Tofu 3.0

Tofu started as an experiment 20 years ago. It was based on a hypothesis that long lines of text and vertical scrolling made it challenging to read on your computer. Arranging text in columns seemed like an elegant way to address both the movement and the line length.

I was amazed at how well the solution was received. Of all the apps I’ve made, Tofu has been the most popular. It’s also the one people missed the most after I announced in 2014 that I wasn’t planning to update it again, especially when the last version became incompatible with macOS releases beyond 10.14.

As requests for an update kept continuing even into 2023, I finally decided to update Tofu to run on modern Macs. I also took the opportunity to make many improvements to usability and layout, increase performance and fix bugs. The result is Tofu 3.0.

This version was built for maximum compatibility: it runs on macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) through 13 (Ventura). For any major future updates, I’ll probably support a smaller set of the most recent macOS versions, as this could allow taking advantage of newer technologies. In any case, there should now be no Mac since Tofu’s initial release that can’t run it.

Beyond compatibility, here are some highlights of what else is new (you can see a full list of changes in the Read me file):

• Content is laid out faster and requires less memory.
• Scrolling has been improved, as well as how the scroll position is remembered and restored.
• In fullscreen mode, columns adjust to the width of the screen.
• Display of PDF contents has been improved.
• Tofu now uses modern app and window behaviour, such as autosave and automatic termination.
• Empty windows show actions and instructions for getting started.
• The Settings/Preferences panel was redesigned.

You can download Tofu 3.0 here. Feel free to send any feedback to contact@amarsagoo.info. And sign up to my mailing list to make sure you don’t miss future releases.

Here’s to another 20 years.