TextWrangler 2.0 Freely Available

Newly released TextWrangler 2.0 is now free (as in beer). TextWrangler is a stripped-down version of the popular BBEdit text editor. TextWrangler has switched identities since 1.0, from being a text editor with an indeterminant purpose to a subset of BBEdit, a BBEdit Lite on steroids. It handles syntax coloring, scripting tools (perl, python, shell), and some Xcode integration. It does not include some of BBEdit's more advanced features like source control, CodeWarrior integration, glossaries, and creating text factories (though it can run existing saved factories). BBEdit remains $200, and TextWrangler still qualifies for BBEdit's $130 cross-upgrade price. Previous purchasers of TextWrangler qualify for a store credit (they will be notified via e-mail).

Comments

Mac only

[waynegoode]

The article fails to mention the important fact that TextWrangler is Mac only.

Re:Mac only

[WCityMike]

Not exactly a prominent omission for an Apple.Slashdot.Org posting ...

Re:Mac only

[shobadobs]

I thought that "TextWrangler is a stripped-down version of the popular BBEdit text editor," made it obvious.

An option

[BFedRec]

I doubt it's enough to make me move away from Quanta just yet... but I'll certainly look at this as another option for web developing on my iBook.

CharlesP

Happy Bare Bones user ...

[WCityMike]

I've been happily using their Mailsmith e-mail product for quite some time, and am glad to see this expression of generosity. I'll be able to retire BBEdit Lite now ...

I wonder if this will actually be a tsrif tsop or not ...

Re:Happy Bare Bones user ...

[Anonymous Coward]

BBEdit Lite is looking very old and I've been trying to fill the gap with jEdit, Taco, TexEdit and others. jEdit is not bad and is free (as in GNU). But BareBone do the interface right and so this is it - out go BBEdit Lite, and all the others I've been putting up with.
I do wonder how BB can earn a living with this?

Re:Happy Bare Bones user ...

[MadChicken]

jEdit is "not bad" as far as being Mac-like. Otherwise it is one FABULOUS editor though... I keep discovering new features it has.

Like BBEdit, and all that beer

[Anonymous Coward]

The Unix command line tools - edit, twdiff -rock. Codeless plugins language sensitivity, providing syntax awareness at leisure: ditto. Integration with Unix at many levels: filters, etc. Awesome. Free. as in Beer.

Emacs

[jefu]

Why not use emacs?

Syntax highlighting, multiple windows, extensions for all kinds of things and the ability to add your own extensions when you want/need to.

And it works in text mode. And it works the same under MS Windows or X Windows.

Download it here.

Re:Emacs

[sydbarrett74]

Maybe because Emacs can hardly be described as 'lightweight'....just a guess.

Re:Emacs

[rsmith-mac]

I know this is going to sound odd, but emacs feels out of place on a Mac. The X Windows version is completely ignorable, since even with good X11 support, X11 is not what the Mac is about. Now the Carbon/Aqua versions are a somewhat different beast, but emacs still brings in things like shortcuts that were developed in the PC world and don't make any sense in the Mac world.

On the flip side there's BBEdit/TextWragler, apps written by guys who have been doing Mac stuff for years(Apple users are unusually loyal to Mac developers; it's one of the last markets where Shareware still works), and their products have been built from the ground up for the Mac because of that. In that respect, it works very well for the environment by doing what users expect out of Mac shortcuts, though it's really one of those "you have to use it to understand it" sort of things, it's hard to describe things that you do instinctively without thought.

Though this could have changed somewhat by now, I haven't used a Mac version of emacs in over a year...

Re:Emacs

[McDutchie]

Why not use emacs?
[...]
And it works the same under MS Windows or X Windows.

You answered your own question there, at least as far as most Mac users are concerned. The emacs user interface is completely foreign to a Mac environment.

