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BBEdit, the preferred text editor of most Mac users who do dev work in text-based environments, is fairly cheap

One better: TextWranger -- basically BBEdit without a few things -- is now free.

Speaking of shareware, it's probably worth mentioning that right now, OS X has an incredible selection of shareware available.

Seriously, there are so many astoundingly good programs out there for free/cheap for solving all those pesky annoyances. Independent developers are pumping out titles rivaling the quality of software produced by big companies. It's really a testament to the APIs put out by Apple.

Just to name a few,
quicksilver - data access tool. one of the most innovative programs i've ever used.
CSSEdit - simplistic stylesheet creator/editor. allows idiots to produce valid CSS
Transmit - wonderful FTP client (my only gripe is that this should've been intergrated into the OS itself)
Acquisition - one of the best p2p clients known to man.
Adium X - the power of gaim + the beauty of OSX = priceless
BBEditBBEdit - so it's a bit more well-known than the others here, but is still a marvelous editor. a bit expensive and out of my budget. I use jEdit instead (which is cross-platform, BTW)

just to name a few..... (feel free to add more)

# Cooledit for Mac OS? And I mean really as good (or better?) I am DJ, I also make songs myself using the multitrack technology of it; I also want to be able to process my soundfiles with compression and effects wherever needed.
Finale, Logic, Reason to name a few, or may be GarageBand? Want some free/shareware? Look here on Apple or Versiontracker

# Instead of Office, Openoffice?
Actually I found Office 2004 quite good, but yes, OpenOffice will do.

# good ssh programs like securecrt? (I love the program, will be tabbed in next version)... It's convenience ...
/usr/bin/ssh :-)

# good editors like Editplus ? (It just works - always - have an old license and it still works perfect...
XCode, Eclipse [sun.com], or the famous BBEdit.

# does it work good with windows sharing (netbios) ? (I know about Samba but sometimes got probs with it - its not exactly point-and-click there unless using Webmin or such ..
All built-in, just browse to your Windows PC/server and double click to mount the shared volume, not even need to map a network drive.

# Needs to work 24/7, no overheating issues like my Compaq EVO N1000v laptop (which needs to be issued back to Compaq because of failing parts - 5th time!!) and Compaq finds it normal?
May be don't shut it down?
Just never lock it inside a closed cabinet :-)

# Stuff like Paintshop Pro (Like it more over photoshop ; less bloated and faster)?
I like Photoshop, may be it is bloat, but hey, it is FAST!

# good and easy desktop player like winamp ? (RIP)
iTunes, man, iTunes!

# Can I turn off automatic updates?
Yes, one mouse click away in an obvious place (System Preferences -> Software Update)

# I am accustomed with Slackware, NetBSD and Solaris. Is OS X as maintainable as Slackware? Everything through the prompt using Bash?
Yes and more, there is the Apple Script, a global scripting system to let you control every OS X compliant app, and you can do it via the shell, too.

They actually were going to go with this slogan, but they were worried about being sued by Bare Bones.

I've wondered this myself, especially given the "embrace and extend" mentality of Microsoft's past, but ultimatley I'm convinced that Mono on OS X is a good thing for the same reason Perl or Apache on OS X is a good thing. Like it or not, .Net seems not to suck. Like it or not, there seems to be a burgeoning open source community embracing .Net.

For instance, I'm an Actionscript developer. A project I've taken great interest in is ASDocGen, which aims to bring JavaDoc-like functionality to Actionscript. This project is written in C# with the express purpose of being multi-platform via Mono.

In the end, it makes OS X a richer platform to develop on. Rather than be limited to a few tools to do my job as a web developer, I have a vast array of options, from open source web servers to GUI text editors to Photoshop -- I can even open Word docs that clients send me without a problem. Having another tool in my aresenal only makes me a better developer.

Apple has a very strong, committed developer base. They will continue to push great products for OS X. The ability to run some .Net apps will only make OS X better.

