Bare Bones Releases TextWrangler

Bare Bones has released TextWrangler, a new editor that fills the need for users who want the power of BBEdit, but don't do software development. It is available for Mac OS v9.1 and Mac OS X v10.1.5 and up, and retails for $49, while BBEdit sells for $179. It has the core text-editing functionality of BBEdit, but not the software development features (except a few, for integration with Project Builder). Seems like a nice tool to have around if you don't have BBEdit, or for using on machines that you don't do development on.

Comments

I've never used BBEdit.

[gnuadam]

What does it have that gvim or emacs doesn't that is worth $150?

And don't tell me to RTFA, because I have, and I still don't have an answer to this. From the people that use BBEdit or are planning on using this new lite version, why?

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[CableModemSniper]

Famlirity. BBEdit is the defacto Mac text editor for coders, IIRC. its like asking what does windows have that Linux doesn't for 200 dollars. Hmm maybe I shouldn't have used that example :)

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[greenhide]

Ease of use.

I've never used gvim, but I have tried to use vim and I find that it just isn't intuitive. Except for more complicated features, such as language recognition and learning RegEx, I've never had to look at the manual to figure out how to open, edit, save, copy, paste, etc in BBEdit.

When I tried using vim, I instantly had to look up a manual to figure out how to do standard things like open and save files. Granted, it may have been the particular port I was using, but it seemed to me non-intuitive.

I've used emacs in the past, but unless I'm mistaken it uses yanking and unyanking to cut and copy text, instead of the cut and paste I'm more familiar with. And again, I'm needing to look in the manual to figure out how to do extremely standard things, such as quiting the damn program.

BBEdit has won huge support mostly because it has strictly adhered to Mac guidelines for user interfaces. This means that it pretty much will behave across the board exactly like I expect any Mac application to behave.

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[capmilk]

What does it have that gvim or emacs doesn't that is worth $150?

Ease of use. :)

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Draoi]

Furthermore, it 'feels' a lot like the editor which comes with the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE, which many MacOS developers will be familiar with. It also integrates well with cvs (you can do checkins and checkouts from within BBEdit) and you can do CodeWarrior compiles without leaving the editor. Not to mention HTML markup support as well as compliance checking and syntax colouring for just about any language, blah ... plugin support ... blah ... applescripting ... you get the picture!

(Do I sound like a rabid fan? :-) )

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty cool. I doubt you care, but here's the short version of why vi(m) is the way it is.

It was designed that all of the functionality could be achieved from the home row of the keyboard, without chording (ex: ctrl-lshift-F3). It was designed as a 'multi mode' 'screen' editor. Multi mode means that there are 2 or more 'modes'. In vi, there's command, and input mode. In input, you type and it appears. In command, each of the keys do commands (ie: w takes you to the beginning of the next word, % goes to the matching bracket/paren, etc). A 'screen' editor (as opposed to a line editor like ed or ex) shows you more of the context around what your editing. Line editors only show you the line.

Vi's not for those who like pretty, intuitive, and easy. Freely admitted. Vi's a power user's editor with a rather steep learning curve. I believe that it's paid off for me. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff with it in 2 or three keystrokes (for example: replace everything from the curser to the next instance of the string 'the': c/the).

That said, I have gvim on this XP box, simply because it can deal with multi megabyte text files (usually log files) in a way that doesn't suck (unlike notepad or wordpad). There are probably other editors that do the same, but I don't know what they are.

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried gvim? Other than the look and feel, and maybe the applescripting, gvim can do all that.

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Draoi]

No, I haven't. I'm a habitual vi user & it's my editor of choice when in the terminal app. I'm guessing gvim is Gnu VI iMproved, right?

For many folks, not having AppleScript would be a biggie. Sure, vi can run in batch mode, but it's not as intuitive as AppleScript. Imagine the average Mac user using a text editor to edit a text editor's batch script - oh, the horror! :-)

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[transient]

Other than the look and feel, and maybe the applescripting

These are two of the most important features in BBEdit. To be honest, BBEdit doesn't offer much that Emacs doesn't, in terms of functionality. But I didn't buy a $3k titanium laptop so I could run an un-mouseable text editor in a terminal window (nor did I buy it so that I could install X and xemacs, so that's not a solution). BBEdit feels at home on the Mac; to me, that is its most compelling feature.

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[gnuadam]

its like asking what does windows have that Linux doesn't for 200 dollars.

And that's my point. You can buy an *operating system* for about what they're charging. I paid $79 for jaguar. I mean all jokes about emacs taking over the world aside, it is *just* a text editor, right?

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[WestonB]

FWIW, the current version of Emacs can be compiled as a native Carbon application. Full mouse support, no terminal or X11 required. Check out http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[transient]

Yeah, I tried it just the other day. There's just something about ctl-x ctl-s on a Mac that I just can't deal with. Don't get me wrong, I love emacs; it's always been my editor of choice on *nix systems. But my attachment to command-s predates my first emacs encounter by several years ;-)

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[0x0d0a]

One thing that emacs can definitely do is handle rebinding...

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[jcstauffer]

For emacs goodness and aqua transparency, you could always try this

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Llywelyn]

1) As others have mentioned, ease of use. This software is *dramatically* easier to use.

2) It will run under MacOS X without an X11, xemacs won't and anything that runs in a terminal is automatically a few marks down on the ease-of-use scale. (I like the ability to click where I want my cursor).

3) It is a lot prettier and conforms to the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines.

4) Did I mention ease of use? Figuring out how to do things with BBedit is much easier than figuring out how to do things with emacs.

5) The defaults aren't as strict. The defaults on emacs can be very strict as to the way it will structure things for you, BBEdit will let you do what you like without any configuration.

6) I don't even know if emacs can do the gremlin-blasting and ASCIIification as nicely or as quickly as BBEdit can.

7) The find-replace &c functions in BBEdit are easier to use (back to this same argument again) and much more intuitive to work with.

8) There is no screen splitting, nor any real need for it.

