14 DAY TRIAL // The "Mac-friendly" version of the renowned Emacs text editing software has reached version 1.4 this week. The guys at The Aquamacs Project have included many new features in Aquamacs Emacs 1.4, among them the ability to group documents in "tabs."
For those who aren't very familiar with Aquamacs Emacs, the software is a version of Emacs that runs as a standard OS X application. But this is just the beginning. Aquamacs is adapted to Mac's popular "Aqua" UI (user interface). While earlier versions of Emacs had a pretty cluttered and complex UI, Aquamacs "behaves the way Mac users expect," the developers note. Not only does the app look and feel like a native Mac app, but it uses normal OS X keyboard commands, as well as the extended Emacs ones, while installing the software is also quite easy.
So while Aquamacs is still a real GNU Emacs "with all the ergonomy and extensibility that this world-class editor is famous for," it performs, feels and looks much smoother than the original Emacs.
Aquamacs Emacs 1.4 includes quite a number of improvements. Users upgrading to the latest version today will be happy to learn that Aquamacs now sports a multi-tabbed interface similar to Safari, which makes switching between open files faster and more intuitive. Full screen editing is also available now, allowing you to focus just on editing your files without distraction from other applications.
Aquamacs no longer creates backup files by default, which means less clutter in your files. The text editing software now uses standard "unified" toolbar, with improved icons, for greater ease-of-use. Version 1.4 also improves LaTeX support and numerous text-search features. Last, users can check for program updates from the application menu.
Aquamacs supports most programming languages including C, C++, Python, Ruby, Perl, Java, AppleScript, and Lisp, but also text and markup formats like HTML or XML.
Aquamacs Emacs is a spin-off distribution maintained by David Reitter and team. It is a free piece of Mac software and open-source, it is a Universal Binary, which means both PPC and Intel-based machines can run it, and needs Tiger or up to run.
