Text editor for Mac that will open any file

Posted by Dinah on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Dinah
Published on 2009-08-21T21:40:24Z Indexed on 2011/03/02 15:27 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 266

Filed under:

osx

|

text-editors

In Windows, every text editor I encountered allowed me to drag and drop any file type into it and it opened. Apparently, Mac app developers have a different philosophy because I can't find a simple free text editor for OS X that will do this. TextWrangler came highly recommended but it can't accomplish this simple feat. Can anyone suggest one?

Edit apparently on at least some editors, there is a distinction between drag/drop in the document list area vs. the typing area. In addition to the accepted answer, this is one thing to be aware of. I still don't know why it doesn't work in TextEdit, but this is true for TextWrangler and Smultron.

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about osx

OSX/Wine - Associating file extension (.php) with a Windows program on OSX

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Greetings, I am running PSPad (a Windows programming editor) on OSX/Snow Leopard using Wine 1.1.35 I want to associate various file extensions (.php, .js, .html) with PSPad.exe OSX Finder does not allow this association -- I can only associate file types with $.app items in Applications. How do… >>> More
osx web service spawns icon in taskbar - osx - while drawing image

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a web endpoint that displays an image of a string... When the following code is run (in tomcat) it spawns a java icon in the taskbar on OSX. Not sure if it is a problem, or whats going on. Looking for some sort of explination @RequestMapping("/text/{text}") public void textImage(HttpServletResponse… >>> More
Cannot disable spotlight indexing on volume

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a FAT32 partition on my HDD. When using OSX, it is mounted to /Volumes/MEDIA. After a recent upgrade to Mavericks, spotlight is having trouble indexing it, eating up almost all of my system resources, and I cannot get the indexing to stop: [jay-mba-osx ~]% sudo mdutil -v -a -i off /: Indexing… >>> More
OSX - User home directories shared via NFS

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, I've run into some problems with how I've got user home directories set up on our system here. Our server is an XServe, using Open Directory to manage the user accounts. The majority of our workstations are OSX, but there are a few running Linux (Centos 5.3), and, as time goes on, we expect… >>> More
Can't connect to local IP address on OSX

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to connect to a webserver that's running on my mac OSX 1.6. I'm able to connect to it locally using http://127.0.0.1:8888/myapp but when I attempt to connect to it using my machine's local IP address (http://192.168.1.15:8888/myapp IP shown below) from the same machine (or another on the… >>> More

Related posts about text-editors

Good text editors or viewers for large log files

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Log files and other textual data files are often tens or hundreds of megabytes in size, and some editors choke when you try to open something so large. What are some good applications for viewing large files? Bonus points for apps that can open compressed files, search for things with regular expressions… >>> More
Which FLOSS text editor is most like kwrite without being KDE-based?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Among text editors on Linux, I usually prefer KWrite. I like that I can quickly turn on/off line numbers and line wrap in the View menu. Other settings are easy to change. Other text editors I've used in the past, such as Gnome's gedit, bury line numbering and wrapping checkboxes deeper into the… >>> More
Right-margin marks in VS2010 text editors

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
In VS2008, you could enable right-margin marks by creating a string registry entry named Guides under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Text Editor. It also worked with the express editions: replace VisualStudio with VCExpress or VCSExpress. The value I had was: RGB(192,192,192) 80, 100 which… >>> More
Featureful commercial text editors?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm willing to buy tools if they add genuine value over a FOSS equivalent. One thing I wouldn't mind having is an editor with the power of Emacs, but made more user-friendly. There seem to be several commercial editors out there, but I can't find much discussion of them online. Maybe it's because… >>> More
What text editors support vertical rulers?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm looking for a feature somewhat like the vertical red 80 columns marker in NetBeans but one that's easier to use. I'd like it to function more like the tabs in MS Word except that the horizontal line is displayed on the entire file. I looked on the Comparison of Text Editors over at Wikipedia… >>> More