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Bare Bones Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Posted by pudge on from the without-bbedit-i-would-not-even-have-an-ass-to-save dept.

An anonymous user writes, "Bare Bones, makers of BBEdit, 'celebrates 3650 days of saving your ass' (according to the new t-shirt) with the the BBEdit Anthology, a limited edition autographed CD with every final commercial release of BBEdit, plus the free versions as 'bonus tracks.' Liner notes are included." It's $250, comes with a BBEdit 7 license, and only 1,000 were produced. OK, the price is a little steep, but it's a collector's item. And the company is also offering a 10% discount on any product orders through June 30, so it is only $225! I still remember the first time I saw BBEdit, a Mac text editor, and I thought, "what, like a word processor?" Some things never change ...

81 comments

  1. Pricey by colonel.sys · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, BB is pretty cool. But:

    I had used the Lite version for quite a while and when they started charging for that, Hydra came along and made me switch (http://hydra.globalse.org) -- pretty cool program. Group-Editing with Rendezvous, freeware and such.

    Just waiting for Apple to get their Finder-FTP working with read/write!

    --
    We are all individualists!
    1. Re:Pricey by dogzilla · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agree that BBEdit is getting a little pricey, but Hydra really isn't comparable to BBEdit yet. It has some cool features, and certainly shows a lot of promise, but comparing any current version of BBEdit to Hydra at this point just makes Hydra look like "My First Text Editor".

      I'd gladly consider an alternative to BBEdit (especially if someone could replicate the Allaire Homesite file-management and tabbed editing interface on the Mac (why is this so hard? Does noone else find it annoying to have 15 windows open at the same time?). If that alternative turns out to be Hydra, so much the better since I dig it's collaborative features. But right now Hydra's basically a one-trick pony - it's TextEdit with Rendezvous and syntax coloring. Seems to me it needs way more functionality before it can stand next to BBEdit (compare the two search/replace windows for a quick example of how far Hydra needs to go).

      --
      The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
    2. Re:Pricey by kosibar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The two features I find the most important in a text editor are FTP and tabbed editing. I often find that I have 10 windows open for one project, and a couple of windows for another project that a customer called me about and I'm waiting for a call back... gets to be a mess! (Especially when two of them are the same filename from a different site.)

      Having a separate window for each project I have open, then tabs for the individual files, would be absolutely perfect! Heck, I'd even pay the $250 ($225) to get that CD if it were the only way to get it. It's that valueable to me.

      Of course, the FTP features wouldn't mean much if Apple fixed their built-in FTP. The BBEdit FTP features are weak anyway - I can't even make a new folder in the browser. And I find that saving a file can be dreadfully slow sometimes, where Transmit can upload in the blink of an eye.

      I like BBEdit overall, though I tend to find the interface to be a little clumsy. It has some very useful text editing features, like zapping gremlins, hard wrapping text, changing case, etc. Things that every text editor should have.

      Rich

    3. Re:Pricey by Feral+Bueller · · Score: 2, Informative
      You can still get BBEdit Lite -- it's just harder to find:

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

      It's also stuck on Version 6.1 apparently.

      --
      - learn to swim.
    4. Re:Pricey by pudge · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I love using Interarchy for edit via FTP, especially now that it does SFTP. It has a feature to "Edit with BBEdit," and automatically saves changes when you save in BBEdit. Much nicer than using BBEdit's built-in FTP (which I used before this feature was added to Interarchy).

    5. Re:Pricey by kuwan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Especially if someone could replicate the... tabbed editing interface on the Mac why is this so hard?

      It's not that it's hard to do, it's that it's not the Mac way to do it, it's the Windows way. I, for one, prefer this "Mac way" since I am usually editing more than one file at a time when I develop and I like to have two or three windows open side-by-side, rather than having to click on a tab to see another file. I like to be able to see more than one file at a time.

      This is how it's always been on the Mac an it's how I prefer it. This way is also in line with a spatial user interface (one window for every document, not one window for many documents) which may be one reason why many people prefer it.