9) It feels faster. Not sure if it actually is, though I wouldn't doubt it since it runs natively under MacOS X while emacs goes through LISP (Lots of Insanely Stupid Parentheses).

10) You can have the most powerful piece of software in the world, but if it is difficult to use or requires specialized knowledge, the only way it is going to get used is if the user has a pressing need for something that it offers (see MatLab or Mathematica). For a text editor, it doesn't matter to me if emacs will slice cheese and make fries if this other text editor will do everything I need it to (which does not include a cheese grater) more intuitively and simply coming out of the box.

Yes, many of us consider that worth paying for :-)

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[CottonEyedJoe]

gtk Vi mproved. gtk "gimp style" look and feel. I'm like you, I use vi in terminals. But I use PB for cocoa coding, vim mostly for posix and occasional general text editing. I dont mind having X11 installed.

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the 'g' in gvim stands for GUI. It's not just gtk, there's also Motif and I believe another I don't recall.

There is a full Aqua Carbon Mac OS X version Here

It works with the OS X Dock, the mouse works as it does in X11.

I have Vim.app installed for OS X, I pathed in the /Applications/Vim/Vim.app/MacOS/vim to have the console version of Vim from the same executable. I also installed an additional copy for X11 under /usr/local/vim

I actually left the BSD version of Vi alone. I could have setup Vim to run in vi-compatible mode but I chose to just use the BSD one that's included. This allows for the possibility of another user expecting the actual BSD version of vi.

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can split the screen by moving your mouse over the grey bar above the scrollbar on the right, and then holding and dragging down. :-)

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[Ruzty]

Several of your problems with vim are solved in Gvim. The graphical version has pulldown menus for common tasks instead of having to memorize keystrokes. You will be faster if you know the keystrokes but not hindered by using the menus. There is an OSX native (Aqua) Gvim port as well which does not require use of the rootless X server to run.

I use Gvim for most of my coding as I do not require moving files around or CVS integration. VI comes naturally to me as I learned it so long ago. It's kind of the same reason I am a Mac user, because my P's bought one for me about 20 years ago and that's what I'm used to...

-Rusty

Re:I've never used BBEdit.

[jovlinger]

nah!

you bought a $3K machine so you could spend more money buying an editor that has regexps AS A FEATURE! Something I take for granted is touted as a major checkmark. That is a warning sign, or at least a sign of incompatible world-view.

But seriously, if you like the mouse, then yes, emacs is not your friend.

As for applescript, I'm suprised that OS-X ports of emacs don't have some foreign-function call interface that lets them script and be scripted by applescript.

Different [key]strokes for different folks.

But they discontinued BBEditLite

[Montreal]

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

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[XnetZERO]

I just downloaded BBeditLite from VersionTracker. Perhaps their FTP servers haven't gotten word. Though to be honest, I don't really see the point of BBeditLite. After having used the full version for so long, I can't do without its features and I'm only a casual user.

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I think that's a huge mistake, honestly. I used BBEdit Lite for a couple of years before I finally decided to bite the bullet and pay for BBEdit. It taught me how to use BBEdit generally (it's a very intuitive program overall, but it does have its quirks) and, more importantly, convinced me that a text editor might be worth paying for -- "If the free version does all this, how much more cool stuff will I get if I pay for it?" TextWrangler may be cheaper, but not enough cheaper to create a bunch of "casual" users who will eventually pay for the full version, which was what BBEdit Lite did.

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[XnetZERO]

Good points... I was thinking of it in the context of someone who has been using the full version and downgrading to the Lite version...

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[NaugaHunter]

That editor would "voom" if you put 4 million volts through it. It's bleeding demised. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If they hadn't nailed it to the server it'd be pushing up the daisies. It's curled up its tootsies, it's shuffled off this mortal coil. It's brung down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible! Vis a Vis the metabolic processes, he's had his lot! All statements to the effect that this editor is still a going concern are from now on inoperative!

Hopefully the replacement isn't a talking slug.

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[wtmcgee]

http://macintosh.ozbytes.net.au/adnload/203923_819 77.html

you can still snag it from here while it lasts!

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[greenhide]

That editor would "voom" if you put 4 million volts through it.

*sigh*

That editor *wouldn't* "voom", you mean.

And BBEdit Lite's not dead, it's just resting.

Re:But they discontinued BBEditLite

[Montreal]

BBEdit Lite? Lovely plumage!

BBEdit vs PB

[zephc]

I have a copy of BBEdit Lite, but there must be a huge discrepincy between it and the full version, because while it has great search fascilities, it doesn't even have syntax coloring, which I have grown to like since my days using CodeWarrior.

Project Builder has everything *I* need for coding. And whenever I do stuff at the command line, I tend to just use emacs. BBEdit Lite is only kept around as a quick(ish) text viewer. And I dont see myself forking over 180$ for a text editor anyway, when PB is free.

Re:BBEdit vs PB

[Golias]

I have a copy of BBEdit Lite, but there must be a huge discrepincy between it and the full version, because while it has great search fascilities, it doesn't even have syntax coloring, which I have grown to like since my days using CodeWarrior.

There is.

And yes, the full fersion has syntax coloring.

Whew!

[eunos94]

Damn, good thing I downloaded it yesterday. Fried my TiBook this weekend, had to reinstall everything. Guess in the nick of time too!

"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[3-State Bit]

REALLY??
I mean, I know lots, and lots of Geeks use BBEdit (to the point that people say it's good form to install [I suppose the free version of] it even on systems you won't be using it yourself on), but I never imagined it was so expansively great that someone would shell out that much money. It's a text editor! (Isn't it?)

Can I hear from anyone who uses BBEdit -- what does it hvae that makes it so amazing?

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[Golias]

When I bought BBEdit for OS X from the Apple Store last summer, it was $89.

It seems to me that the story here is not that they are splitting their product. It already was split. BBEdit was $89, and BBEdit Lite was free.

Now it appears they have released a $49 app to replace the free one, and nearly doubled the price of the full version.

The headline should have been "BBEdit decides to put the squeeze on their customers, announces it as a produict release."