I don't install very often because I use a Mac running OSX. When i get a new machine though, here are my top ten:

1) Menu Meters -- I couldn't live without it
2) SQLGrinder -- great DB programming tool
3) SubEthaEdit -- great editor, supports collaborative development via Rendezvous
4) Little Snitch -- lets me know when a program tries to go out on the network on its own.
5) BBEdit -- the ultimate editor. How does anyone ever live without it?
6) Timbuktu -- great for managing all those Macs and PCs remotely.

I didn't post above, but I currently use both XP and 2000 daily. Make your own decisions but I also use OS X daily and it's far and away the most pleasant working environment I've encountered to date. That doesn't mean it's perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but that's not the point now, is it.

As for "OS 9," um, who's talking about OS 9?

If you want Unix, install Linux... FreeBSD... SuSE... Debian... Lycoris... Lindows... There are choices in the Windows world.

Well, by the time I've finished clicking through the (Continue) buttons in an OS X install I've managed to install both the entire GUI environment and the entire Unix OS. I can also install other Unix systems on Mac hardware, but frankly I've got everything I need right here.

I don't need to install anything else except Logic Pro 6, Ableton Live, MetaSynth, ArtMatic Pro, MetaTrack, Voyager, VTrack, Absynth, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniDiskSweeper, Studiometry, FileMakerPro, Adobe Creative Suite, LaunchBar, MySQL, Perl 5.8.3, Fink, Plone, Keynote, BBEdit, FastTrack Schedule Pro, Sonasphere, Toast 6, ZBrush, and a few more but I'll get to those tomorrow.

I run all these (plus my email, internet, contacts management, calendaring, etc) in the same operating environment; not an emulation shell, not after dual-booting, but in the very same operating system and simultaneously.

To top it all off OS X comes with a full set of developer tools, documentation and optimization utilities, plus Cocoa+Obj-C is a match made in heaven.

There's no need to pay Apple for a decent Unix experience.

Well, I believe there is. I enjoy the ability to support quality whether it's a film, a restaurant, a music venue, a book, clothing, my neighborhood, an artist, etc. every single day.

The hardware is just a hunk of material until you've discovered/designed an interface with which to use it. Solely on a base consumer level, I'm very happy to pay Apple for what is, in daily practice, a superior computer operating system. From the level of both a technology consultant and a media creator, the solution is very simple.

OS X is a very impressive "Holy Grail" for all my current activities. Strap me in because I'm ready to get to work.

I must find some pico users to have flamewars with over that one...

There is no longer any BBEdit Lite.

It is no longer supported, but it is still available, and it still qualifies for the "BBEdit 7.1 Cross-Upgrade from BBEdit Lite, Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver (3.0 or later)" price of BBEdit. Shrug.

I just find it hard to see why someone would switch from something else.

And I find it hard to see why people like the New York Yankees. Shrug.

As a really amusing side note, BBEdit, by Bare Bones Software, a really great programmer's tool for the Mac, has a ROT13 tool...

When you select text and use the tool, a warning pops up on the screen:

"Warning: This operation is not undoable."

-T

• Built-in OS X Mail.app
  
• Microsoft Entourage (think Outlook/Exchange)
  
• Eudora
  
• Mailsmith (hard core)
  
• Mutt
  
• Pine
  
• Elm...
  

...for BBEdit. Because It Doesn't Suck. Someone needs to build a workalike for BBEdit that runs on Linux, because Bluefish, Quanta and Screem all are wannabe HomeSite clones. I mean, HomeSite is nice, but BBEdit just...rocks, y'know?

...for BBEdit. Because It Doesn't Suck. Someone needs to build a workalike for BBEdit that runs on Linux, because Bluefish, Quanta and Screem all are wannabe HomeSite clones. I mean, HomeSite is nice, but BBEdit just...rocks, y'know?

It really and truly doesn't suck (note company slogan if you go to the site), and it's a mite bit more intuitive than vi.

(That said, once someone explained that vi was intended to be that way (rather than the result of some hostile foreign nation or malicious artificial intelligence), it actually started to make sense to me and became usable.)

--Kimota!