      --
      infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
    6. Re:Pricey by WeirdKid · · Score: 2, Informative

      $179 is quite high for this sort of thing. But it's got a loyal following from the early Mac days that will pay (or at least talk their bosses into paying). I wonder how many people would shell out the cash if it came out of their own pocket? I'm sure there are some who do, but not me. In this vein, it's a lot like IntelliJ or SlickEdit.

      When the freeware 6.1 version for OSX started getting crashy, I switched to JEdit. Ant and CVS integration, autocompletion, code refactoring, you-name-it plugins. It's cross platform and open source!

    7. Re:Pricey by notfancy · · Score: 1

      Having a separate window for each project I have open, then tabs for the individual files, would be absolutely perfect! Heck, I'd even pay the $250 ($225) to get that CD if it were the only way to get it. It's that valueable to me.

      I've never used them, but maybe filesets will help solve this problem?

    8. Re:Pricey by seney · · Score: 1

      so does transmit.

      --


      help out.
    9. Re:Pricey by selfish · · Score: 1

      Have you tried jEdit? It rules. http://www.jedit.org/

      Additional information at http://community.jedit.org/index.php

      It's written in Java, but it's still fast, and you can run it on all the platforms you might have at home or work. You can also very easily emulate most of the features you mentioned: tabbed documents, file management, syntax highlighting, etc. Plus, it is very extensible with macros, reconfigurable key shortcuts, plug-ins, etc. Try it!

      Perhaps best of all, it's free (as in beer)!

      Download it here!

      --
      This is not an official Fugazi sig.
    10. Re:Pricey by Suffering+Bastard · · Score: 1

      especially if someone could replicate the Allaire Homesite file-management and tabbed editing interface on the Mac (why is this so hard? Does noone else find it annoying to have 15 windows open at the same time?)

      I asked BBEdit about tabbed windows once. Here is the brief e-mail conversation:

      Suffering Bastard: ...a tabbed window interface would be REALLY nice, although BBEdit is the best of its kind on any platform.

      Patrick Woolsey of BBEdit: As for a tabbed window interface, I will spare you the gory details :-), but we do not feel that this sort of presentation is approriate for editing windows under either the customary or current Mac interface guidelines, so are not likely to implement same.

      SB: I'm coming from using Ultra Edit in a Windows dev. environment for a while, and while BBEdit is far more useful for me, I felt the tabbed window interface of Ultra Edit to be very natural as well as helpful toward the conservation of screen real estate.

      PW: I like a tabbed window interface a la Mozilla or Chimera very much for browsing, but it raises a whole slew of different UI considerations when applied to editing windows. In fact, now that OS X does cross-application window layering, in some ways there may be even less reason to go with tabbed editing windows because this precludes easily setting up source-target window pairs, e.g. consider an HTML source window with a browser window behind/next to it.


      So there ya go...straight from the horse's mouth!

      --
      "Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
      - Deep Thought
  2. BBEdit is great for writing HTML... by gdarklighter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...which is why I'll save the $250 for web hosting costs.

  3. BBedit going out with a bang? by jeeves99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Web-design has evolved into its own art form. More and more webpages are popping up with elaborate layering schemes and graphical widgets. Toss in some php scripts and you've created a beautiful mess that one could never code by hand.

    Along this vein, does BBedit stand a chance any more? I for one have switched to Dreamweaver. When I need to edit the source, dreamweaver has a more than adequete color-schemed text interface.

    I admit this limited-CD release is a really cool idea, but it rings a little too loud as a final hurrah of an obsolete product.

    1. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by pudge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think you understand BBEdit. BBEdit was a great program before it had any built-in HTML functionality, and it still used by many people who never, or rarely, use it to write HTML. I'd be surprised if most people who used it, used it primary for HTML. I highly doubt it.

      BBEdit is a fine program for people who want to code their HTML "by hand," but it is much better as a general developer's text editor, which is what it was before, and always will be.

    2. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by michaelggreer · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've been coding my pages in xhtml and css, so the layout is separated from the content. When making JSPs for such pages, BBEdit has been wonderful, and Dreamweaver is useless. Dreamweaver is great for some kinds of pages, but is incredibly slow and buggy on the Mac. I mean, terrible. BBEdit just does what it claims, and I have used it since its inception.

