Bean Menu

About Bean: Displays the application’s version number and some credits and contact information for Bean.

Check for Updates: Checks whether a newer version of Bean is available for download from www.bean-osx.com. Your Mac must be connected to the internet for this to work. Note that Bean does not automatically check for newer versions at startup.

Preferences…

NOTE: Unless otherwise indicated, Preferences affect the creation of new documents, so changing a setting in Preferences does not affect already open documents. To affect open documents, use the commands in the menu bar instead.

General

Continuously spellcheck: Underlines potentially misspelled words with a red dotted line. Use Ctrl+click to reveal a contextual menu with suggested corrections.

Smart copy/paste: adds and deletes surrounding spaces automatically when cutting and pasting words selected by double-clicking on them.

Background pagination: paginates the Layout view in the background while you type, instead of all at once. This allows documents in Layout view to load faster if the remembered insertion point is toward the beginning of the document. Background pagination works great on newer (Intel) Macs, but is not recommended for older (PowerPC) Macs, as it can make the text system sluggish. Force pagination to complete with this keyboard combination: Cmd+Page Down.

Use “Smart Quotes”: automatically replaces straight quotation marks with curvy opening and closing quotation marks (or the appropriate quotation marks for the user’s language as selected in the Style control).

Supplied by: If Bean's Smart Quotes function interferes with your language’s use of ‘dead keys’ to add diacritical marks to letters, then select Supplied by > OS X (Note: OS X 10.5 only).

Style: (applies immediately) changes the linguistic style of the quotation marks used by Bean’s Smart Quotes to the style preferred by the user.

Text Cursor

Center cursor vertically: Centers the blinking text cursor in the window as long as you are adding to the end of the document. Not recommended for older macs (PPC G3s).

Cursor shape and behavior: (applies immediately) provides a choice of three different types of text cursors, including 1) the 'standard' thin, blinking cursor, 2) a wide, blinking and semi-transparent cursor, and 3) a thin, non-blinking cursor.

Color: (applies immediately) changes the color of the text cursor. When the alternate display colors are active, the cursor color is a blend of alternate text color and background color. The Default button below the color well restores the cursor to black.

Documents

Default save format: Rich Text Format (.rtf) works well for formatted text without images; if you include images often in your documents, Rich Text with Graphics (.rtfd) works well.

Autosave documents every ... minutes: activates the Cocoa autosave function, after which newly opened documents will autosave at the interval you specify. If Bean quits unexpectedly, it will open the autosaved document next time you start the application.

New document template: Choose 'Generic' for a typical new document (note that default page size is an OS X preference that can be changed at System Preferences > Print & Fax > Default Paper Size in Page Setup). Choose 'Custom' to use a template file for new documents. Select the 'Choose Template' button to specify a template document (only *locked* files are selectable). To lock a file, with the file's document open in Bean, select File > Make Template. Or, select View > Get Info... and then select 'Locked file/Template.' A file can also be locked in the Finder in the following way: select the file in a Finder window, then select File > Get Info and select the 'Locked' checkbox.

Printing

Print header and footer: (applies immediately) a header and/or footer is added when the document is printed onto paper or saved to .pdf format. Also, you will see a preview of the header and footer in Layout mode. The font family and size are those in Preferences > Font. Note that headers and footers may get squeezed out if the document’s margins are set too small.

Style: (applies immediately) changes the content of the header and footer that prints. Note that the Title, Author, and Subject properties are entered by the user in the View > Get Properties... sheet for individual documents.

Thus, you can print an APA style header

An Analysis of Methodologies 1

...or an MLA style header

Kirkpatrick 1

...or even a ‘Turabian’ style header by adding four spaces after the Author property.

Kirkpatrick 1

Begin on page: (applies immediately) specifies the page number on which the header and footer first appear (to allow for an un-numbered title page, for instance). The page number in the header or footer is adjusted accordingly. For now, you cannot arbitrarily set what numeral the page numbering starts with.

View

Layout view: displays the document to the user as it will appear on the printed page, as opposed to a continuous stream of text. If you work with large documents (of several hundred pages) you may wish to disable this option for quicker document loading.

Alternate display colors: the document is displayed with an alternate set of foreground and background colors for use in editing documents. White text on a blue background, for example, can relieve eyestrain. Headers and footers are not shown with the alternate color. Non-black font colors are not altered.

