How to get Mac OSX Finder to preview programming text files that don't have .txt or .text extension?
macos
Solution
There is the Textmate QuickLook plugin which only works with Textmate running.
Pro: Syntax Highlighting Contra: Only with (non-free) Textmate running
Alternatively: QLStephen
QLStephen is an Apple OSX QuickLook plugin that lets you view plain text files without a file extension.
But it works for all plain text files (even with extension).
Pro: Stable and free Contra: No syntax highlighting
Problem
Programming obviously involves lots of text file usage. You often want to see what you did somewhere else in some other program, without loading up that whole program into your current IDE of choice. If I copy a text file from say `fred.cpp` to `fred.cpp.text`, I can view the contents of the file from the Finder's preview. But I don't want to have copy or rename all my development files. In a 2003 (!) post on MacOSHints, there is an instruction to do this `find . -name *.xml -exec SetFile -t TEXT {} ;` (in that case, for *.xml files), but this didn't work for me due to issues with the `exec` command. But in any case, surely there's a better way to do it from the GUI? Either way though: a command-line or a GUI solution would be great, thanks!