    3. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by jcbphi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Some would argue that in the long run, when your beautiful mess isn't rendering properly and its time to debug your HTML+CSS+PHP+who-knows-what, you may regret not knowing the intricacies of your code.

      Having used Dreamweaver (and few other visual editors) in the past, I doubt its ability to create a working site that I could not create by hand. Sure it speeds a lot of things up a lot, but so does the HTML tag templates built into BBEdit

      While Dreamweaver does offer a window for editing source directly, I would never call it adequate. Just because you can edit text does not mean its a substitute for a full blown text editor. (Does anyone know if Dreamweaver can use an external editor? I don't remember.)

    4. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by Arkham · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I do use BBEdit for HTML now and then, but 99% of the time I'm using it to write java, perl, python, or shell script. BBEdit is a multipurpose editor, and different people use it for different things.

      The "edit over ftp" feature is what keeps me using it. I know Windows tools like Visual SlickEdit offer these features, but I am so productive with BBEdit that it's hard to consider anything else.

      --
      - Vincit qui patitur.
    5. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by Hawthorne01 · · Score: 2, Funny
      (Does anyone know if Dreamweaver can use an external editor? I don't remember.)

      Yes. And it's called BBEdit. ;-) .

      --
      "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
    6. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by self+assembled+struc · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nor, do I think you work on a LOT of websites. I'm the senior web developer for the also-ran search engine, and without BBEdit and OS X, i'd scream.

      BBEdit lets you do GREP-based search and replace across multiple open files, files in a directory, has code clean up options and the such.

      I write all of my code in BBEdit, JS, CSS,XHTML, PHP, whatever...layers, multiple frames..whatever. It's still the best text editor i've ever used, bar none

    7. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by RevAaron · · Score: 1

      I'm a Mac user at home, but at work its Windows. At least in the Windows version of Dreamweaver, DW checks to see if the file has been touched outside of Dreamweaver. There isn't integration with an external editor, but it works on the assumption you may need one. I'll have a file open in Dreamweaver and the same file open in emacs or jedit at the same time. I'll make a change to it in emacs/jedit. When I click on DW, it noticed its been edited outside of DW, and asks if I should reload. It'd be nicer if I could check a box to make it assuem that the external edit was intentional, and to load the new version when I switch back to dreamweaver...

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
    8. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by raju1kabir · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Web-design has evolved into its own art form. More and more webpages are popping up with elaborate layering schemes and graphical widgets. Toss in some php scripts and you've created a beautiful mess that one could never code by hand.

      Not to be insulting, but the only people I know who don't code by hand are hacks who don't have to or aren't able to create complex, long-term maintainable sites.

      Doing it with the GUI just doesn't scale, once you get past the Photoshop/Imageready stage.

      --
      "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
    9. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by kalidasa · · Score: 1

      (Does anyone know if Dreamweaver can use an external editor? I don't remember.)

      Yes, in earlier versions: this fun Mac text editor called BBEdit.

      I haven't used a recent version of Dreamweaver on the Mac, so I don't know if it still can.

    10. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no problems doing everything in text editors. The layering gets a little complex sometimes, but once I've got a working chunk of code, it's just plop it in an include and forget about it.

    11. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by ninthart · · Score: 1

      Damn straight. Any web designer/developer worth their salt would never use anything other than a text editor (and pen and paper, of course) to create the sites they work on. It's the only way you can create clean code without all those mm_foo function names and other proprietary crap that doesn't validate.

    12. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by seney · · Score: 1

      i only code in xhtml and css - dreamweaver doesn't display this for shit. and it runs slower.

      --


      help out.
    13. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by JJahn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Never code by hand? I regularly do code complex websites using php and such by hand. Tried Dreamweaver but I couldn't stand it. Kind of a personal preference thing i think.

    14. Re:BBEdit going out with a bang? by jub · · Score: 1

      BBEdit is far from dead; it's a model for gui text editors across platforms.

