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.

[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.

[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 :-)

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.

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.

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."

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:"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.

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?