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[3-State Bit]

okay. But my question was why people pay so much for text editing anyway. Tell me about why you payed $89 for a text editor... (I'm not saying it is or isn't worth it -- I just want to know how you use it).

Thanks, Golias.

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[Alderete]

When I bought BBEdit for OS X from the Apple Store last summer, it was $89. It seems to me that the story here is not that they are splitting their product. It already was split. BBEdit was $89, and BBEdit Lite was free. Now it appears they have released a $49 app to replace the free one, and nearly doubled the price of the full version.

Are you sure you weren't paying for an upgrade, or a competitive sidegrade, or some other special introductory offer? BBEdit has been its current price for a while...and worth every penny, IMHO.

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[Alderete]

Can I hear from anyone who uses BBEdit -- what does it hvae that makes it so amazing?

I have been using (and paying for) BBEdit since version 3.something. It is the one piece of Mac OS software for which I order the upgrade first, and look at the new features second. It is one of my favorite pieces of software of all time. I've paid far more than $179 for my copies and upgrades, and consider it money well spent.

If you are a happy vi[m] or emacs user, don't bother to check BBEdit out. You won't like it, for the same reason that, while I can get around, I hate using vi (and never touch emacs). It's a different philosophy of application design.

BBEdit is a Mac OS application first. It conforms to all of the usual HI guidelines, but goes beyond that to provide an extremely well-designed, high-efficiency interface -- for Mac OS users. (vi folks will no doubt compare keystrokes to do the same task; apples to oranges, Mac OS folks don't want to have separate modes for commands vs. input. It goes back to the application philosophy.)

In spite of being Mac OS first, it provides nearly all of the tools and features you'd want in a text editor. Text munging, search-and-replace, grep manipulation, selection of columns, HTML-specific commands, glossaries, syntax highlighting, etc. I've yet to find its equal in a GUI-oriented application. (My favorite on Windows is TextPad, but it's a distant second.)

If you're a vi man, skip BBEdit. But if you're a Mac OS person, or aspiring to be so, you should give it a whirl.

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[pudge]

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.

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY worth every penny? Please answer your grandparent post!

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[analog_line]

There is something hard to explain about BBEdit. It just seems to make text manipulation...fun. It's got that je ne sais qua. Possessing probably the best catch phrase in software, "It Doesn't Suck," it really doesn't. The tools it gives you are an HTML writer's dream. Macromedia, way back at the first release of Dreamweaver for the Mac, originally just gave you a full BBEdit license in with the deal, and BBEdit integration is still in there today. It looks nice. Everything is well laid out. Feature-for-feature, vi and emacs almost certainly would pound it to the dirt, but the GUI versions of both of those editors are ugly and act like the kludges of terminal mode applications that they are. I like vi in terminal mode, but in a window manager, resizing a terminal and getting the font to a different size just for text editing is an unecessary hassle. BBEdit fits into the MacOS GUI like it was born there, even in Aqua. It's completely scriptable with AppleScript, to the point of providing the AppleScript menu even if you don't enable it in general. I bought a full version of BBEdit 6.5 (first version with native OSX support) when I got my iBook after a long absence from the Mac, and I use it for everything possible. I don't use Office X, or AppleWorks, or Text Edit (which does RTF, not text) for my word processing. Just BBEdit. I try to find ways to use it, just because I enjoy using it. I even bought Mailsmith so I could have a BBEdit interface to my e-mail, but I had to stop using it because aside from the editing functions, it's just not there yet as far as the networking/speed is concerned (but that's another discussion). I haven't thought

As someone who started out on the Mac, BBEdit was one of the most amazing utilities I had ever seen back in '97 when I first looked at BBEdit Lite. It was fast. You didn't have to go through huge text files by hand deleting billions of windows or unix line breaks, because BBEdit could figure it out. (No scripting this operation didn't always work. I tried, oh gods, how I tried...the tools I had available didn't cut the mustard) It looked nice, as opposed to the horrendous TeachText and SimpleText. You could open almost any file and BBEdit would just open it, and you could mess around (whether you should or not). For some of us old Mac guys, I admit, we can tend to get very zealous about BBEdit, because of all that. Hell, when I dropped the Mac at home because I decided I wanted to play games, the one thing I missed more than anything else from the Mac was my BBEdit Lite.

If the concept of a text editor GUI galls or amuses you, BBEdit isn't for you. Go use vi or emacs and be happy. But if you don't find the concept silly, or you've used other GUI text editors, you owe it to yourself to at least take a look at BBEdit.

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[Mikey-San]

TextEdit can do plain text.

Have a look under the Format menu.

-/-
Mikey-San

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[Golias]

I went back and looked. BBEdit may be $179 now, but it was usually about $120 then, depending on where you bought it.

The differences between TextWrangler & BBE Lite makes sense. Still, I find it kind of baffling that they are dropping Lite. It was the perfect "gateway drug" to get people to buy the full app. (At least, that strategy worked on me...)

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[pudge]

Well, yeah, but you can still download it and use it in demo mode. That's something. And BBEdit Lite is still available (from Bare Bones FTP server, no less ... grab it while you can :-).

Anyway, I assume, pending evidence to the contrary, that BBEdit knows what is best for its market, or what it needs to do to remain in business, or whatever. Good luck to them. I think $49 is a bit steep; I think $30 or $35 would be great. But they'll find out!

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[greenhide]

Please see above re: comments on ease of use.

Basically, it is the best text editor out there that *acts* like a Mac program.

BTW, I want to go on record as saying that I just downloaded emacs for OS X, carbonized and aquified and everything, and it looks little different than emacs running within a terminal window.

However, since I'm increasingly using Linux (our shop is moving from almost all Windows/IIS servers to Linux/Apache), I'll probably take the time at some point to teach myself emacs (*never* vi. I hate that text editor, and I doubt that anything will ever happen to change my feelings about it).

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[phyxeld]

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

I haven't used TextWrangler myself yet, but from reading this I think you're mistaken.

"TextWrangler 1.0: All the functionality of BBEdit Lite, plus..."