      The beautiful thing about BBEdit is that it's really a swiss army knife for text. It's good for a lot more than authoring code (which it does very well, with colored syntax for most languages).

      The built-in grep engine alone saves me dozens of hours of work/year, all programs should be using it. Even if i'm laying out pages in Quark, chances are i'll run text through BBEdit for some cleanup.

      For remote editing on my websites, i can easily ssh in and make my changes via a terminal, but for anything that requires a little poking around, i'll generally use Transmit over sftp and edit in BBEdit. Much easier to search through big files and look at multiple files at once than via command line.

      The other beautiful thing is the Applescript dictionary. I've got plenty of scripts that use BBEdit as the engine to (cleanly) convert Word files to html, tag hundreds of test questions for online testing (WebCT), and a myriad of other automated tasks.

      Pre-OS X, this was the only way to do this kind of work. Sure, this could generally be done with OS X/Linux shell scripts, but it's much handier to have a decent window where i can see my changes. Plus, Applescript lets me tie into other programs that i'm moving stuff in/out of.

      For me, it's well worth the price. I bought it at 4.0, and i figure the upgrade cost is about 1/100 the price of the time it saves me every year.

    15. Re:BBedit going out with a bang? by jceaser · · Score: 1

      If you understand the layers that are involved then there is no reason why you can't code by hand. In fact, I would say it is the only way to develope a large site. Kiddy tools like Dreamweaver hide way to much from you. You have to get down to the code if you want to optimize and/or simplify the code. Think of it this way, Manual or automatic transmition. Manual is the best way to date to comunicate to the car what you plan to do (I see a hill, better change gears). I do all my asp and java development in BBEdit. Thanks to Samba and BBEdit, my Mac is the best development tool ever, be it Windows, Mac, Java...

  4. Waiting For Apple FTP by ihatewinXP · · Score: 3, Insightful

    -Just waiting for Apple to get their Finder-FTP working with read/write!-

    Jesus Christ I should make that my sig! How in hell can Apple have a built in FTP client that wont say.....upload files or play nice with just about anyhting? For the love of god Apple, dont include things that dont work and are only going to irritate me (cough iCal 1.0 cough). Its hard to tout a feature only to say "yeah its great, i have a built in FTP client, seamless with the finder! whats that? does it work? well no, but its there!"

    I know this is mad offtopic but I banged my head against the finder ftp for too long to not add my 2 cents.

    --
    ---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
    1. Re:Waiting For Apple FTP by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Upload to ftp? I kind of remember that. It's what people used to do before we had scp, right?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. 3650, or 3652 by lonely · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What about the two, of three leap years in between.

    Or do they take those off? :-)

    1. Re:3650, or 3652 by davesag · · Score: 3, Interesting
      1996 and 2000 are the only two leap years in the last 10 years, so yes it should be 3652 days of saving our arses,

      Now if BBEdit could only add langauge sensitive auto completion and contextual menu based x-reffing of java docs (you know crtl click on a method to open the java source it is defined in at that method) and add parsing of ant scripts such that the targets appear in the function list I'd be even happier and it would stop bastard eclipse users from taunting me.

      real mac java programmers use bbedit and the terminal after all.

      --
      I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
    2. Re:3650, or 3652 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Years divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also divisible by 400; hence, 2000 was a leap year.

    3. Re:3650, or 3652 by Aknaton · · Score: 1

      3651. The year 2000 was not a leap year because it is a year ending in 00 that is equally divisable by 400.

    4. Re:3650, or 3652 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it's the other way around - 00's are only leap years if they ARE divisible by 400.

    5. Re:3650, or 3652 by davesag · · Score: 1
      Check your calendar mate. I just looked in iCal and 2000 was most definitely a leap year. To double check I looked through my email out-tray for 29 Feb 2000 and on that day I made the decision to leave boo.com. So your numerology is for naught - it's 3562.

      Just to be extra sure, I just looked it up, a year ending in 00 is not a leap year unless it is divisible by 400.

      --
      I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
    6. Re:3650, or 3652 by Aknaton · · Score: 1

      Thanks for correcting my error, I had the rule reversed.