Re:Emacs

[giaguara]

eamcs is good. i like it.

however, it doesn't do for me, since i need internet or rendezvous document simultaneus editing. so a typical examples is i need to edit a document at work in ireland, one other needs to edit same document in france, 3 people in us and so on ... that is something i've seen only subetha do so far. :)

Re:Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs integrates seamlessly with RCS, CVS, and (surely) Subversion (though I haven't done the latter). There are plenty of ways to do what you need, it's probably worth doing your homework if you really like emacs--some packages (like JDE) do it for you, other situations may require some effort on your part but it will be worth it.

Re:Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Iunno... no drag & drop? Convoluted key combinations? The fact that BBE & TW require no training to use?

Like many people, I use GUI apps when I can, and text apps when I need to.

Or, I could have just said: why not just use Vim? :-)

(I must admit, I haven't tried the Carbon emacs you link to, and since I'm at work on a PC, I can't right now. I'm guessing it's not much more than a carbon window with the emacs we all know & love inside; not much different from a terminal or XTerm window with emacs. Correct?)

Re:Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

emacs still brings in things like shortcuts that were developed in the PC world

Excuse me?

Re:Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because majority of Mac users expect a clean, consistent GUI?

I'm not one of them, but I think that the "native" Mac versions of Emacs and Vim suck even more than running X11 version under OS X. I myself use console Vim exclusively (except for short test-runs with other editors.

By the way, since you happened to link to that particular build of Carbon Emacs I tried out literally 5 minutes ago: is it just me, or does it really not read ~/.emacs at startup?

Re:Emacs

[Wolfkin]

It doesn't sound odd at all. We Mac users understand. I gave Emacs more than two months of my time, switched back to J, and detailed my irritations with Emacs on LiveJournal.

I used to use TextWrangler (bought it more than a year ago), but it just doesn't have the Lisp-related features I need.

Re:Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the same; I've tried other text editors (including BBEdit) but none are as flexible or as powerful as Emacs.

You can make Emacs more Mac-friendly by mapping key sequences that use the Command key in your .emacs file. Here's a couple that I've added in mine:

(setq mac-command-key-is-meta nil)
(global-set-key [?\A-v] 'yank)
(global-set-key [?\A-c] 'kill-ring-save)
(global-set-key [?\A-x] 'kill-region)
(global-set-key [?\A-w] 'delete-frame)
(global-set-key [?\A-n] 'new-frame)
(global-set-key [?\A-q] 'save-buffers-kill-emacs)

I've also created a simple batch file to keep my Emacs source tree synced with the CVS tree, and to patch in support for Quartz font smoothing. I put it in /usr/local/src and run it periodically to update my local version of Emacs:

#!/bin/sh

export CVS_RSH="ssh"

tar cjf ~/emacs-`date '+%y%m%d-%H%M%S'`.tar.bz2 /Applications/Emacs.app /usr/local/share/emacs/21.3.50
rm -rf /Applications/Emacs.app

rm emacs/src/macterm.c
cvs -z3 -d:ext:anoncvs@savannah.gnu.org:/cvsroot/emacs co emacs && (

cd emacs/src
patch <<HEREDOC
--- macterm.c Tue Aug 12 11:53:06 2003
+++ macterm.c.new Tue Aug 12 11:52:09 2003
@@ -670,7 +670,22 @@
TextFont (gc->font->mac_fontnum);
TextSize (gc->font->mac_fontsize);
TextFace (gc->font->mac_fontface);
- TextMode (mode);
+
+#ifdef ENABLE_QUARTZ_FONT_SMOOTHING
+ if( mode != srcOr )
+ {
+ Rect rc;
+ rc.left = x;
+ rc.bottom = y+FONT_DESCENT(gc->font);
+ rc.top = rc.bottom - FONT_HEIGHT(gc->font);
+ rc.right = x+nchars*FONT_WIDTH(gc->font);
+ TextMode(mode);
+ EraseRect(&rc);
+ }
+ TextMode (srcOr);
+#else
+ TextMode(mode);
+#endif

MoveTo (x, y);
DrawText (buf, 0, nchars * bytes_per_char);
@@ -8725,6 +8740,11 @@
init_required_apple_events ();

init_mac_drag_n_drop ();
+
+#ifdef ENABLE_QUARTZ_FONT_SMOOTHING
+ /* if possible, enable Quartz font smoothing in QuickDraw */
+ SwapQDTextFlags (kQDUseCGTextRendering | kQDUseCGTextMetrics);
+#endif

#if USE_CARBON_EVENTS
init_service_handler ();
HEREDOC

cd ..

make maintainer-clean
CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -DENABLE_QUARTZ_FONT_SMOOTHING" ./configure --with-carbon --without-x --enable-carbon-app || exit
make bootstrap &&
sudo make install
)

And, because the slashdot filters suck:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.