On my Mac I use BBEdit almost exclusively now for note-taking and the occasional creative writing I do. It's perfectly suited (and in fact designed) for coding, but it's stability, speed, and simplicity make it ideal for any task.

Now I only fire up Word when professors insist on pretty formatting for my assignments. As I take more and more CS classes, this is less of an issue.

I personally use BBEdit for all of my drafts when I'm editing from the GUI. It's quick, mostly lightweight and keeps backups of each successive save. No silly fonts or formatting to get in the way...just turn on Soft Wrap and go. Spell check is supported but optional so no annoying red squigglies to interrupt the creative flow.

The added benefit to plaintext is that it doesn't matter where I'm outputting to. Copying and pasting to a Blog or Web forum. Saving for a database, CMS or Word document. Doesn't matter. Plus saving local copies of all my Web postings allows me to keep track of how many times I've put my foot in my mouth. ;)

There have been a number of good responses to my original post, so far, and fortunately none of them (yet) simply say, âoeStop whining!â, which was the prevalent response for people advocating an upgrade fee for Jaguar from Puma.

I do see a few people relying on âstraw manâ(TM) variants of what I said, though, so let me interject one thing to head off further remarks along that thread. For those of you who are making arguments that it is something that should be paid for: listen, Iâ(TM)m not opposing that statement. Apple puts way too much stuff in it for it to be free. (Although sometimes companies are just generous.)

Iâ(TM)m merely stating that there should be a slightly lessened amount for people who are not buying it new. Is Apple really going to get financially hurt from giving a discount of at least $30 (preferably $40-45) to existing users? I honestly donâ(TM)t think so, and in fact, I think itâ(TM)d help. Stuff over $100 is a much harder sell than stuff below $100 ⦠even if the upgrade fee brought it down to $99.95, itâ(TM)d probably sell disproportionately better.

And I very much suspect that if they continue this full-price scheme, theyâ(TM)re going to find their percentages of OS adoption will suffer in a few versions. Itâ(TM)s definitely not a foregone conclusion that Iâ(TM)ll be buying Panther, and if they pull this same stunt again with Ocelot, Bobcat, and PuddyTat ⦠well, my opinion (entirely that of a layman) is that their sales will suffer.

There have been a number of good responses to my original post, so far, and fortunately none of them (yet) simply say, âoeStop whining!â, which was the prevalent response for people advocating an upgrade fee for Jaguar from Puma.

I do see a few people relying on âstraw manâ(TM) variants of what I said, though, so let me interject one thing to head off further remarks along that thread. For those of you who are making arguments that it is something that should be paid for: listen, Iâ(TM)m not opposing that statement. Apple puts way too much stuff in it for it to be free. (Although sometimes companies are just generous.)

Iâ(TM)m merely stating that there should be a slightly lessened amount for people who are not buying it new. Is Apple really going to get financially hurt from giving a discount of at least $30 (preferably $40-45) to existing users? I honestly donâ(TM)t think so, and in fact, I think itâ(TM)d help. Stuff over $100 is a much harder sell than stuff below $100 ⦠even if the upgrade fee brought it down to $99.95, itâ(TM)d probably sell disproportionately better.

And I very much suspect that if they continue this full-price scheme, theyâ(TM)re going to find their percentages of OS adoption will suffer in a few versions. Itâ(TM)s definitely not a foregone conclusion that Iâ(TM)ll be buying Panther, and if they pull this same stunt again with Ocelot, Bobcat, and PuddyTat ⦠well, my opinion (entirely that of a layman) is that their sales will suffer.

There have been a number of good responses to my original post, so far, and fortunately none of them (yet) simply say, âoeStop whining!â, which was the prevalent response for people advocating an upgrade fee for Jaguar from Puma.

I do see a few people relying on âstraw manâ(TM) variants of what I said, though, so let me interject one thing to head off further remarks along that thread. For those of you who are making arguments that it is something that should be paid for: listen, Iâ(TM)m not opposing that statement. Apple puts way too much stuff in it for it to be free. (Although sometimes companies are just generous.)