  6. Question by keesh · · Score: 1

    What's in BBEdit that isn't in, say, Vim? I've only used Lite, and wasn't impressed -- is the expensive version any better?

    1. Re:Question by jcbphi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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).

    2. Re:Question by Phroggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      OK, follow-up question: in what ways is vim more powerful and more configurable than BBEdit? BBEdit has more features than I could ever think of, and is reasonably configurable (menus are very configurable, and you can make plugins and scripts for it). I don't use vim; what am I missing?

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    3. Re:Question by Phroggy · · Score: 1

      What's in BBEdit that isn't in, say, Vim? I've only used Lite, and wasn't impressed -- is the expensive version any better?

      You can download the 30-day demo, and find out for yourself.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  7. Re:BTW by pudge · · Score: 1

    Ah, I didn't reload before replying. Phew!

  8. Re:BTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    3652.5, to be exact.

  9. I have to disagree. by BoomerSooner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I only use textpad on linux and windows (linux via wine) and the only editor I like on mac is dreamweaver. Granted you have to close all the extranious bs they have open but if you set it up as a text editor with syntax highlighting it works well.

    I code in jsp and asp primarily. I still prefer textpad to all other editors though. The cursor placement and block select modes I cannot live without (and it's only like $30).

    1. Re:I have to disagree. by ins0m · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can get a lot of the same in vim, if you're willing to learn the keystrokes. I know visual block mode has saved my bacon many a time when tearing through extended sections of LISP or C.

      --
      Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
  10. Leap Year by Ann+Coulter · · Score: 0, Redundant

    celebrates 3650 days of saving your ass

    Shouldn't it be 3652 days since there were two leap years between 1993 and 2003?

  11. For you windows users... by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

    For Windows users, I recommend EMEditor (Google it) as an excellent product. It has macros, a customizable toolbar, a nice standard windows interface, source highlighting for many languages (configurable, too - add your own languages if you want). It auto-indents after brackets if you want, you can shift tab out entire blocks of text. It's not free like VIM, but it behaves much more like a "normal" text editor. They have a demo, too (not functionally limited, either). It's also free for students.

    1. Re:For you windows users... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It looks okay but it seems to have left out a feature I'd really like: Cleanup of PHP i.e. put in correct indents, etc.

  12. Comes with Chocolat by WatertonMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hey, not only did it come in the mail today, but it came with Chocolat with some exclusive chocolat from this Berkeley company. Great! Plus I didn't have to pay for it! (The folks at BBEdit sent it to me for free since we'd submitted some code *way* back)

  13. Edit by FTP by kosibar · · Score: 2, Informative

    Transmit has a similar feature, but I haven't looked into how it works yet. I think I'll have to take a look at that. Thanks for the tip!

    Still no tabs, though. :-(

    1. Re:Edit by FTP by pudge · · Score: 1

      The sad thing is that Mac OS basically had the tabs problem solved, with WindowShade. Yes, there is "haxie" for it in Mac OS X, but haxies give my computers fits (no offense to the cool Unsanity folks, I just got sick of random errors and crashes caused by things that patch my system :-).

  14. I agree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The main use I have for BBEdit is its ability to do regular expressions, convert between the various line endings out there, handle text files with very long lines (without hard wrapping them) and the option to show invisible characters.

    It also doesn't look ugly and doesn't do any automatic crap behind my back.

    I don't like its price though so I use the free version :(

    1. Re:I agree by pudge · · Score: 1

      To each his own; but if you want a more updated version, without the high price, and don't use it for development, there is always TextWrangler, though that too costs money. But less.

  15. it is pretty versatile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If their slogan is "XXXX days of saving your ass"...well, i gotta admit, they saved mine.

    BBEdit is a good hex editor. I really haven't used any other hex editor for the Mac, but, I really don't feel that I need to.

    I was having problems with a a corrupt file. Flash (.FLA). The only advice I could ever get about how to recover it was to choose Save As... in Flash to create a "Clean Copy". Of course, it didn't work (thank you for your sagicity, Macromedia. thanks you for your support)
    But, I managed to actually salvage more than 90% of the file by using BBEdit to make a cleaner back up copy. It allowed me to get most of my work back. This, in comparison to Flash, which just "ate my homework, spat it up and ate it again".