Re:Emacs

[bsharitt]

Don't worry TextWrangler will work on and eMac too. //I know he was talking about emacs the editor, but some uninformed person will probably be by at some point and make that argument and be serious.

Re:Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

I like BBEdit because I don't have to do any of that shit.

Re:Emacs

[babbage]

I know this is going to sound odd, but emacs feels out of place on a Mac.

That does sound odd.

Put your cursor in almost any editable text field in your Mac -- the address bar in Safari, any text widgets in a Safari web page, the composition window in Apple Mail, etc -- and try a few Emacs keystrokes.

Huzzah! The Emacs keystrokes work! The beginning & end of a line are [ctrl]+[A] and [ctrl]+[E]; delete-right is [ctrl]+[D], delete-right is [ctrl]+[H]; etc.

Basically any application written in Cocoa -- not the Finder, but most of Apple's other core applications, and a lot of the post-OS9 third party stuff as well -- will get Emacs keybindings by default. If you know Emacs, or learned Emacs keystrokes in another application that uses them (I learned them in Pine and the Bash shell, personally), then you can transfer that finger memory to huge chunks of OSX.

So... yeah. Emacs out of place on a Mac? Probably not... :-)

Re:Emacs

[babbage]

The emacs user interface is completely foreign to a Mac environment.

Oh?

Put your cursor in almost any editable text field in your Mac -- the address bar in Safari, any text widgets in a Safari web page, the composition window in Apple Mail, etc -- and try a few Emacs keystrokes.

Huzzah! The Emacs keystrokes work! The beginning & end of a line are [ctrl]+[A] and [ctrl]+[E]; delete-right is [ctrl]+[D], delete-right is [ctrl]+[H]; etc.

Basically any application written in Cocoa -- not the Finder, but most of Apple's other core applications, and a lot of the post-OS9 third party stuff as well -- will get Emacs keybindings by default. If you know Emacs, or learned Emacs keystrokes in another application that uses them (I learned them in Pine and the Bash shell, personally), then you can transfer that finger memory to huge chunks of OSX.

So.... yeah. Emacs out of place on a Mac? Probably not... :-)

Re:Emacs

[McDutchie]

Well, I'll have to admit I didn't know that - thanks for the tip! But as you say, this support is far from universal (far from every application in common use is Cocoa) which in my view significantly weakens this argument. This may help an Emacs user use the Mac, but I doubt it'll help a Mac user use Emacs.

Re:Emacs

[pudge]

Those are not specifically Emacs keybindings, they are control sequences that pre-existed Emacs, and work in most shell and Unix programs.

(BTW, you can turn on full Emacs keybindings in BBEdit, right down to being able to save with ctrl-x ctrl-s, and quit with ctrl-x ctrl-c. Crazy, man.)

Re:Emacs

[js7a]

[Ctrl-{A,E,P,N}] are not specifically Emacs keybindings, they are control sequences that pre-existed Emacs and work in most shell and Unix programs.

Those emacs keybindings existed in 1976, before any Unix programs had any keybindings, other than the use of stty(1) to set the "erase" and "kill" characters for those rare times that you might want to type "#" or "@".

Re:Emacs

[.com b4 .storm]

If you know Emacs, or learned Emacs keystrokes in another application that uses them (I learned them in Pine and the Bash shell, personally), then you can transfer that finger memory to huge chunks of OSX.