Iâ(TM)m merely stating that there should be a slightly lessened amount for people who are not buying it new. Is Apple really going to get financially hurt from giving a discount of at least $30 (preferably $40-45) to existing users? I honestly donâ(TM)t think so, and in fact, I think itâ(TM)d help. Stuff over $100 is a much harder sell than stuff below $100 ⦠even if the upgrade fee brought it down to $99.95, itâ(TM)d probably sell disproportionately better.

And I very much suspect that if they continue this full-price scheme, theyâ(TM)re going to find their percentages of OS adoption will suffer in a few versions. Itâ(TM)s definitely not a foregone conclusion that Iâ(TM)ll be buying Panther, and if they pull this same stunt again with Ocelot, Bobcat, and PuddyTat ⦠well, my opinion (entirely that of a layman) is that their sales will suffer.

BBEdit BBEdit BBEdit!

Always friend and often savior.

Amen.

Although, the BBEdit Anthology is a bit crazy.

If you don't practice writing, you'll get screwed when it comes to the 1.5hr essay-based final (and maybe multiple during the course of the same day).

So you're sitting at the test, trying to put the answers down on paper, and your hand starts cramping up. Not to mention that you have to write slower than you normally do, so that it's actually legible for the teacher to grade. And your spelling sucks, as you've gotten so dependant upon spell check.

Some people forget about the features in a pad. And although the teacher may put all of his powerpoint slides online, it's the teacher who writes the tests, so pay attention to him, not the slides.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/vs_ Lite.shtml

It's also stuck on Version 6.1 apparently.

The full version of BBEdit offers quite a lot over BBEdit Lite (which is not much more than a plain text editor). See BBEdit Feature List for a real list of features, but suffice to say BBEdit has enough to be a real coding environment (so long as auto-completion is not your bread and butter).

As for BBEdit vs. vim, they really are two very different pieces of software. vim is quite a lot more powerful, and is infinitely more configurable. However, I find BBEdit offers a much easier environment to work in. Forgetting a command never involves looking through a help file or manpage, and for light jobs its simple enough for my mother to use.

Also, BBEdit has always been the best text editor with a "Mac experience" (standard UI, file handing, etc). Without a cleaned up interface, vim and emacs are second class citizens in much of the Mac world, despite being much more powerful text editors. This alone was enough to make it a worthwhile pruchase for me (though I only paid the academic price).

First, this is off topic, as is commonly associated with HTML, not HTTP, which this guide is about.

Second, has never been in HTML. Netscape supported it, but it's never made it to the HTML standard, just like tag from IE. (See the Bare Bones Guide to HTML (not related to Bare Bones Software)

Bare Bones has been doing this for years, which is why I knew to look in the first place.

Last year, they announced the Personal Analog Device (PAD). 2001, I can't recall and it isn't online anymore. In 2000, BB stated that they'd bought Fenway Park. Lime iMacs run BBEdit faster, according to the 1999 Press Release! 1998 saw the announcement of BB's first hardware, the Text Accelerator Component Kit (TACK) Board for PCI.

I've got a lot of respect for a company with a history for joking around.

Bare Bones has been doing this for years, which is why I knew to look in the first place.

Last year, they announced the Personal Analog Device (PAD). 2001, I can't recall and it isn't online anymore. In 2000, BB stated that they'd bought Fenway Park. Lime iMacs run BBEdit faster, according to the 1999 Press Release! 1998 saw the announcement of BB's first hardware, the Text Accelerator Component Kit (TACK) Board for PCI.

I've got a lot of respect for a company with a history for joking around.

Bare Bones has been doing this for years, which is why I knew to look in the first place.

Last year, they announced the Personal Analog Device (PAD). 2001, I can't recall and it isn't online anymore. In 2000, BB stated that they'd bought Fenway Park. Lime iMacs run BBEdit faster, according to the 1999 Press Release! 1998 saw the announcement of BB's first hardware, the Text Accelerator Component Kit (TACK) Board for PCI.

I've got a lot of respect for a company with a history for joking around.

Bare Bones has been doing this for years, which is why I knew to look in the first place.

