Aquamacs 2 review

Aquamacs 2 is an advanced programmable text editor for Mac OS X. It?€s a lot more than that, though: it?€s two ambitious software projects, one wrapped inside the other.

The first is Emacs, the venerable command line editor that was first developed by Richard Stallman in 1976. It?€s now at version 23 and forms the core functionality inside Aquamacs.

Wrapped around this core is code that takes that command line complexity and simplifies it. There are two direct consequences of this: first, software that some might find intimidating as a command line application becomes friendlier and more approachable; second, with the system-wide hooks built into Cocoa, Aquamacs can be a better Mac OS X citizen, behaving well with other applications and with the system itself.

It?€s important to remember that Aquamacs is an amalgam of these two things. It offers two experiences: the less technically inclined can stick with the simple environment they understand, while the advanced user has access to all of Emacs?€ power if they need it. Most of the time though, that layer is kept hidden from view.

Aquamacs menus are modal. Switch to a different text editing mode (such as HTML, JavaScript, PHP or even a dedicated Wikipedia mode) and the menu options will change accordingly. In HTML mode, for example, there?€s not one but two different versions of the HTML menu: one for experts, which includes everything you can think of and a few extras, and one for complete beginners, which has just eight commands.

No amount of shiny wrappings can make the default Emacs preferences section ?€" known as the Customisations buffer ?€" less intimidating for beginners. However, Aquamacs does a good job of pulling out the most important preferences and putting them within easy reach via the Options menu. This is where you?€ll find quick access to basic essentials such as fonts and colours. Again, it?€s modal and will behave slightly differently depending on your current editing conditions.

There are many small changes that make things a little more comfortable for newcomers. For example, word-wrap is now switched on by default and is easy to find in the Options menu.

Everything behaves better now ?€" and looks better, too. Simple things such as opening and saving files work like you?€d expect them to. Aquamacs now even supports the system-wide spellcheck, and can be set as the default editor for various file types.

Printing is also improved, because the Cocoa parts of Aquamacs know how to talk to the rest of your printing system. Generally, the look of the Cocoa wrappings is vastly improved. New toolbar icons are large, bright, friendly and descriptive of their function. Things that used to look as if they?€d been ported from Linux now look like they?€ve been purpose-built for Mac OS X. The modal menus are kept as minimal as possible.

Aquamacs is an impressive project and the result is an excellent all-purpose editor for Mac users. But who is it for? Not experts, who will already be using Emacs (or one of its rivals) on the command line. It?€s well suited for newcomers to programming and web development, and is an excellent free alternative editor for people who would rather not spend money on some of the equally powerful commercial alternatives.