So... yeah. Emacs out of place on a Mac? Probably not... :-)

That's like saying because Windows apps have buttons, and Cocoa apps also have buttons, that you can transfer that finger memory to huge chunks of OS X, and thus Windows apps won't seem out of place. Just because Apple decided to implement something that is actually quite common in the UNIX world (emacs style bindings - check out the shell, midnight commander, pretty much any IRC client, etc. for examples of this) doesn't mean that all the baggage that goes with that something also fits.

Emacs feels out of place because it is not a native app - it doesn't use native widgets, native keybindings do not work consistently and without tweaking, native file dialogs (as of my last check) are not there, various levels of interaction with OS X on higher levels are non-existent, etc. This is not to say that Emacs is not worth using on OS X. On the contrary, I used it a lot for various things when I was doing a lot of programming. But that doesn't mean that it didn't feel out of place and cause finger cramps from the otherwise very un-OS X key combos and interface.

Great!

[JHromadka]

I've been using the last version of BBedit Lite forever. Can't wait to download this tonight.

"On Steroids"...

[fm6]

...is a cliche on steroids...

Re:"On Steroids"...

[standsolid]

congratulations of a recursive cliche!

They had to do it

[Fahrenheit 450]

Not a big surprise, really. With the exception of HTML editing, the crop of newer editors for OS X (TextMate, SEE, Smultron, etc.) were making BBEdit look like that smelly old t-shirt stuck at the bottom of the drawer. You used to love that shirt, but now there are a whole lot of new shirts for you to wear, only without all of the rips and stains.

Since BBEdit is underfeatured and way overpriced for general text editing, Bore Bones had to do something to keep their name recognition alive...

Re:They had to do it

[giaguara]

true

i use mainly subethaedit now. even for editing books.

i need to edit html and other stuff .. but what subetha has and hte others dont is the rendezvous and internet sharing for editing. haven't seen any others have that, and work free. :)

Re:They had to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it the other way. BBEdit beats all of those text editors hands-down, but was beaten on the price. Now, TW gives you most of BBEdit for free, and is the best low-priced editor out there, with BBEdit as the best high-priced one (although its price is not that high if you use it for work 20 hours a week, as many of us do).

Re:They had to do it

[commodoresloat]

I have that smelly old t-shirt... it says "BBEdit: Software that Doesn't Suck." They sent it to me for free back when I ordered BBEdit 3.0. I pretty faithfully upgraded until right before 8.0. Not because 8.0 didn't also look cool, but because for my purposes I'm perfectly happy with 7.1.4.

BBEdit REALLY doesn't suck. For basic text editing of course there are fine programs that are free, but for HTML and for other tasks that require a lot of text processing (supersmart search and replace, browsing multiple files, etc.) it is a godsend on the Mac. And it is ALL Mac; so intuitive it makes you want to drool with pleasure. There may be newer OSX text tools out there but I've had no need or desire to poke around at them, not with trusty old BBEdit around.

Re:They had to do it

[AvantLegion]

Damn, why did I not know about any of those editors?

Look a bit friendlier than gVim...

Re:They had to do it

[lamz]

I really like Smultron too.

Apple's X-Code editor is also nice, but I mostly use it for PHP, and I have to constantly remind it that it should open my Smarty .tpl files as text.

You answered your own question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use emacs?

Because...

it works the same under MS Windows or X Windows.

The Mac user needs to use something that only works on the Mac. This lends to the exclusivity related to Mac ownership; a common technique among cults.

Re:You answered your own question

[Anonymous Coward]

The above "Insightful" moderation is an excellent example of why the moderation system is broken.

The above is a troll, troll, troll.

Tried it, will stick with emacs

[Fished]

This gidget, like every other promising editor, lacks one feature of emacs that I am positively addicted to: namely, it doesn't have "true" auto-indentation. Yes, it will put me back at the indent level I was at when I hit "enter", but if I press tab ... it tabs. It doesn't automatically place the line at the right indent level.

When it does that, I'll probably use it. But not until.

Re:Tried it, will stick with emacs

[vocaro]

Yes, I also found that annoying, as well. It's a surprising omission for a $200 text editor that is supposed to be a good programmer's editor.

