plain text files get messed up when editing in mac

[Nvidiaguy07]

Im my dropbox account, i save text files as notes.

I can change these notes on either my pc, and also right from my cell phone in dropbox.

Whenever i edit one on mac, it doesnt register when i press return, and the result is just one long line. This is the case for creating new txt files in mac, and also editing existing files.

Im using textedit. Anyway to fix this?

 

[Patranus]

Never had that problem when moving documents created in TextEdit (or NotePad) and gone back and forth.

Edit it in Terminal with pico or vi and see if the problem persists. If it does, then its a problem with DropBox.

 

[Zaap]

The problem is with basic text editors on Windows, vs. files saved with Unix-based text editors. Specifically, Notepad has the carriage return problem.

Other notepad replacements (Notepad2, Notepad++, Akelpad, etc. have a similar problem where they'll show all the messy Unix formatting in files from TextEdit that are encoded with UTF-8 -the default. (You can get around this in TextEdit by changing the Preferences/Plain Text File Encoding to use UTF-16, Mac Roman, or Windows Latin. Still won't work in Notepad, but the files will work in the replacements listed.)

A good solution is a full-featured Word Processor, or just use WordPad.

Right click your text files and open with WordPad: you shouldn't see the problem.

You can also right-click on any .txt file's properties in Windows, and change the "Opens with:" default application to WordPad or another app.

(Also of course, it helps to make sure you use Word Wrap in any of these apps.

Basically kick Notepad to the curb, it sucks anyway.

 

[mugs]

I don't think I've ever seen that issue myself, but you might try using TextWrangler on your Mac. It's a free, (more) full-featured text editor that will recognize whether you're editing a file with Windows line endings (\r\n) or Unix line endings (\n) or old style Mac line endings (\r) and edit/save accordingly.

You can also change which line endings you want to use for a file you're editing, so if you create a file on your Mac you can give it Windows line endings.