    Add that bit of goodness, to using it to clean up HTML, as a word processor and to view contents of invisible files and BBEdit has made my life a bit easier. (and it ain't an easy life.)

  16. what's up with BB? by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 1

    allow me to say bbedit rules. that being said ... what's up with BB? just a few months ago, they were offering a version of bbedit for $250k, but that'd include ungodly support, feature requests, etc etc. here's the /. story. between that and this one ... well, that marketing defintely caught my attention.

    --
    vodka, straight up, thank you!
  17. ahh, bbedit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I still remember the first time I saw BBEdit, a Mac text editor, and I thought, "what, like a word processor?" Some things never change ...

    Heh, the first time I saw BBEdit (on a Mac Classic) I thought "cool, a real text editor like Emacs!" .. everything else on the mac was a word process with fonts and shit like that.

    BBEdit was way cool. I know lots of people still depend on it now but nothing beats Emacs if you ask me. Well, except vim sometimes.

  18. Remember Vantage? by tomem · · Score: 1

    Does anyone remember Vantage? It was a desk accessory. Remember them, installed with the Font/DA Mover? Now I'm really dating myself. But it was a damned nice text editor that could strip/add prefixes and suffixes, remove line breaks, wrap and unwrap, entab and detab, and it was also programmable to some degree so you could process a batch of files through various filters, or add a script to one of the menus, which were on each file window, since DAs didn't have regular menus. Not only that, but it allowed you to edit the file type and creator.

    I regarded BBedit as unwelcome competition for a while, then eventually it became clear that it would be supported, while Vantage was going the way of Hypercard.

    --
    ThosEM
    1. Re:Remember Vantage? by wavedeform · · Score: 1

      Yes Vantage was very cool, as was its predecessor, McSink. I used Vantage/McSink for years, but BBEdit is better supported and by now has lots more features.

    2. Re:Remember Vantage? by repetty · · Score: 1

      Yes, McSink was awesome. I also used Sigma Edit a lot, too. Sigma Edit hit the sweet spot for me.

      --Richard

  19. More than 10 years by h3 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Looking at the timeline, the 10 years refers to the commercial releases of BBEdit, which began in 1993 at v2.5x.

    I recall using it for a programming class in college ca. '89-'90, so it's been already a bit longer than that. Probably longer than some slashdotters have been around :p.

    I also remember reading the README that came with the original freeware BBEdit, where Rich proclaimed that BBEdit will always and forever be FREE (as in beer).

    For whatever that's worth.

    -h3

    1. Re:More than 10 years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, this is Slashdot. You know, the site that said they'd never run ads, the site that said they'd never sell out, the site that said they'd never run java/javascript shoot the duck ads, etc.

  20. Dude, your parentheses are totally unbalanced! by percepto · · Score: 1
    I'd .. (especially ,,, Mac (why ... time?)... BBEdit (compare ... go).

    )

    Your LISP is rusty, eh?

    =0) ~percepto

    --

    The term "outside the box" is squarely within the box at this point.

  21. Did you try a decent editor? (was: BBedit [...]) by sorbits · · Score: 1
    [...] it is much better as a general developer's text editor [...]

    Seriously, did you try a decent editor? BBEdit has no easy to use scratch macros (if macros at all?), its column selection is a joke (doesn't extend past the text, can't paste as columns), the syntax highlight isn't user configurable, it hasn't got overwrite mode, freehanded (non-restrained) cursor movement, auto-completion (or just completion), doesn't use the user configurable OS X key bindings (and the default values doesn't conform to the rest of the OS), it can't fold text, auto-underline misspelled words, hasn't got a useable (unlimited) clipboard history and I could go on for hours...