I guess I had been spoiled by jEdit's ability to automatically indent the next line for you following an if/switch/while/etc. clause.

However, jEdit isn't quite as polished as BBEdit -- it has annoying little bugs here and there -- and BBEdit has superior Mac OS X integration. (For instance, you can launch BBEdit from the command line, unlike jEdit.) Plus, as a student, I got a 40% discount from Bare Bones. So I finally switched.

Anyway, if you're used to Emacs but don't want to switch to BBEdit, I suggest you try jEdit. It plays nicer than Emacs with OS X, and it has a nice set of plugins. And it's free, too!

Re:Tried it, will stick with emacs

[Matts]

You can open from the command line with open -a jEdit filename, which of course you can easily turn into a shell script or a bash function.

Re:Tried it, will stick with emacs

[pudge]

Bah, indeed. I've spent a lot more time in Emacs trying to fix line indents than I have in BBEdit doing the same (and I have spent a lot more time using BBEdit over the years).

Emacs-style line indenting is great when it works, but often it gets it wrong, to the point where I much prefer how BBEdit does it.

Re:Tried it, will stick with emacs

[Leo McGarry]

Xcode does what you want. It's also got the big plus of being free.

It's also got the even bigger plus of, you know, not being Emacs.

One word:

[lux55]

WOOOHOOO!!!!!

BBEdit

[Bastian]

"Bare Bones Edit." Talk about an inaccurate name.

Re:BBEdit

[treerex]

When it was created in the early '90s it was indeed "Bare Bones". Over the intervening years features were added to make it more powerful and, perhaps, bloated. While I edit now with Emacs (since I like having a consistent environment across all four platforms I regularly develop on) BBEdit is always there, as it has been since its initial releases.

It's a good editor. People should deal.

-tree
BBEdit Engineer Emeritus

Re:BBEdit

[jtrascap]

I agree with Tree - it's is a good, if not great editor. It's fast on virtually any Mac...I've been using it since version 3 and I'm staying at 6 only because of the update prices.

I'll move to TextWrangler for now because for my needs I can't justify the high upgrade costs. I do think it's a great editor though and it deserves its due respect.

BareBones, please hurry up and go out of business

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was cool like 10 years ago. But BBEdit hasn't aged well.

Today I use VIM, TextMate, and SubEthaEdit. They rock, and they're cheap. VIM is all you need, really, if you don't mind the UI. TextMate is new but showing a lot of promise, especially with Unix integration and automation. And SubEthaEdit's amazing collaborative editing is a "category killer".

Please, let BBEdit die a graceful death. Right now it's like a 75 year old in spandex.

Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Now i can edit my .html files fine.

I cant open my .php files with Text Wrangler though.

last i checked, .php files were 'text', so this program should be able to open it at least without color coding it..????

Guess not.

Whats this new emacs program everyones talking about?

Re:Uhh...

[pudge]

I cant open my .php files with Text Wrangler though.

I can. I did. I don't think you even tried it.

When I open a .php file in TextWrangler, it shows as HTML, which is reasonable as a default (the HTML mode recognizes PHP code, but also HTML In addition). Others may prefer plain PHP syntax coloring instead, and you may modify that in your preferences (under "Languages").

last i checked, .php files were 'text', so this program should be able to open it at least without color coding it..????

If you think it cannot, you're obviously mistaken.

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. install the software.
2. run the program
3. File->Open
4. All .php files are greyed out and non-selectable.

thats what i tried, and thats all i should have to do to open a friggin file.

Re:Uhh...

[pudge]

Then your system -- not TW -- thinks they are not text files. There's two ways file types are stored in the system, the old way and the new way.

The old way:

[pudge@bourque pudge]$ touch foo.php
[pudge@bourque pudge]$ GetFileInfo foo.php
file: "foo.php"
type: ""
creator: ""
attributes: avbstclinmed
created: 01/11/2005 16:09:31
modified: 01/11/2005 16:09:31

So it looks like it has no file type, unless I look at it in the Finder or somesuch, where I see it has a BBEdit document icon, and a Get Info shows "Kind: HTML file" and "Open with: BBEdit".