Last year, they announced the Personal Analog Device (PAD). 2001, I can't recall and it isn't online anymore. In 2000, BB stated that they'd bought Fenway Park. Lime iMacs run BBEdit faster, according to the 1999 Press Release! 1998 saw the announcement of BB's first hardware, the Text Accelerator Component Kit (TACK) Board for PCI.

I've got a lot of respect for a company with a history for joking around.

Too bad they pulled Lite though. If you can still get it, try it, it's awesome.

TextWrangler is a tweener that's not all that practical. The problem boils down to the fact that BBEdit Lite is free, BBEdit is worth the money if you need an UltraEdit equivalent on the Mac, and the in-between niches are already fairly well taken up by other free alternatives. Luckily for BareBones, I think they just have to pick out some bits of BBEdit and they can "release" TextWrangler more or less for free. It's not like they're really out anything for releasing this, and it brings the flagship a little more exposure (and highlights some of its lesser known features).

Most of the features (which can be found listed in comparison to BBEdit Lite here) aren't things you'll need in a true text editor. I mean come on, how much code do you hack that's in Unicode? Rather, of the people that do hack code, how many of *them* need Unicode? And if you're hacking Unicode and need spellcheck (ie, not coding at all), well, you're better off (if only b/c you saved $50) just using TextEdit (Apple's free text/rtf editor) anyway.

The feature of TextWrangler I like the most is "Optional Emacs keybinding support". Heh. If you want Emacs keybinding, I think I can find something that'll do that in an even more Emacs-like fashion.

If you need a powerful text editor that's Mac friendly, shell out for BBEdit. I just can't see there being much middle ground. But again, from BareBones point of view, they're out next to nothing and get to have all the coverage of a "brand new text editor".

Also, TextWrangler != BBEdit Lite. Different things. BBEdit Lite had a lot of the software development features of BBEdit. TextWrangler doesn't have those...

After e-mailing Bare Bones about the lack of BBEdit Lite, he pointed out that there's a demo version of TextWrangler, with the standard 30-day trial period. Now, I've been using BBEdit Lite for well more than 30 days, and I'm probably going to get the full version soon, but I doubt after only 30 days I would've had enough use of it to buy a pay version.

After e-mailing Bare Bones about the lack of BBEdit Lite, he pointed out that there's a demo version of TextWrangler, with the standard 30-day trial period. Now, I've been using BBEdit Lite for well more than 30 days, and I'm probably going to get the full version soon, but I doubt after only 30 days I would've had enough use of it to buy a pay version.

You paid a discounted price. TextWrangler might have discounted prices at some point, too. But full retail is $179 vs. $49. Go look.

Also, TextWrangler != BBEdit Lite. Different things. BBEdit Lite had a lot of the software development features of BBEdit. TextWrangler doesn't have those, but it does have all the text editing features of BBEdit 7 that BBEdit Lite does not have. They are both subsets of BBEdit, but different subsets.

And, of course, to complain that a company is no longer giving something away for free is pretty stupid on its face. Boo hoo.

It is no more. It is an ex-editor.

You're so right. No one writes software for the Mac.

-T

If Qualcomm were to offer a Linux port of Eudora, I'd be hard pressed to think of a reason not to switch to a Linux desktop. I've tried Evolution; it's too much like Outlook. Eudora isn't perfect (in particular, I need more sophisticated filtering abilities), but I've been using it for ten years, so only something spectacularly more powerful would make me switch. (I've only used two email programs in my life, the first was unix Berkeley mail, the second was Eudora.)

The only other application I use constantly is bbedit, but I suppose I could learn to love vim or emacs. Web browsing is already handled quite well by Mozilla and its derivatives.

I'm ready, even eager, to switch, as soon as the software is ready. Until then, MacOS X.

I have One of these devices, and I find it never lets me down at meetings. The handwriting recognition is really good too. Portable too.

