Bean is a small, easy-to-use, and free rich text editor and lightweight word processor that supports open/save of Microsoft Word format (.doc and .xml) documents (less images). Lean, fast and with an attractive, uncluttered user interface Bean starts up almost instantly on my not exactly cutting-edge 2.0 GHz Macbook, but still has cool stuff like a live word count, page layout mode, full-screen mode, split-screen mode, regular expression search/replace, multi-column text, inline graphics, detailed statistics, and more word-crunching and document formatting bells and whistles.

The fine folks over at Nisus Software are celebrating Festivus again this year with a one-day sale on their Nisus Writer word processor. Today only (December 23rd) they are going to sell the full version of Nisus Writer Express for $30 and Nisus Writer Pro for $49 (regularly $79.00). No coupons are required. Just go to more »

So I was delighted to discover Tincta last week. Tincta’s user-interface layout is quite similar to Smultron and Fraise, and it’s available in both a free version (“Always free” the Website pointedly declares) and a feature-enhanced Pro version. Tincta’s developers say the app was written and designed from ground up, that they don’t use any third party code or technologies (besides Mac OS X) and that they keep their codebase small and clean to maintain maximum speed, avoid bugs and add improvements very quickly.

Tex-Edit Plus (TE+)—my favorite text-cruncher—is a scriptable, styled text editor that fills the gap nicely between pure text/no formatting text editors and full-featured word processors. It’s fast and efficient, has a clean, uncluttered interface, is great for cleaning up text transmitted over the Internet, and has the best implementation of AppleScript of any application I’ve used.

I collect word processors like some people collect tiny spoons. Difference is, though, that I use all my word processors. I’ve got Storyist for writing novels, Montage writing stage plays, Pages for heavier layouts, and when I need to open a Word document, I’ve got Word. Different functions, different tools. But if I had to get rid of them all and use just one word processor for everything, it’d currently be Nisus Writer Pro 2.

The Nisus Writers Pro and Express are now fully Lion compatible via updates released today. The updates are free for owners of Nisus Writer Express 3.x and Nisus Writer Pro, and fix a handful of bugs in addition to adding Lion compatibility. The already Lion compatible Nisus Writer Pro 2 has also been updated with a few fixes and support for full screen.

Keeping your system safe and sound is important if you work with any sensitive data or if you just have to share your system with your family (or nosy roommates) and you want to maintain your own personal privacy. Since you cannot always lock out the whole system, locking single document is a solid option, as it allows you to keep just some data secured.

My benchmark “gold standard,” so to speak, of text-crunching applications is Tom Bender’s superb, Apple-Scriptable, $15 shareware-styled text editor and text cleaner Tex Edit Plus. Thanks to its support of text formatting, it can also serve admirably as a lightweight word processor, filling the gap between pure plain text editors and full-featured word processors. TE+ is lean and quick, with the best AppleScript support of any application I’ve ever used.

Using Nisus’ own description, the Nisus Writer Pro word processor for Mac OS X is much like the Macintosh itself: “fast, clean, and with all the power you need.” And with today’s announcement of Nisus Writer Pro 2, it’s more functional than ever. This new version adds a suite of drawing tools, watermarks, paragraph-level borders and shading, EPUB export, a customizable “special characters” menu and palette, and saved PDF files create clickable links for cross-references, page numbers in generated TOCs/Indexes, and hyperlinks.

With competing products cutting deeper into Adobe’s feature sets, and with Adobe ramping up the capabilities of their own consumer and prosumer products, the Creative Suite packages have shifted into higher gear. This is great news if you’ve got a need for these complex but powerful sets of tools (and a company paying for your upgrades and training). If you’re on your own, the new subscription model is a viable option.