Try both, and see what they say. Chances are it is either an unknown type, or it is known as a different, non-text, type.

Either way, you can modify it in Get Info by changing to "Open with: TextWrangler" and then click "Change All..." to make that change permanent for all files with the ".php" suffix. Or, in TextWrangler, you can modify the options right there to open any files, not just text files (see the "Enable:" popup list in the file dialog, select "All Files"; you can make this the default, too, I believe).

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

SubEthaEdit is Default app. I dont think that should matter.

Re:Uhh...

[pudge]

Yeah, apparently SEE is "broken," declaring it of type "****", instead of "TEXT".

[pudge@bourque pudge]$ GetFileInfo foo.php
file: "foo.php"
type: "****"
creator: "Hdra"
attributes: avbstclinmed
created: 01/11/2005 18:14:10
modified: 01/11/2005 18:14:10

As you can clearly see, your assertion that this is a text file was incorrect, as SEE is telling the OS that it is not.

The simple answer, if you wish to continue using SEE as your default for that file type, is to set TextWrangler to open any file by default, instead of only text files, as noted previously.

Re:Uhh...

[Lally Singh]

Get Info on the .php file, and select TW as the handler for 'Open With...' and make it the standard way for every .php file.

Still not good enough

[Richard5mith]

Still doesn't meet the requirements...

http://blog.blogbear.com/blog/single/842

Re:Still not good enough

[Onan]

Since the journal to which you refer won't let me respond without an account, I'll do so here:

When you start adding support for CVS, wouldn't you agree that handling code indenting automatically would benefit so many more users?

Um, no. If you consider the text that you're editing to be important, there's no reason for absolutely any file ever to not be in cvs. And in fact you don't need your editor to speak sftp (or, heaven forfend, ftp) if you're being sane, and committing to a repository rather than writing directly to live copies.

And if I select a bunch of text and press tab, indent it, don't replace it with a tab character (and if I press shift-tab, remove the indent). When would I ever want to replace a bunch of text with a tab character?

If you don't want to replace that text with what you type next, why would you use the mechanism that has been incredibly consistent and standardized for literally decades for saying, "replace this text with what I type next"? Why would you possibly think that ruining the consistency and predictability of this extremely fundamental text editing behaviour is worthwhile so that you can avoid hitting ^a or similar?

Re:Still not good enough

[revscat]

If you don't want to replace that text with what you type next, why would you use the mechanism that has been incredibly consistent and standardized for literally decades for saying, "replace this text with what I type next"?

Because most IDEs do exactly what you say they shouldn't, and for good reason. Indenting blocks of text is so commonplace as to be pedantic; BBEdit's aparent lack of support for such a feature keep it from being a top-class editor. I have only briefly used it, but this was so immediately noticable that it kept me from switching.

Re:Still not good enough

[gozar]

Still doesn't meet the requirements...

http://blog.blogbear.com/blog/single/842

You need to revisit jEdit. It does everything you mentioned in your post.

Re:Still not good enough

[pudge]

LOL. Just like a liberal. The text editor does precisely what most people expect it to do, and the behavior is wrong because a minority of people want it to do something relatively unexpected.

Re:Still not good enough

[Fahrenheit 450]

Because most IDEs do exactly what you say they shouldn't, and for good reason. Indenting blocks of text is so commonplace as to be pedantic;

Cutting and copying are also commonplace (moreso than indenting text I'd wager), yet we don't highlight the text we wish to operate on and type a C or a P in order to perform those actions. We use a special key combination instead.

Why should we expect different behavior from the tab key? Because emacs screwed up X many years ago?

Re:Still not good enough

[revscat]

Why should we expect different behavior from the tab key? Because emacs screwed up X many years ago?

No, because it's convenient. Your mileage apparently varies, but I like editors that have this behavior, and in my experience it's not all that uncommon among IDEs or "programmers editors". It would be interestin to see/compile a list of different IDEs/editors and how their behavior compares in this respect.

