emphasis on simplicity where things are easier to find.[3]
Bean has the following features:
- A 'Live Word' count
- A 'Get Info' panel for 'In-Depth' statistics
- A zoom-slider to easily change the view scale
- An Inspector panel with lots of sliders
- Date-stamped backups
- Autosaving
- A page layout mode
- An alternate colors option (e.g., white text on blue)
- selection of text by Text Style, Paragraph Style, Color, etc.
- A floating windows option (like Stickies has)
- Dictionary, word completion, etc.
As of version 3:
- Tabbed editing
- Ability to resize the width of the draft edit view within its window
It also includes full screen mode, which only displays the text.
The following features are deliberately missing: footnotes, pre-defined text styles, floating graphics (but it does in-line graphics).
[edit] File formats
Bean natively reads and writes these file formats:
- .rtf format (rich text)
- .rtfd format (Rich Text Format Directory, rich text with graphics)
- .bean format (identical to .rtfd)
- .txt format (Unicode and legacy)
- .html format (as source code)
- .webarchive format (Apple's web archive format)
Bean imports and exports these formats:
- .doc format (MS Word '97, minus images, margins, and page size)
- .docx format (Office Open XML, minus images and some formatting)
- .odt format (OpenDocument, minus images, margins, and page size)
- .xml format (Microsoft Word 2003 XML, minus images)
Bean can export all of the above formats to these formats:
- .html (web page format, minus images)
- .doc compatible (with images intact)
- .rtf (Rich Text Format, with images intact)
[edit] Version history
| Version Number | Release Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| 0.9.2f | May 1, 2007 | Initial release (beta) |
| 0.9.2g | May 3, 2007 | Bug fixes |
| 0.9.3a | May 16, 2007 | Bug fixes, minor changes and enhancements |
| 0.9.3b | May 20, 2007 | Bug fixes |
| 0.9.4a | May 27, 2007 | New icons |
| 0.9.5a | June 20, 2007 | Major revision |
| 0.9.6 | July 30, 2007 | |
| 0.9.7 | August 31, 2007 | |
| 0.9.8 | September 17, 2007 | Bug fixes |
| 0.9.9 | October 14, 2007 | Bug fixes |
| 0.9.10 | December 18, 2007 | |
| 0.9.11 | January 6, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 0.9.12 | March 14, 2008 | Preview of Bean 1.0 |
| 1.0.0 | March 25, 2008 | |
| 1.0.1 | March 26, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 1.1.0 | April 17, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 1.2.0 | April 29, 2008 | Enhancements |
| 1.3.1 | June 9, 2008 | Enhancements and bug fixes |
| 1.3.2 | June 11, 2008 | Bug fixes: improved kerning |
| 1.3.3 | June 20, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 2.0b | December 17, 2008 | Beta release of the upcoming major update |
| 2.0.1b | December 20, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 2.0.2b | December 22, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 2.0.3b | December 23, 2008 | Bug fixes |
| 2.0.4b | January 6, 2009 | Bug fixes |
| 2.0.5b | January 9, 2009 | Bug fixes |
| 2.1.0 | January 26, 2009 | Official (non-beta) release of Bean, version 2 |
| 2.2.0 | March 7, 2009 | |
| 2.3.0 | May 31, 2009 | |
| 2.3.1 | June 19, 2009 | |
| 2.4.0 | August 31, 2009 | Major update |
| 2.4.1 | October 3, 2009 | Minor changes, added localization for French and Italian. |
| 2.4.2 | November 30, 2009 | Snow Leopard support |
| 2.4.3 | February 20, 2010 | Bug fixes, added localization for Czech and updated Danish |
| 2.4.4 | July 12, 2011 | Bug fixes and minor changes |
| 2.4.5 | December 14, 2011 | Bug fixes |
| 3.0.1 | December 24, 2011 | Complete rewrite sporting a new user interface and new features. Has become closed source with the switch from the GNU General Public License to the Bean Word Processor Software License |
[edit] See also
- List of word processors
- Comparison of word processors
- Office Open XML software
- OpenDocument software
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- [1], official website.
- [2], review
- [3], Macworld review
- Interview with James Hoover creator of Bean
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