Margin guides: displays a line to indicate the editable area of the page which may be filled with text; in other words, the area within the margins. Margin guides do not print.

Page shadow: adds an attractive shadow below the virtual page in Layout view. Bean is snappier with this option off!

Live word count: shows a continuously updated word and character count (as well as a page count in Layout view) in the status bar at the bottom of each document window. When you select a section of text, the status bar shows a word and character count for selected text in blue (instead of the usual black).

Ruler: displays a ruler above the document. You can directly manipulate the tab and indention settings for a text selection by dragging and repositioning the widgets in the ruler. Click in the ruler to create a left tab stop. Double-click or Option-click a tab stop to change its alignment type.

Ruler accessories: displays the standard OS X ruler controls in the space above the ruler. When enabled, you can drag and drop different types of tab stops from the supplied tab well. Also, when enabled, you can access OS X’s goofy native Styles control.

Toolbar: toolbar icons allow quick and intuitive access to frequently used commands.

Horizontal scroll bar: allows you to scroll horizontally across a highly zoomed document.

Invisible characters: displays otherwise invisible characters (space, non-breaking space, tab, return, paragraph break, and page break) so you can fine tune the layout of a document. Also reveals text tables with hidden borders.

Color: specifies the color of invisible characters when they are revealed.

Don't show spaces: causes spaces to not display when invisible characters have been revealed (which makes for less clutter).

Font

Rich text font: the default font and size used for new documents. A preview is provided.

Plain text font: the default font and size used when loading plain text documents (.txt, .html, etc.). A preview is provided.

Use alternate display colors: identical to Bean Preferences > View > Alternate display colors. Click the Text and Background color wells to change the alternate display colors used.

Style

Margins: provides margin settings for new documents. Click the ‘Apply Changes’ button to save changes.

Line spacing: provides the line spacing setting for new documents. A line spacing of 1.2 is pleasing to the eye.

First line indent: provides the setting for automatic paragraph indent when the user presses the Return key. Click the ‘Apply Changes’ button to save changes.

Apply style to .txt files: applies the settings of the Style pane to plain text files opened in Bean. This is not always desirable. For editing HTML code, for instance, you do not want document formatting as this will obscure the code. But for a Project Gutenberg plain text file, on the other hand, these settings might make the file more presentable and readable.

Show in metric units: displays the control settings in the Bean Preferences > Style pane in metric measurements instead of U.S. measurements. This does not effect the ruler, etc. of new document windows. The measurement unit for the ruler of a new document is determined automatically by System Preferences > International > Format > Measurement Units. You can force either metric or U.S. units at Bean Preferences > Advanced > Interface > Measurement Units.

Apply Changes: this button commits changes you made to the text field controls in this pane.

Window

Center initial window: new document windows are centered on the display, then cascaded to the right as new documents are opened.

Window size

Factory setting: new windows are opened with a pre-set size.

Custom: new windows are opened according to a user-determined size.

Match to Active Document: sets the Custom window size to match the frontmost document window.

Zoom

Fit page width: new documents are scaled so that the printed page’s width just fits the document’s window. When the window is resized by the user, the document scales up or down accordingly.

Except for plain text: disables ‘Fit page width’ for plain text files. Often, with plain text, a user will resize a document’s window simply to avoid line wraps, so rescaling the document is not needed.

Custom: new documents are scaled by an amount determined by the user.

Full screen options

Left/Right full screen margin: controls the amount of horizontal padding around the editable text (the left and right margin on screen), represented as a percentage of the display’s width (33% for each side is the maximum).

Hide ruler: hides the ruler in full screen mode and restores it if necessary upon exiting full screen mode.

Hide toolbar: hides the toolbar in full screen mode and restores it if necessary upon exiting full screen mode.

Use alternate text colors: enables alternate text colors in full screen mode and disables alternate text colors if needed upon exiting full screen mode.

Hide layout view: hides Layout view in full screen mode and restores it upon exit of full screen mode.

Advanced (Document)

Allow change of document background color: reveals a color well in the Font panel which in turn can change the background color of the document. A document's background color will print (unlike the colors of View > Alternate Colors), but it will not print beyond the document's margins.

Respect antialiasing threshold / turn off fine kerning: causes Bean to respect the System Preference setting 'Appearance > Turn off text smoothing for font sizes ... or smaller' (applies upon application restart). While enabling screen fonts can use less system resources, it also disables all fine kerning (that is, character spacing) for every size of text (applies immediately), and so its use is not encouraged.