I'm bitter because BBEdit 6.5 came out as a for-pay upgrade ($19 upgrade price) right after I bought 6.0. I've been putting off buying 6.5, and now I'm glad I did, because I see 7.0 is out already. I think asking customers to pay for updates more than once a year is bad form. Then again, bare bones is one of the few commercial software companies who's software I'm willing to pay for at all (yarr, I used to be a pirate, but now I'm just using more Free software). Since TextWrangler is essentially them saying "our previously free lite editor now costs money", I can't say this betters my opinion of bare bones any :(

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[nullard]

Why BBEdit rocks. Back in the day, I loved BBEdit's MPW integration. Since MPW is no more, I'll stick to those features that are still relevant. I haven't used it in years since I don't work at the same place, but this is what I remember:

Edit over FTP. Great for fixing problems on websites where the host won't give you shell access.

Works with perl. I hear that it works with the perl in OS X now. Before It worked with MacPerl for OS 9. It gives you a real perl IDE with syntax checking and everything.

Regex search and replace. Need I say more?

Unlimited undos - before they became common.

Built in diff. Now I use Apple's FileMerge, but BBEdit's was damned good.

Built in HTML reference form many tags and all ascii entities.

HTML validator.

AppleScriptability.

HTTP download. There was a pluggin that let you doiwnload data from any http url into a text file, headers and all.

Most importantly, I work faster in BBEdit than any other editor. I fell better working. I don't feel like I'm fighting the editor just to get my work done. I use Emacs and JEdit for similar reasons, but for just getting my work done, neither holds a candle to BBEdit. I've requested a Mac at work. One of the main reasons was so that so that I could code in BBEdit again.

If I get the cash, I'll buy it. Yes it is worth it.

Re:"while BBEdit sells for $179"

[kalidasa]

The upgrade price directly from 6.0 to 6.5 was a lot more than $19, iirc. More like $49, I think, which is the price of the upgrade from 6.5 to 7.0. And many of us bought the program when there was an upgrade price from BBEdit Lite (free) to BBEdit ($79, or so).

Advertising as News

[V. Mole]

I hope Slashdot got paid for this advertisement. I mean, it's one thing to have a little info-post about a unusual or useful free project, but this is pretty much a straight-up ad for a commercial product. Why this one, and not any of the other umpteen-jillion "press releases" that are published everyday?

Re:Advertising as News

[Golias]

Why this one, and not any of the other umpteen-jillion "press releases" that are published everyday?

Well, they didnt' put this on the /. front page; they put it in the Apple section. To Apple users this is news. Anything that happens with Toast, BBEdit or Photoshop is going to be of interest to 90% of the Mac users out there.

That said, this "paid advertisement" is not good news. The news that BBEdit Lite might be going away to be replaced by a $49 product that nobody will want, while the cost of BBEdit itself has shot through the roof, makes this a potentially dark day for Mac users.

Great! Now I can finally pay them.

[dpbsmith]

I've used and loved the freeware BBEdit Lite for, five? six? years now. It's just a perfect little gem. Everything I needed and nothing I didn't need. Opens big files beautifully. Fast, efficient, no bloat.

When I emailed them to mention that it had some issues running under Classic in OS X, they informed me that there WAS an OS X native version of BBEdit Lite, and that in fact it had gone through two major revs since I downloaded it. I hadn't even known, because BBEdit Lite was so satisfactory that I never got around to checking for updates!

It was at about that time that I tried to get them to accept a completely voluntary $30 donation for BBEdit Lite. I really didn't want or need the features of the full BBEdit, but I did feel that I morally "owed" them for BBEdit Lite.

They refused to accept my payment!

So, while I am very disappointed that they have withdrawn BBEdit Lite, nevertheless I will happily purchase TextWrangler, because I think it's above time I paid them back for all the use I've gotten out of BBEdit Lite over all these years.

No, I'm not shilling for them, and, yes, I'm perfectly sincere.

BBEdit Lite was just plain NICE, and I hope TextWrangler continues that tradition.

Mixed feelings...

[singularity]

I bought the full version of BBEdit back when they were having specils for upgrades from BBEditLite for something like $69. This was under OS 8, so it was a version or so ago.

When I moved to OS X Bare Bones was requiring me to purchase another (discounted) full version, so I stuck with BBEditLite under OS X.

Lite was doing about 95% of what I wanted. I missed some of the features of the full version, but definitely not enough to pay $100+ to get them. The few features I was looking for could be replaced by other methods (Although admittedly not nearly as well as having them integrated into BBEdit). I kept wondering why I saw the full version being updated regularly and BBEditLite not getting updates (In the past BareBones was good about releasing bug fixes for the Lite version within a day or two of the full version).

Now I am not sure if I am going to shell out $50 for TextWrangler. That would mean that I would be paying a total of over $100 to BareBones in the past few years and getting fewer features than their full product.

I am leaning towards doing it, though, since I know the BareBones people to be good people. It is often I will see one of their developers posting on comp.sys.mac.* to answer questions about BBEdit and MailSmith (their mail client).

They also sent me a nice T-shirt many years ago for building my web site with BBEdit...

Ahh, the joys of the dot.bomb age...

vs TextEdit?

[mkelley]

How does this stand up to the free TextEdit bundled in Jaguar? I have spell check and a couple of other features that really take the place of something like this.

Re:vs TextEdit?

[pudge]

That's like asking how Photoshop compares to Preview. Read the link that shows the features.

Re:vs TextEdit?

[mkelley]

No it's completely different. They're very similar, in their functonality. It's a text editor and so is textwrangler. There is no editing capability in Preview.

Re:vs TextEdit?

[Llywelyn]

Um, No.

Pay attention now, I'm going to look at their feature chart (something you obviously have never done).