The Dock is a truly inovative and powerful application-launching *and* context-switching all-in-one metaphore: Hold the ctrl key while clicking on a running app's icon (or use the right mouse button) (yes OS X natively supports pretty much all two-button USB mice). Lately i'm trying to further maximize my desktop real estate by putting it on the right side of the screen, turning off magnification, making it very small, and always leaving it on. i had it at its default position before, worked pretty well too, so we'll see how that goes.

Having multiple terminal windows opened with tcsh, and, sporadically, with bash, allows me to use all the utilities i like, such as find, sed, awk, grep, xargs, vi, emacs and even ... pico. heh. Those of you who have tried to get a development environment set-up with tomcat while fooling around with classpaths must be intimately familiar with how GAY and RETARDED the DOS shell is, and while cygwin is a very nice tool, any time there needs to be interactions between windows OS and cygwin layers, dealing with 'cygpath' is still highly gay.

For those of you familiar with BareBones Software's BBEdit, one of the Macintosh Platform's most old-school text-editor/code-authoring software (i still have my BBEdit, it doesn't suck t-shirt), it comes with a command-line executable called "bbedit" that gets installed with the app, and you can use it to open files from the shell:

find . -path "*some/path*" -name "*.html"" |xargs bbedit

incredibly cool.

Anyway, there are a ZILLION ways you can customize OS X to work better for you, check out sites such as macosxhints.com and of course, Fink.

Of course, you should have Apple's Developer Tools installed, which is a CD that comes with your OS X package.

The bottom-line is, once you install Developer Tools, OS X comes out-of-the-box equipped with a slew of geek power tools, with a *all* the unix utilities you are accustomed to, plus a slew of application development IDEs and utilities, such as Project Builder, MallocDebug, ThreadViewer. Beyond that, you can easily install additional unix tools such as X-Windows, Gnome, KDE, Gimp via Fink. I've got those running on my TiBook 400mhz 384MB RAM.

To further customize your working environment, the finder's "favorites" (heart icon on a finder window toolbar) are also highly useful, as you can quickly make any folder or drive or shortcut a "favortie", which will be listed in any dialog box that asks you to save or open a file.

So like ... how is OS X frustrating to you?

Looking at the extensive feature list of BBEdit, it's kinda ironic that it's produced by Bare Bones Software...

Bare Bones re-released their announcement about their entry into the PDA market with their new Personal Analog Device, or PAD. The Bare Bones PAD uses the strong content encryption algorithm known as "Chicken Scratch" which renders the input unreadable to all except the PAD's rightful owner, without relying on the cumbersome key-and-passphrase systems of existing encryption technologies. There are two configurations available, the PAD 150 and the PAD 300. The PAD 150 has storage for 150 pages of data. The 300 doubles that.

Best text editor: BBedit

"It doesn't suck"

Another nice thing is plugging your mac on any network, hit the "connect" menu and instantly see:

• all the samba shares on your network
• all the apple shares on your network
• all the unix nfs shares on your network

find ./code/java/net -name "*Factory*java" | xargs bbedit
bbedit *.xml

Vim is also available as a native OS X application.

Many more open-source *nix-flavored packages can be easily installed via Fink, they already have well over 600 packages. I've got X11, Gnome and Gimp running in OS X on my old 400mhz TiBook.

If you ask me, such a set-up beats the *crap* out of using cygwin in windows. It also beats running linux on a laptop.

Oh ... one more thing. Aside from CPU clock speed considerations (as in, you spec two laptops with the fastest cpu available for each vendor, knowing that *yes* pentiums will give you slightly more bang), if you are comparison-shopping for a dependable high-end laptop to do serious work, if you add to a PC laptop all the features that come standard on Apple powerbooks, you'll see that both systems come at about the same price. Oh and the PC laptop will be thicker and heavier. If they are lighter it means they're missing a cd/dvd/rw combo drive. I'm not sure about the Porsche one.

Hey i'm not a zealot. I used macs for years, at work and at home, then i used windows NT on some 500mhz P3 dell laptop at work which i then upgraded to windoz 2k, it served its purpose for a while, cygwin was, after all, a very good compromise ... Until Mac OS 10.1 came out, i no-longer needed to compromise and i switched. And it has been fun ever since.

