As any Web maven knows, content is king. But it’s not always in the fancy graphics, photos, or video. Most of the work we do on our Macs calls for manipulating text, that is, typing words. We present eight text-savvy Mac apps that make your time at the keyboard more productive--enjoyable even.

Spend enough time browsing tech blogs, and you might get the idea that multimedia is the Mac’s main squeeze. Not so. Despite Mac users’ hearty appetite for audio and video, the Mac’s default currency is still pretty lo-fi. Plain text dominates both online and off, whether you’re sending an email, surfing the Web, or adding an event to iCal. Beyond your favorite word processor, a rich list of time-saving text editors and utilities is waiting to automate, clean, and transform your keystrokes, saving you time and helping you get more done in a day of blogging, emailing, writing, and generally aiding in organization and productivity.

As a platform, the Mac enjoys best-of-breed applications in several areas, and nowhere more so than text editing. Unlike word processors, text editors are code-crunching workhorses that specialize in analyzing, converting, and rejiggering huge amounts of text. And unlike most word processors--you know who you are, Microsoft Word--a text editor won’t ever make you feel like an idiot.

Here, we introduce you to the best text apps for the Mac. Text utilities aren’t sexy, but neither are most computer keyboards, and we can’t work without them.

BBEdit 9.0

Still the Best

The granddaddy of pro-level text editors for the Mac, BBEdit 9.0 deserves the most praise for its scriptability and speed in searching and replacing text snippets in large groups of files. Those highlights aside, there’s little that the application can’t do. We use it every day to strip quotes from email chains, straighten curly quotes, and capitalize titles. Productivity gurus should enjoy the ability to assign hot-keys to all menu items, create complicated find-and-replace routines, and quickly compare differences between files. Bloggers and Web designers should be especially impressed with the extensive menus for HTML markup, as well as the ability to edit files stored on an FTP server. As a pro-level application, BBEdit’s price tag is hefty--but so is its feature list.

BBEdit's multifile find-and-replace is the best in the business.

BBEdit 9.0
Bare Bones Software
www.barebones.com
$125

TextMate

Bundles of Joy

Compared to BBEdit, TextMate is the upstart of Mac text editors, but it has quickly gathered a loyal following. For programmers, the app’s most obvious benefit is its automatic code completion, a feature BBEdit sadly lacks. (Open a pair of quotation marks, for instance, and TextMate automatically inserts the closing pair after the cursor.)

TextMate's bundles provide the software with limitless expandability and an enthusiastic user base of writers and coders.

For everyone else, choosing between TextMate and BBEdit is a question of design philosophy. Where BBEdit largely expects you to define your own keyboard shortcuts for menu items, TextMate ships with them predefined. Where BBEdit lets you choose individual colors for your editing window’s background and text, TextMate provides a list of prebuilt themes (although you can also create your own). The heart of TextMate’s magic (and expandability) is its bundles, which extend the software for different purposes. There are bundles for a variety of programming and scripting languages: markdown, textile, HTML, and more. And if you don’t find a bundle for your preferred writing or coding syntax in the default installation, a Google search is likely to turn one up.

TextMate
MacroMates
www.macromates.com
$57

TextWrangler

Free, as in Beer

Though technically BBEdit’s little brother, TextWrangler packs plenty of editing power for all but the most demanding HTML coders. Indeed, all of the BBEdit’s text-transforming tools are available, as well as multifile find-and-replace and basic scriptability.

Converting your text to ASCII nips compatibility issues in the bud.

If none of TextWrangler’s other features interests you, this tip alone is worth the download: For foolproof compatibility, load a document in TextWranger and select Text > Convert to ASCII before emailing it or posting it to the Web. ASCII text is as close to universal compatibility as you’ll find in the digital world.

TextWrangler
Bare Bones Software
www.barebones.com
Free

SubEthaEdit

Really Real-Time Collaboration

SubEthaEdit offers all the essential features of the other three editors, but it sets itself apart with a knockout specialty act: real-time, multiauthor collaborative editing. Dragging a buddy icon from iChat’s Bonjour list onto a document automatically invites that person to edit the document with you. Once the invitation is accepted, your collaborator’s changes appear on your screen as he types them, and vice versa. Each author’s changes are highlighted in a different color for easier review.

SubEthaEdit's real-time collaborative editing is so cool, it's a little spooky.

Drag-and-drop collaboration requires all participants to be on the same subnet (which usually means within the same home or office network), but collaborators can connect over the Web with some additional configuration.

SubEthaEdit
The Coding Monkeys
www.codingmonkeys.de
$38