    All in all, I'll take the free editor that comes with Cocoa (and is used in Project Builder) over BBEdit any day (with the TextExtras plug-in of course :-) )... at least this one doesn't get on my nerves by ridicules names for the options, ugly often border less windows, non-consistent (and non style guide compliant) GUI, and a whole lot of question for each simple little operation...

    ohh... and it takes forever to start, it's big and bloated -- the slogan: "Software that doesn't suck" really seems to be self irony IMHO!

  22. Re:Did you try a decent editor? (was: BBedit [...] by pudge · · Score: 1

    Seriously, did you try a decent editor?

    Gawrsh, no, I just use whatever happens to be in front of me! Please don't be an ass.

  23. Re:Did you try a decent editor? (was: BBedit [...] by sorbits · · Score: 1

    My question was actually sincere, I do realise that a lot of people praise BBEdit as "the king of editors", but I really fail to see the attraction -- I have tried to use it on several occasions, but I lack tons of features, it has a horrible user interface, is slow to start up (the app bundle is ~17 MB) and the features it has are sort of in the way...

    I have started to write my own editor, borrowing inspiration from close to every other editor I have ever seen, but seeing how BBEdit is mentioned on the mac, take this interview as an example, which amongst other refer to it as: "one of the best examples of how modular software should work. It's small, fast, slick [...]", then I have started to seriously doubt on my success on providing a small (below 512 KB) feature rich editor to OS X...

    What is it that I am missing with BBEdit?

    And no, I am no fan of vim nor emacs, although at least with these editors, I know exactly why one would favour it over a "graphical" editor which is well integrated into the operating system...

  24. Re:Did you try a decent editor? (was: BBedit [...] by pudge · · Score: 1

    My question was actually sincere

    Well, then perhaps next time you should be more respectful when you ask it.

  25. Re:Did you try a decent editor? (was: BBedit [...] by sorbits · · Score: 1

    ehh... I list the reasons I dislike BBEdit, you then say "don't be an ass", and now you accuse me of being disrespectful...

    This doesn't add up...

  26. Re:Did you try a decent editor? (was: BBedit [...] by pudge · · Score: 1

    I list the reasons I dislike BBEdit

    No, you started your post as though someone who uses BBEdit is an ignorant dupe. Excuse me for not caring to engage in a conversation such as that. Or don't.

  27. BBEdit is my Swiss Army Knife by macdaddy · · Score: 1
    I use BBEdit for EVERYTHING. And I do mean EVERYTHING. I would write HTML with it. My Java, Javascript, C, Perl, and Bash shell scripting/programming was done with BBEdit. I'd edit massive numbers of MRTG and Nagios configuration files with it. BBEdit was my favorite tool for processing a list of spammers' domain names and netblocks for inclusive in my Sendmail access DB. It's Find and Replace feature set is riveled only by vi (and who in their right minds would want to use that?!). How many tools do you know let you search for a a string in all open windows, replace matches, and save all at the same time (as a simple example). BBEdit is an awesome tool and one that I don't mind upgrading every time.

    My only complaint is that they don't make a Windows version. I am a Mac user but unfortunately I'm stuck on a XP box at the moment. Having my favorite text editor would go a long ways towards making this tolerable.

    1. Re:BBEdit is my Swiss Army Knife by jceaser · · Score: 1

      use macos x's build in windows networking to connect to your xp box. Edit from the mac and run on the pc, it's like having a two screen computer.

    2. Re:BBEdit is my Swiss Army Knife by macdaddy · · Score: 1

      Except I don't have a Mac capable of running OS X at home and I no longer have access to my work machines. That's the catch. If I had a decent Mac again BBEdit would be the first thing I'd install. :)

  28. True. VIM is great. by BoomerSooner · · Score: 1

    I like it a lot and use it frequently (almost as much as textpad). However in GUI I still prefer Textpad to GVIM or VIM in a console. Plus for some reason I could never get GVIM to store my damn font preferences! lol... oh well.

  29. Too pricey, try tex-edit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tex-edit has no limitation on the trail period.
    It will never whine and beg you to register. (whine-ware)
    It will never disable features. (cripple-ware)
    You are not forced to use a 'lite' version.

    If you feel like paying for it, its $15.

    I like BB edit, but I love tex-edit for the reasons above.