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.

[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.

[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.

"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?

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...

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?

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.