I will show a list of things that TextWranger has that TextEdit does not and never will (this is not a complete list, this is just a few things that matter):

0) Default to text, rather than rich text.
1) regexp searching (!!!!!!)
2) Multi-file search
3) Plug-In Support
4) Sorting
5) Zap Gremlins
6) Entab/Detab
7) Save in a variety of file formats.
8) Unicode
9) Will save with Unix line-breaks (if you do *any* kind of shell scripting or hand-modifying files, this is a /necessity/.)
10) Auto-indent
11) SYNTAX COLORING
12) Can function as an external editor w/ project builder.
13) Emacs Keybinding (your choice)
14) Will open any file up to 2GB in size (RAM restricting, of course)
15) View directory listings.
16) FTP SUPPORT!

If these things aren't important to you, then don't buy it--no one is forcing you to.

In the meantime, however, this is like comparing Preview to Photoshop--not that one of them can't edit, its that one of them is *so much more powerful* than the other one.

Next time, RTFM.

Re:vs TextEdit?

[mkelley]

take that manual and go fuck yourself, ok. I can read and I was asking a basic question. jesus christ.

JEdit fills the void!

[caulfield]

Just my $0.02, but JEdit fills the gap that BBEdit Lite leaves, and has all of the (and more) capabilities of BBEdit Lite with the added bonus of being cross-platform.

Re:JEdit fills the void!

[Anonymous Coward]

jedit... yeah right.

let's see...

slow...check!
ugly interface...check!
open sores...check!

Re:JEdit fills the void!

[utopyr]

I agree, except that I wouldn't restrict the claim to BBEdit Lite. Just started using a Mac in November, had heard that BBEdit was the text editor, & I love me some text editors. Downloaded the trial, it was fine, but I do as much XML as anything these days. I'm _real_ hooked on being able to reference a DTD & get a pull-down menu of valid/required elements. JEdit for me, so that I can have the same editor on the 3 platforms I use. Well, that, and SciTE, especially since I've had some memory problems with the last couple of pre-s with JEdit. Love me some SciTE, too.

Re:JEdit fills the void!

[shayborg]

Interestingly enough, I use jEdit happily on my (400 MHz G3) Mac, but find it too slow to be usable on my (XP 2100) PC. So I find myself with two great editors available for the Mac (though I don't own BBEdit, it is available), and none I know of for Windows ... Which sucks really bad right now since my Mac is temporarily out of commission.

-- shayborg

Help with bbedit registration?

[commodoresloat]

First, I love BBEdit, and have loyally paid for it + upgrades since version 3.0. I recently had to reinstall my system (OS X) and I reinstalled BBEdit and I made 2 accounts, an admin and a user. I put my serial # in for BBEdit under the admin account (version 7.0.1) and then when I logged in as the user, my normal account, it asked me for the number again. But it will not accept the same serial number! Do I have to reinstall everything to use it? I want access to it from both accounts and I am the same person in both cases (and it's on the same computer). Do they expect me to pay twice or am I doing something moronic here?

Re:Help with bbedit registration?

[NSObject]

The serial number is stored in /Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/BBEdit Preferences/BBEdit Serial Number

You can toss that file and experiment again, or perhaps copy that file to the corresponding place in each user folder.

Re: Emacs for OS X

[__david__]

But I didn't buy a $3k titanium laptop so I could run an un-mouseable text editor in a terminal window (nor did I buy it so that I could install X and xemacs, so that's not a solution).

Well then install the native Mac OS X Emacs (binaries can be found here). Using emacs in a terminal window is for chumps.

-David

Shorter learning curve

[0x0d0a]

BBEdit has a much shorter learning curve than emacs. OTOH, it's also much less powerful.

[sigh] I remember when Bare Bones was a small company that made inexpensive products, and didn't try all this price discrimination crap.

Re:Shorter learning curve

[Anonymous Coward]

BBEdit has a much shorter learning curve than emacs. OTOH, it's also much less powerful.

ROTFL! That's a funny joke!

Re:Shorter learning curve

[kalidasa]

BBEdit has a much shorter learning curve than emacs. OTOH, it's also much less powerful.

If you take Lisp out of emacs, BBEdit is only somewhat less powerful. For everyday text editor users, BBEdit is a nice way to go.

Still, I think it needs more features to compete with the editors I use on the Windows platform; which is a shame. Give BBEdit the kind of Unicode support found in TextEdit (in other words, thoroughly Cocoaize it) and include a nice little workspace pane like the one in HTML-Kit, and I'd never use Windows again.

Too many $$$

[0x0d0a]

Urgh...too much money.

To be honest, BBEdit doesn't offer much that Emacs doesn't, in terms of functionality.

The Pro version used to ship with a nice GUI HTML table editor. Other than that, I'd say it's pretty handily outfeatured by emacs.

But I didn't buy a $3k titanium laptop so I could run an un-mouseable text editor in a terminal window (nor did I buy it so that I could install X and xemacs, so that's not a solution).

$3k for the laptop and MacOS (admittedly, the OS is factored into that cost), and then $150 to run an editor that isn't as flexible when you could be running xemacs in an OS that uses X as its native UI (And I used BBEdit for years before using emacs :-) )? Urrrggghhh...so expensive.

BBEdit is the king of text editors, here's why

[fiftyvolts]

I've been programming since I could touch type, and I must say that BBEdit is an awesome text editor. First I used the Lite version. It held me over for a long time, mostly I was dissapointed at the lack of syntax highlighting. When Mac OS X came out I started to use emacs. I've used it so much the commands are hard wired into my head. I realized that no matter how good I got with my terminal emacs I needed a GUI to squeeze even more productivity out of my time developing. So I bought BBEdit. I have no regrets. All the emacs commands work in BBEdit, it has syntax highlighting, auto-indent, its own mini FTP and File Browser. The Shell worksheets are a huge help for when I am doing large scale rennovations of my system. I've even found some of the third party plugins helpful. I was most impressed with the HTML tools that it came with; I can churn out style sheets twice as fast as I used to using BBEdit. It's much better than the built in editor for PB.

If Bare Bones is putting forth the effort to make Text Wrangler a lower cost alternative to BBEdit then I must say it will be worth every last penny.

bizarre

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, from their web page comparing the two, they say that TextWrangler has "Syntax coloring and function navigation for ANSI C, C++, and Objective-C", but only BBEdit has that for web stuff like HTML, etc.

