Mac, and We're Not Talking Golden Arches

In spite of the ubiquitousness of Windows-based operating systems, there are people joining the Internet Writing Workshop who have learned to love and appreciate Apple's Mac computers.

For those of us administrators who never saw the light, it can be difficult to help a Mac-member clean up a SUB or CRIT so that the list server computer doesn't mangle and mutilate the traffic.

Grace Skibicki, part of the nonfiction administration team, is a Mac user. She recently wrote a short piece to help a newly-signed on member who also uses a Mac. It's worth reviewing here.

I compose in AppleWorks and paste into my emailer. I use AppleWorks 6. In this version, when I'm in AppleWorks, I go to the header marked Text and scroll down to style and select Plain text.

Smart Quotes:

• Under the header AppleWorks, scroll down to preferences and open preferences.
  
• Under Topic, select Text. Unclick Smart Quotes. The only section I have checked is Font Smoothing. That will take care of the Smart quotes problem.

Text Edit:

• In Text Edit select Preferences and click New document.
• Select Setting preferences for new documents, click show at the bottom of the page. Select a format, in this case it would be Plain text.
• If you save a document in Text Edit, it is automatically converted to an RTF file. You can save it as a plain text file. Chose Format> Make Plain Text and then save your document.
• I played around with the line spacing. I found selecting Wrap to Window displayed the proper spacing. I did a copy and paste into my emailer and it arrived looking okay.
• Do check to see if you have shut off Smart quotes and selected Plain text in your emailer, also.

I found the above information in the Help page of TextEdit by doing a search. I typed Plain Text in the finder window to the far right of the header, hit return and the help page brought up several documents. I've never explored TextEdit and did find it quite interesting. If you need help applying these options, let me know.

I've included below a copy of the instructions I found using the Help in TextEdit. Much more detailed than I offered. My response touches only on formatting, smart quotes and line spacing.

1. Choose TextEdit > Preferences and click New Document.
2. Choose a format.
3. Rich text allows special formatting such as bold or special typefaces. Plain text is very simple does not allow formatting.
4. Select "Wrap to Page" if you want to use document margins when you view or print a page.
5. Leave this unselected to let text wrap according to the size of the document window.
6. Set an initial window size.
7. You can always drag the window to change its size.
8. Choose default fonts for plain text and rich text documents.
9. Specify document properties for rich text documents. You can edit these and other properties for individual documents using the Format menu.
10. Select options to check spelling as you type or show a ruler in the document window.
11. If you want to include page numbers, the document title, and the date on each printed page, select "Number pages when printing."

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Read a deconstruction of the Apple ad campaign on Slate.