'Paste Selection...' service adds separator: causes Services > Bean > Paste Selection into Current Bean Document to insert a graphic divider before inserting selected text. Thus, when the service is used repeatedly, different sections of pasted text are separated graphically in the Bean document. (Advanced hint: the divider string itself is stored in defaults.plist under the key prefPasteSelectionDividerString and can be altered by the user.)

'Print Selection...' separates multiple selections: causes a graphic divider to be inserted between multiple text selections before they are printed using File > Print Selection.

Default gutter between columns (in pts): sets the default amount shown in the Format > Columns > Gutter control (when the number of columns is two or more).

Advanced (Interface)

Measurement Units: causes Bean to display measurements (in rulers and controls) using either Metric units, or U.S. units. The Automatic setting will cause Bean to use metric or U.S. units based on the setting System Preferences > International > Formats > Measurement Units.

Restore cursor location when opening documents: causes Bean to restore the last saved location of the blinking text cursor when a document is reopened (rich text documents only). Documents will usually load faster with this option turned off.

Show page numbers in status bar (layout view only): indicates the range of pages visible and the total number of pages in the status bar at the bottom of the window when both layout view and live word count are active.

Show page numbers in layout view: pages in the layout view are numbered (just above and to the left of each page). These numbers do not print.

Show vertical ruler: as it says, so it does. (OS X 10.5+ only)

Suggest filename at first save: (applies immediately) Bean will suggest a filename in the save panel based on the first 40 or so characters of the document. (OS X 10.5+ only)

Advanced (Find/Replace)

Use simple Find/Replace panel: causes Find > Find/Replace... to show the standard OS X text finding Find panel, instead of Bean's 'Advanced' Find panel. Bean's Find panel allows the use of pattern matching (regular expressions), while the simple Find panel does not.

^ and $ recognize newline: (applies immediately) causes the regular expression symbols ^ and $ to recognize embedded newlines in addition to the usual beginning and end of a document. Note that the found text will not include the newline, just text immediately after it ( ^ ) or before it ( $ ).

Dot matches newline: (applies immediately) causes the 'dot' regular expression symbol ( . ) to match newlines as well as the usual any character (except newlines). The found text will include the newline.

Advanced (Notes Mode)

Set font and colors to match selected text: (applies immediately) establishes the text attributes (font name, font size, text color and highlight color) used for notes mode. These attributes are taken from the text at the text cursor in the front-most document when the control is selected.

Use font/size; Use text color; Use highlight color: (applies immediately) select which attributes you wish to apply when notes mode is active.

Add brackets: (applies immediately) causes new notes to be enclosed by square brackets.

Add new paragraph: (applies immediately) causes new notes to create their own paragraph.

Services

HTML/CSS Snippit from Selection: converts the selected text in compatible applications to an HTML snippit with embedded CSS which opens in its own Bean document window. HTML snippits (text, lists, tables, etc.) can be pasted directly into an HTML document.

HTML Snippit from Selection: converts the selected text in compatible applications to an HTML snippit without CSS which opens in its own Bean document window.

New Document Containing Selection: creates a new untitled document containing the selected text (which may be in another application such as a web browser).

Paste ‘Lorem Ipsum’: pastes a paragraph of mock latin text into the editable text of any application. This service was removed from Bean 2.4.2 due to what I believe is a Snow Leopard bug which causes an application to freeze when it attempts to apply a text-transforming service to one of its own documents. Sorry about that, I know how useful it was. (bug report: 7355325)

Paste Selection into Current Bean Document: pastes the selected text from any application into the frontmost open Bean document. To automatically add a divider before each text selection pasted using this service, activate this control: Bean Preferences > Advanced > Document > 'Paste Selection...' service adds separator.

Recover Text from Selected File: recovers plain text contents from corrupted or legacy format files. Select a file in the Finder, then select this service from the Services menu. A new document is created in Bean with a first section containing recovered text (formatting, images, etc. are not recovered), and a second section containing discarded text (usually gibberish). Control characters that can cause Bean to crash are discarded in the process. Use this service to recover text from corrupted Word 97 format (.doc) files, or from legacy format files you can no longer easily open because the applications that created them are no longer available. Note: a company called Dataviz used to sell MacLinkPlus, which could convert between many current and legacy document file formats, but unfortunately this software is now discontinued.