TextEdit has its roots in OPENSTEP, where it was used as kind of a demo application of the text views IIRC. It even came with source code, as did Chess by the way.

So I guess a comparison between TextEdit and Pages doesn't make too much maybe, they're really different things.

• dchest

  today at 11:54 AM

  Source code, published until OS X 10.9: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/TextE...

• mananaysiempre

  today at 11:38 AM

  > TextEdit [...] was used as kind of a demo application of the text views IIRC. even came with source code, as did Chess by the way.

  On the other side of the fence, WordPad initially came with source code as well, and was essentially a demo app for the rich edit control as well as the criminally underused text converters[1].

  [1] https://www.malsmith.net/wincvt/

Also Pages also has a fairly decent print design mode. Sure, it can't compete with something like Indesign in feature parity, but I find it pretty useful to do posters, booklets, flyers and the like. It's free and fairly intuitive to use.

You should be able to create and use templates for TextEdit using the Stationery Pad feature which comes built-in to macOS:

https://support.apple.com/en-ie/guide/mac-help/mchlp1341/mac

• Cockbrand

  today at 12:04 PM

  Stationery Pads are one of the almost criminally underused and well-hidden features that have been around since the Mac OS (pre-OSX) days.

  Another one is Cmd+H for hiding an app. People often minimize the current window to see the next app underneath, while hiding the current app is much more elegant and creates a lot less friction for restoring it later.

  Which of these hidden champions did I forget?

Pages is an underrated Word Processor. It has the lessons of 30 years of development and experimentation of WYSIWYG editors distilled and applied in a tight little package.

• Cockbrand

  today at 12:05 PM

  The same goes for Preview.app - it's a very underrated, super powerful app for PDF editing and lots of other stuff.

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