Ted 2.5, an easy to run and easy to install Rich Text Processor for 
Linux/Unix released under the Gnu Public License.

Utrecht, July 31, 1999

Announcement
------------
Mark de Does released version 2.5 his wysiwyg rich text processor Ted 
for Linux under the GNU/General Public License. With this release he 
wants to contribute to the personal productivity of Linux users. The 
software shows that appealing Linux software that is easy to use and 
easy to install indeed exists. Ted is available for download from 
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/editors/ted. The Ted web site is 
http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted.

Description of Ted
------------------
About two years ago Ted was started as an operating system accessory 
like Wordpad for Linux. Compatibility with Macintosh and Windows word 
processing applications played an important role in the design of Ted. 
Every document produced by Ted is a legal something.rtf file for Word 
without any loss of formatting or information. In the other direction, 
compatibility with Word is not perfect, but a major part of the 
functionality of Word is supported. Although from the point of view of 
technical elegance, RTF is far from ideal, the fact that RTF files can 
be exchanged between so many word processing programs was conclusive 
in the choice of a file format.

History and motivation
----------------------
Mark de Does is a professional software developer working on more 
computer platforms than just Windows. He was annoyed by the fact that 
every time he had to make a presentable text, he had to boot Windows 
to type and format it. About two years ago, he decided that the only 
way to provide what he was so dearly missing, was to build a simple 
word processor himself. The primary source of inspiration was the 
'Edit' application under NextStep. The project required much more work 
than he ever expected. Ted contains some nice pieces of craftsmanship. 
For instance the use of finite automata for spell checking and image 
rendering code that uses a single loop for scaling, anti-aliasing, and 
dithering. However the main ingredients of Ted are hard work and 
perseverance.

In Marks opinion, the force of Microsoft lies in the simple and 
appealing applications that run on the Microsoft operating systems. 
While the rest of the world is discussing principles and quarreling 
about standards and architecture, Microsoft builds applications that 
people can use. Ted is an attempt to make something easy and useful 
for Linux.

Versions
--------
The first version of Ted that was widely available was version 2.0. It 
dates from November 1998. Since then, improved versions have appeared 
every few month. The most important changes since Ted 2.4 are the 
following:

·	The layout of the text on the screen is no longer independent 
	of the PostScript layout. Whenever possible, the PostScript 
	layout is used on screen. The change incorporates bug fixes in 
	the handling of tabs in printing, and support for right 
	aligned and centered text.
·	Selections ending at the end of a line were occasionally 
	displayed in a silly manner.
·	The PostScript Ted saves to file contains so-called pdfmarks 
	to keep the links and bookmarks when they are converted to the 
	Acrobat PDF format.
·	Use the new German orthography in the spell checker, thanks 
	to Joerg Jacke.
·	Added a Polish spell checker.

Future developments of Ted will include the support of more languages 
and scripts, more features to control the vertical layout of the text, 
and probably a move from the Motif widget set to GTK. 

Features
--------

Teds features include the following:

·	Wysiwyg rich text editing. You can use all fonts for which 
	you have a .afm file and that are available as an X11 font. Ted
	 is delivered with .afm files for the Adobe fonts that are 
	available on Motif systems and in all postscript printers: 
	Times, Helvetica, Courier and Symbol. Other fonts can be added 
	with the normal X11 procedure. Font properties like bold and 
	italic are supported; so is underlining.
·	Ted uses Microsoft RTF as its native file format. Microsoft 
	Word and Wordpad can read files produced by Ted. Usually Ted 
	can read .rtf files from Microsoft Word and Wordpad. As Ted 
	does not support all features of Word, some formatting 
	information might be lost.
·	In line bitmap pictures.
·	PostScript printing. Saved PostScript files contain pdfmarks 
	to keep links when they are converted to Acrobat PDF.
·	Spelling checking in twelve Latin languages.
·	Directly mailing documents from Ted.
·	Cut/Copy/Paste, also with other applications.
·	Find/Replace.
·	Ruler: Paragraph indentation, Indentation of first line, 
	Tabs. Copy/Paste Ruler.
·	Page breaks.
·	Tables: Insert Table, Row, Column. Changing column width of 
	tables with their ruler.
·	Symbols and accented characters are fully supported.
·	Hyperlinks and bookmarks.
·	Saving a document in HTML format.