* That doesn't mean using Dreamweaver or any other GUI HTML design software. Real HTML-ers write it by hand. Real Men use vi from what I hear but I like BBEdit for UNIX.

Sometimes this is a good thing (when you want to get out a unique document very quickly) and sometimes it isn't (when people with no training in typesetting are sending out memos with four different fonts and underlined text). This semester I've forced myself to write all my papers in BBEdit and then set them in InDesign, and I must say that while it adds a few minutes to the process, by preventing yourself from getting lazy you get much better looking and consistent documents.

BBEdit from Bare Bones faces such an issue. Their solution is to allow users to remap Command-H to whichever they prefer. See their FAQ about Command-H.

The last line of /etc/httpd/httpd.conf in the default OS X.1.5 installation reads:

Include /private/etc/httpd/users

one /private/etc/httpd/users file being added for each user which enable you to serve anything you put in the Sites folder in your personal home directory. These are served in turn as http://your.domain.name/~username/page.html or the prevailing DirectoryIndex file to you (me) locally as http://127.0.0.1/~ynotds/

The main config file includes a script alias to run any CGI scripts in /library/webserver/CGI-Executables

They have put one Perl test script in that directory which you can view locally at http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/test-cgi, or at least you can after you have done a

sudo chmod 775 /library/webserver/CGI-Executables/*

from your Terminal window.

From there, it isn't a lot of work to tweak your config files and uncomment AddHandler cgi-script .cgi to get scripts running throughout your site.

Of course the real point to setting up your Mac as a fully functional server is that you get to do all your editing in BBEdit which not only does syntax checking and colour coding on the fly of HTML, Perl, JavaScript and more, but also can directly run Perl in an open document window, enabling you to all manner of extrancting and reporting on the fly.

Now I just need to get brave enough to install MySQL.

Close. The best HTML editor, ever, is BareBone's BBEdit. It Doesn't Suck(TM)

Its also one of the best Text Editors ever made, if not the best ever made.

Here's an example of the versatility offered by the Powerbook/iBook/OS X combination. I can run my shell scripts, PHP and Perl while retaining a GREAT UI and use my favorite editor, BBedit. I can graphically monitor my remote Unix systems and database server WITH X11 forwarding (I have XDarwin and Gnome running alongside the Aqua UI). And, I've added virtual desktops to the Aqua desktop. It's a good development platform.

http://ems.music.uiuc.edu/p/pics//screen2.png

Howsabout some Stuff That Matters? Jeez... at least timothy posts amusingly trollish crap. pudge... well really, does anyone give a fuck about minor point releases of scripting languages used by the three people worldwide who found Python too difficult to get their heads round?

Actually, AppleScript isn't really easier than Python. Even for non-programmers, I would be willing to bet that most people find Python easier to learn and more intuitive -- AppleScript has an "English-like" syntax (as its marketing says), and English is actually one of the most inconsistent and hardest languages to learn (for those who are not raised speaking it). Why? Because there are so many different ways to say the exact same thing in English, not just synonyms but the grammatical structure itself -- very unsystematic. I find that the same thing is true of AppleScript. This is often leveraged against Perl by those who would criticize it as being difficult to learn (in comparison with PHP or Python, for instance).

Whereas Perl and AppleScript provide "more than one way to do it", Tim Peters praises Python saying There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Anyone who's written an AppleScript can tell you this is definitely not true of AppleScript.

Besides that, AS hooks nicely with scriptable apps on the Mac. It even lets you call shell scripts and other languages' scripts directly. I don't use AS much, but one of my favorite little tools is a script I incorporated into my text editor ( BBEdit ) -- I highlight a function name and hit F8, and my web browser pops open and serves me the man page for that function (using php.net's awesome URL-based function lookup.

No, none of this really matters for non-Mac users, but then why are you reading apple.slashdot.org if you're not interested? Besides, as you can see from the release number, it's not like AppleScript has been updated much in its 14+ years of existence. For Script-savvy Mac users, this is "news that matters".