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DESCRIPTION
Diamond is a document editor for Mac OS X, minimalist in design yet flexible and very powerful. Although on the surface it presents a unique and highly configurable document window, beneath the surface it is a fully equipped Macintosh application and when editing a document will behave exactly as you expect it to. If your are familiar with editing Rich Text documents in other Mac applications, your are already very familiar with Diamond.
In addition to its own format/extension of .dmd, Diamond reads and writes files in the RTF, RTFD, Text, and MS DOC formats (and more formats are on the way) whether created by Diamond or by other applications, and handles them as any document-based application should, including support for printing, dragging and dropping text, track-pad scrolling, and advanced Apple features such as Expos?, Spotlight, Spaces, and others (for convenience, Diamond's own document format is identical in functionality to RTFD, and can also save text documents with extension.tex for the convenience of those working with the TeX or LaTeX typsetting systems).
Diamond offers complete support for the advanced text & font handling capabilities of Mac OS X, so if you are familiar with editing and styling text in any of the many applications that also implement it (such as TextEdit, Apple Pages, and many others) you will be right at home. Where it differs is in the flexibility of its window and desktop display, allowing you to configure your own unique workspaces tailored to the projects at hand, and ? most significantly ? in the way in which widows scroll horizontally, from column to column, rather than vertically through the entire text of a document. In this behavior it most resembles Amar Sagoo's Tofu, a popular multicolumn text reader but unlike Tofu, Diamond is, as mentioned, a full-featured Rich Text editor as well.
WHAT'S NEW
Version 3.5: Restored the Sparkle framework allowing automatic updates, and pointed it toward the new URL for the (soon-to-be) revised Diamond site. Renamed “Clone Contents” to Clone Document; other minor tweaks and corrections.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.5 or later only
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| Diamond User Reviews (3 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Oct 4 2008 |
RPITCAIRN Lovely in its simplicity. Easy to use and to view on screen. I use a "paper" background to a page and it is very nice. I like the ability to format text. Only additional thing I would like is styling paragraphs so that I could have them, by default, indent and have space between them. I also have Ulysses (not used any more) and Scrivener (very nice program as well) but I find Diamond easy to open and use so use it more. The column format is great and makes working with text more accessible to me. I am very glad it has been shared.
(Version 3.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Sep 4 2008 |
ACHIM2 Nice little editor, all that's been needed for many tasks. What I don't like: if you activate Diamond via the Dock, it always opens a new empty window (fortunately it doesn't do that if you change programs via cmd-tab). And I don't find the horizontal scrolling particularly useful - an option to use standard vertical scrolling would be nice. The page up/down arrows also don't work reliably (often those only adjust the view a few pixels). "Undo" is also unreliable (e.g. the Homogenise feature is only undoable if you're lucky). What's really missing is the stander "Recent files" menu.
(Version 3.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Sep 22 2008 |
GEOFFREYALEXANDER Thanks for the review; Undo has not yet been implemented for a couple commands as you noted; I'm revising the Read Me to note the exceptions; these will be cleaned up in a near-future release. As for the "Recents" menu, I've been working on that on and off for some time; due to severe issues with the underlying Apple Doc system, Diamond docs (no matter what format you try to save them) don't register as saved documents. Hopefully I'll find that solution before my ulcers kill me. Keep tracking updates here and hopefully I can have your issues handled soon.
(Version 3.4) | |
| Aug 5 2008 |
MRSIN Diamond provides the ability, via preferences and other options, to set my work space environment to suit my workflow or better still, the particular way I like to work. By using the main space backdrop, it provides the ability to isolate as much, or as little, as one would like from the writing environment. I also like being able to use color, images or pictures for the document work space, as well as the main space backdrop. I currently use the developer provided “cardStock” image file for the document work space and the “brownPaper” image file for the main space backdrop, this combination works well for my purposes. These image files can be downloaded from the developer’s web site. If you’re so inclined, your own images or pictures can be used for these purposes as well. Diamond loads with the main space backdrop raised, lowering it allows a number of distractions to be, at least temporarily or for the current work session, minimized or eliminated. Another feature of Diamond that appeals to me, admitting it took a little getting used to at first and also mentioned in the program description, is it handles the documents in a horizontal column format, similar to Amar Sagoo’s Tofu for displaying documents in a newspaper style horizontal column format. The developer has also provided the ability to export your work to Apple Mail, Sticky Note or Entourage which, for me, has come in handy a number of times. Of course select all, copy & paste would probably also work. I rely on Diamond daily for a variety of tasks and it has always been up to the challenge. Diamond is actively developed and I have found the developer to be extremely responsive to questions, suggestions, requests and recommendations (constructive criticism). I’ve just scratched the surface of Diamond with this review, some things, like Diamond really need to be experienced, so download Diamond 3.1, give it a spin and see if it fits into your workflow.
(Version 3.1) | |
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