Isn't that a little backward? You'd think the little brother would have the HTML stuff and only the big brother would have the stuff for "programming".

I also wonder about the name - shouldn't it have been something more similar to BBEdit? Like babyBBEdit? Or BabyBB? Maybe (BB^2)Edit? Or just go with all lowercase - bbedit. And on a related note, what do the two B's in 'BB' (the little metal projectiles) stand for, anyway?

And why am I in this handbasket?

Re:bizarre

[Elwood P Dowd]

Project Builder and Vi/Emacs are priced at $0. They are widely accepted by the mac dev community. Mac based web developers, on the other hand, all need the workflow, ease of use, and power of BBEdit.

A cheaper HTML BBEdit would cannibalize their sales. Most of the price conscious developers have already switched to emacs, vi, and project builder. This may stem the tide a bit, or even draw back some folks that prefer the BBEdit interface.

What do I know? I code VB for a living, so: Nothing.

Re: bizarre

[holygoat]

Just in case someone misunderstands, to quote from the page:

" All the functionality of TextWrangler, plus..."

So BBEdit has everything.

As to why to limit it to programming stuff: programmers are cheap bastards, web designers aren't. At least, that's what I expect (being a programmer!). I also would assume a text editor to have C/C++ highlighting - but not necessarily HTML highlighting.

BB stands for 'Bare Bones', the name of the company.

Seconded

[metamatic]

I thought that was weird too. ProjectBuilder satisfies my code-editing needs, but I could use an editor with HTML syntax checking.

Yet BareBones have decided to go after ProjectBuilder, and leave the under-$100 HTML editor market completely.

Huh?!

Oh well, I'm happy enough with vim. BBEdit is better, but it's not $180 better.

Try harder with emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs is free. I'm talking about cost, not freedom, although that is important too. You can use emacs (or xemacs) in gui mode on Mac OS/X, you just have to spend some time getting the rootless X working.

After that everything you mention is there. Want FTP ? Use the efs file system browser, and while you are at it switch to ssh from ftp (ftp works also of course). There are several html modes you can pick from. The downside is that each of these can involve several hours of screwing around and getting flamed by emacs zealots on newsgroups.

But you are saving $150. Think about how that would look to your clients or customers, especially in this economy. Why should I go to more trouble to get you money (by increasing your price) than you are willing to go to to get you money ?

P.S. The font size on your web site is miniscule in mozilla. How about not explicitly setting the font size and letting the browser pick it ? Also, the part where you spell "plan" in ascii art sucks because you need to use a fixed-width font.

Re:Try harder with emacs

[fiftyvolts]

Emacs is free, but it doesn't have all the various built in features that makes BBedit my Swiss Army Chain saw. Thanks fo the comment about my website, I have not tested it with every browser. (With the ones I have tested it on it is very readable).

Re:Try harder with emacs

[Llywelyn]

You know, emacs might be able to do everything BBEdit can for me, I don't know. That being said, I like having my Ultimate Text Editor look and feel like a MacOS X app (which XEmacs does not, even when running under Apple's X11), I like having its lower memory footprint, I like how easy it is to use and configure... and I like that I don't have to spend more time with it or "try harder" in order to use it.

My clients, customers, professors, and friends don't care one whit if I spent $150 on my text editor, they do care if I deliver my products on time and that they look clean and professional. I may be able to make it look as clean and as professional with X/Emacs, but I will have to "try harder" and "spend more time" with it in order to get the same level of quality I get now and out of the box from BBEdit.

Re:Try harder with emacs

[porkchop_d_clown]

I've been a long time EMACS bigot, but even I have to admit that it's time to stop tarting the old girl up and let her have a graceful retirement. Newer editors offer everything EMACS does, and more gracefully.

BB = Bare Bones who would have thought?

[fiftyvolts]

However I agree some HTML stuff would be more useful.

Long time BBEdit user

[Suffering Bastard]

I've been using BBEdit since version 4 (five years ago?). I was pretty much a hardcore Mac geek back then (thank goodness for the mellowness of age), and BBEdit was one of my primary reasons for defending the Mac platform.

Today I'm a freelance web developer, writing apps in Perl, PHP, ASP, and of course straight up HTML. BBEdit has been an invaluable tool for my work, and along with OS X's fantastic networking support, I can edit all of my Mac, Unix, and Windows projects from my lone G4 workstation. The CVS integration in version 7 is fantastic...I now use it to manage version control for all those disparate projects. It's a beautiful thing.

However, I am also saddened to read that BBEdit Lite is gone. I would never have become a hardcore BBEdit user if it weren't for the Lite version to help me get my feet wet. I'd probably still be stuck at some ad agency creating web pages in Dreamweaver (ick) or GoLive (double ick!). I worry that new adoption of BBEdit will come to a halt.

At the same time, they deserve the money. Not only does BareBones make some great applications, but their customer service is tremendous. On more than one occasion I've bitched at them for this or that, and they've always responded quickly and courteously, even when I've been wrong. I even had a brief e-mail chat with one of their developers discussing the pros and cons of tabbed documents.

So, on the one hand, their apps rule; on the other hand, they may be shooting themselves and future developers in the foot for charging for what was once free; on the third hand, their apps still rule, as does their customer support, and this should be worth a few bucks to people.

Today's word is "ambivalence."

Re:Long time BBEdit user

[djupedal]

Me too. Great software...always has been. I always compare other same type apps to BBEdit.

And I happily paid for a 6.x version mid-2002. When the upgrade to 7.x came out, and I saw the price, for the first time I stopped and asked if I was really interested. I've never questioned paying for BBEdit until now, but when the pricing structure for 7.x hit, I began to wonder if it was a tool I really needed. I don't think I'll follow along this time. I'm sure someone else will enter the market and replace BBEdit with the traditional no-limits text editing we've all enjoyed for so long. If BBEdit wants to be a major developer app, that's fine, but all I need is a text editor that can open any sized file, provide line numbers, and global search/replace.

Re:Long time BBEdit user

[cupiditas]

I share Suffering Bastard's ambivalence. BBEdit is a great tool for an incredibly wide range of text-editing tasks, and does it all while being very faithful to Apple's HI guidelines. What I like best about BBEdit is that it doesn't get in your way, or try to make decisions for you (which is what I hate about Dreamweaver and the other WYSIWYG apps), but has readily available all kinds of assistance if you decide you need it. As someone else on this thread said, it somehow makes text-editing and coding fun. Hard to explain.

BUT: Bare Bones' pricing is getting WAY out of line (not only with BBEdit but also with Mailsmith, a very cool app that isn't making a lot of headway in a field crowded with cheaper or free alternatives), and it's hard to see how they're going to be competitive in the long run. I hope they figure out how to strike the right balance, because they're a great company and they make uniquely useful products.

Re:Long time BBEdit user

[Anonymous Coward]

In reference to BBEdit, I's like to say that I prefer Star Wars because Star Wars uses HYPERSPACE and Star Track uses Warp speed.

"Ooo.. We need to do Warp SEVEN... Ooo.. don't do warp 10 cuz dat's DANGEROUS!"

Star Track also uses phasers. "Ooo... Look out! I'm going to PHASE you! There! You've been PHASED!"

Star Wars uses BLASTERS, baby! Which would you rather carry at your hip? A PHASER or a BLASTER?

Star Track has the prime directive. "Oooo! We can't get involved! The prime directive! The prime directive! Sweet pants and glasses don't forget about the prime directive!"

In Star Wars if you get in their way, the Empire wil blow your damn planet up. How's THAT for your prime directive!

In conclusion, both BBEdit and Star Wars rule.

No BBEdit Lite, but TextWrangler Demo

[tuxedobob]

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.

BBEdit Lite still at download.com

[jcsehak]

You can still get bbedit lite 6.1, which includes an os x native version, at download.com. If Bare Bones is phasing out bbedit lite, you might want to get it soon. I just got it, and it kicks ass. I was looking for a simple text editor to replace the non-existant simpletext in os x, and it fits the bill perfectly Plus, it's way better in so many ways.

Re:BBEdit Lite still at download.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking for a simple text editor to replace the non-existant simpletext in os x

You stupid shit, OS X ships with TextEdit, which is the replacement for simpletext.

Dumbass.

Re:BBEdit Lite still at download.com

[Anonymous Coward]

TextEdit doesn't save plain text files, only rtf.

Re:BBEdit Lite still at download.com

[cupiditas]

OF COURSE TextEdit saves plain text files. Just set it to do so in the Preferences. RTF is default, but defaults CAN be changed. . . .

Re:BBEdit Lite still at download.com

[jcsehak]

It's weird. I can open a .txt file, but I can only save it as plain text if I originally created it in TextEdit. What's more, the help file says:

"You can open SimpleText documents in TextEdit. If you save the document, TextEdit saves the document in RTF format.

To make changes to a SimpleText document, open it using the SimpleText application, which will start the Classic environment."

Maybe it's me, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to set it so it will save a document I created in SimpleText as plain text. Of course, it's academic now that I've got BBEdit Lite, but I'd still like to know if I'm missing something.

Re:BBEdit Lite still at download.com

[cupiditas]

Open the SimpleText document in TextEdit, choose "Make Plain Text" from the Format menu, and then save it (TextEdit will add the .txt suffix for you). Works for me!

I write Perl scripts...

[ellem]

On Windows I use UltraEdit. I like it. It has color syntax and it has line numbers. Line numbers are really important to me as I write horrible, horrible code and I:

use warnings ;

Is BBEdit any good at this?

I use X/Emacs on OS X (my home, and fuzziest OS.)

I'll pay but I hardly ever write HTML.

Re:I write Perl scripts...

[Drishmung]

Yes, it does line numbers (can be turned on or off), and it lets you run the Perl from a menu. (Ditto Python). Allows you to syntax check Perl programs too.

Re:I write Perl scripts...

[analog_line]

BBEdit has perl syntax as well, but unless the file browser/network integration/CVS integration is something you really could use, then it's probably not worth the full $180 for BBEdit full version, and unless you a lot of looking at text files, Text Wrangler may not be worth it for you either. Look around for the latest version of BBEdit Lite and take a look. If you like it, Text Wrangler may be something to look at then.

I don't use a quarter of all the features BBEdit has to offer, but I just think the Bare Bones guys rule, and I'd frame my BBEdit t-shirt if I got my hands on another one to wear. But I'm kinda crazy that way. Money well spent.

Re:I write Perl scripts...

[Anonymous Coward]

lou,

use mi. I've posted info on mi in another comment, but here it is again. It is a really great editor, and I use it for my perl work.

and, it is free. and very fast.

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~gf6d-kmym/en/

Re:I write Perl scripts...

[MisterSquid]

BBEdit is great for writing PERL or just about any code you can think of. Yes, BBEdit supports line-numbering.

Of course, whether you're working in UltraEdit or BBEdit or NotePad or SimpleText, when you're debugging PERL it's PERL and not your editor that will be telling you what's working and what's not.

Re:I write Perl scripts...

[ellem]

True but I used to have COUNT the line number manually... guh... Error on line 235?

"Sorry guys I can't figure this one out..." ;)

JEdit performance on OS X

[HotButteredHampster]

I found JEdit and started using it on Win2k at work. It is the best text editor (besides BBEdit) that I have ever used. Some of the plugins for java development are the cat's ass, and it does a lot right. I was doing some Java development at home at the time (playing with Robocode) and I wanted to use the java compiler plugin, because BBEdit 6.1 did not have a similar option. However, I found that Robocode would grind to a halt (1-2 fps) when jEdit was running concurrently. Quit jEdit and my framerate jumped to around 12 fps. I don't see this kind of a performance hit when running jEdit/Robocode at work (don't tell my boss!), so I'm guessing that there is some issue with the java runtime in OS X. Either way, I paid $49 for my upgrade to version 7 of BBEdit, which allows me to run UNIX commands from command windows (step in the way-back machine: we're doing the MPW shuffle!), including javac, so it's all moot in the end. Summary: jEdit on Win2K, good, on OS X, bad!

BBEdit Lite still on barebones anonymous FTP

[Anonymous Coward]

Get it while you can: ftp://ftp.barebones.com/pub/freeware/ Although, since it is still there, I doubt they are planning to remove it. My guess is that they will just stop developing and promoting it.

You can still get bbedit lite via google

[Anonymous Coward]

Versiontracker has taken down the link to bbedit lite, but...

I just searched google for "Download BBEdit Lite versiontracker" (no quotes) and I viewed the cached version of the first hit from versiontracker. Bada bing!

First stuffit, and now this (*cry*)

"It doesn't suck"

[finelinebob]

More and more, I've found that to be such a fitting description of BBEdit. Sounds like for the Mac Unix folks out there it may even qualify as "Insanely Great", but I'm a web developer and every time I have to take my right hand off the keyboard to reach for the mouse to click on the tool bar, activate a menu command, or check off boxes in a dialog, I wind up losing time and productivity. Homesite has always been a superior tool for coding in markup languages, particularly because of its tag insight and tag completion features. When Macromedia bought Allaire I was hoping we'd finally get Homesite on the Mac, but it looks like they (Macromedia) have folded it into Dreamweaver MX. It's a shame BBEdit never looked into something along the same lines. Forget about any arguments about "product distinction" or anything like that -- Adobe and Macromedia know well enough to copy features of the other's software when it makes sense. XML Spy takes Homesite's tag insight one better by generating pop-up menu content based on your DTD/schema, so its not like there isn't any precedent for other programs using this feature either.

Looks like I have something to look forward to with BBEdit, tho, since I'm trying to learn more about what I can do with the Unix under the hood....

Text Wrangler--why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey BareBones, I have a suggestion. Sell a reduced-cost version of BBEdit with just the html markup features and leave out the programming capabilities. Now that would really be something to get excited about.

It doesn't suck.�.

[dpbsmith]

That's been their slogan for as long as I can remember:

BBEdit. It doesn't suck.®.

In this day and age, that is a truly remarkable claim for any piece of software, and in my opinion it makes BBEdit truly amazing.

try mi

[Anonymous Coward]

does way more than TextWrangler... maybe less than BBEdit, but I am not so sure. I have been using mi for a month now and have found it to be everything I wanted in a code/text editor.

did I mention it was free?

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~gf6d-kmym/en/

um,

[Anonymous Coward]

Bare Bones Edit?

I *have* used BBEdit

[pvera]

I use BBEdit 7.0 for almost all our development work (ASP, PHP and XML). I think the $179 list price is a bit inflated, I bought 6.5 for $79 at their website (you download the lite version and that was enough to qualify for the "competitive" upgrade to the pro version). Less than two months later Barebones moved up to 7.0, and my purchase fell within the grace period for a free upgrade. My previous weapon of choice was Edit Plus (back when I was still in windows) and even if I absolutely loved it, its developers sort of left it hanging for a long time. I used Edit Plus for many years because the cliptext function was ideal for ASP programming and it did not add any weird gremlins to text files.

Within a week of using BBEdit I was completely weaned-off Edit Plus. Cliptext only allows one substitution, while the BBEdit glossary facility allows you to substitute for whatever you have highlighted, plus whatever is on the clipboard. Plus extra dynamic tags you can use for that. You can of course combine the glossary with GREP patterns and Applescript for some truly evil automation.

The stripped-off tool is just another way of Barebones showing off how they listen to their customers. In every instance that I have had to contact them, they have been very quick and professional. Many times I have emailed them with "hints" for a next version only to have them reply with the page of the manual that explains a function that does exactly what I want to.

An app without a niche

[mactari]

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".

Yes

[sulli]

I love BBEdit Lite and use it all the time. $179 is too damn much for full BBEdit, but like the other poster I may buy TextWrangler to support BB.

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

BBEdit pointrelease offers new character encodings

[John Seifarth]

In their latest point release (7.0.2), BBEdit has fixed my single longstanding complaint: character encoding support.

I write most of my PHP scripts using Quanta, 'cause it's a pretty good editor and the syntax highlighting works well.But most of all, I can write text in French, with accents, which will be served up nicely by Apache to all comers, be they Mac, Windows, or Linux.

This works because my Linux boxes use ISO Latin 1 encoding, Quanta saves files using that text encoding, and Apache serves them as such.

Windows doesn't seem to have any problems reading these files, but they're a pain in the butt to edit on the Mac, in both Mac OS X and previous OS releases;

If I open one of these files in BBEdit version 7.0.1 or previous, most of the accents I use (like éèçàù or â î û) turn into other, ugly, wierd-ass non-corresponding accented characters.

Just-released version 7.0.2 adds support for many more encodings beyond UTF and MacRoman offered by previous versions: additional Unicode oprions, ISO Latin 1 and 9, along with Windows Latin 1 for Europe, and Korean, Chineese, and Japanese.

Why such a major feature sneaks in a point release is beyond me. I've been paying my upgrades since version 4.5. It has cost me between 35 and 75 bucks a pop, but I've really felt that is was money well spent for Software That Doesn't Suck.

For me, BBEdit's killer feature is function popup menus which put up a list (optionally alphabetically sorted) in the toolbar.

I just click the function popup menu, and all the functions I've defined in the script are a single mouseclick away. Being able to instantly jump to a function I've defined is the single most useful editor function I've seen for programming.

Switching from BBEdit to XEmacs and vim

[markjugg]

Hello,

I used BBEdit for years and loved it. I was power user and a tinkerer. I found many hidden features and exploited them. I thought it might be the Best Text Editor Ever.

Then I started looking at unix text editors, especially XEmacs and vim. They were both harder to use initially, but I eventually felt more productive in either one than in BBEdit, both because of the feature sets, but also because of the keyboard short cuts and the ability to run in a terminal.

Now vim is my preferred editor on OS X, and I only fire up BBEdit when I have to. Details here.