Re:BareBones, please hurry up and go out of busine

[Anonymous Coward]

VIM's UI sucks. TextMate is a pale shadow of TW. And collaborative editing is, for most people, one step above entirely useless. Hey, if you need it, great. I never have. And it's a reason to have SEE as a secondary utility, even if I did.

Bluefish?

[mshiltonj]

How does this compare against Bluefish? Which *does* run on a Mac, and now that I check, I see that they finally went gold.

Re:Bluefish?

[Fahrenheit 450]

Well, for one thing, it doesn't look like ass...

Yes, but...

[trendyhendy]

Is it digitally signed?

emacs legacy info...

[anactofgod]

I agree with the gist of your comment, rsmith-mac. But, note Emacs' legacy lies in the Unix workstation world, not with PCs. I know that these days, with *nixs running on low-cost PC-class hardware, one wouldn't necessarily make a distinction. But back in the day, when one required expensive workstation-class machines to run Unix, it wasn't the case. The Unix workstation class legacy of Emacs is apparent when reading documentation that speaks of short-cuts using a "meta" key combination.

Personally, I hadn't used emacs in years until I found cause to just recently. A few months ago, in fact. Fired up it up under OS X to get reacquainted with Lisp (talk about old school, huh?). It was like meeting up with an old, long-lost friend. An old, complex, powerful friend with lots of quirks and an eccentric way of communicating. It is the ultimate extendable editor, and it works great for Lisp development.

And I *am* digging it, and trying to remember which long-forgotten IDE wooed me away from Emacs oh so many years ago. But then again, my appreciation for Emacs probably has to do with my history with it, and the fact that I have a real good reason to use it now. If one doesn't require the power, though, I can see why one would not want to deal the Emacs interface. I'm not expecting to throw away any of the other editors I use (yet), and in fact pulled down TextWrangler for a look see.

Anyways, in these days of the lickable, clickable GUI, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many computer users, either of the Mac or PC variety, comfortable using command-line/keyboard centric editors like Emacs (or...dare I say it...vi).

Present company of /.ers excepted, of course. *grynn*

Big Mistake

[cryptochrome]

They should have canned TextWrangler and lowered the price of bbedit.

Now all they've ensured is that people who have been using bbedit lite all these years get an upgrade to something almost as good as bbedit (like me... I was sometimes switching to SubEthaEdit but that slows down on big files), and low-end bbedit users will go with the free TextWrangler instead.

Re:Big Mistake

[jtrascap]

I was actually thinking that it was a pretty shrewd move on their part - cannibalize the lower end of the market by offering a proven free app with the best features of BBE, while retaining the upgrade link to the more-faithful pro market. I can see Smultron and a few other dying out in favor of the free TextWrangler.

The only thing I miss in TW is Rendezvous integration - then it would knock out SEE (which isn't free anymore, I believe).

How about that offtopic?

[Onan]

I cannot speak for the other poster, but I could in most ways be described as "liberal", and I'm the one arguing for the more-standard behaviour. I would imagine this complicates your arbitrary assertions of political connotations to interface behaviour.

Following you into tangentland, the advent of politics.slashdot has caused me great dismay by revealing additional views of people whom I'd previously liked and respect; and yes, I'm looking at you, pudge. As passionate as I am about the macintosh, I can't manage to hold a choice of computer platform as more important than, say, the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent humans.

Re:How about that offtopic?

[pudge]

I would imagine this complicates your arbitrary assertions of political connotations to interface behaviour.

It was a joke, playing on his sig and his perpetual flames against conservatives.

the advent of politics.slashdot has caused me great dismay by revealing additional views of people whom I'd previously liked and respect; and yes, I'm looking at you, pudge

For your own sake -- it certainly has no impact on me -- I adjure you to not be so closed-minded that you can't even like or respect someone who has different political views than you.

Favorite OS X text editor?

[mclaincausey]

Mine are:
1: vim
2: jEdit
2: TextWrangler is moving up...
3: SubEthaEdit
4: Smultron

Software that doesn't suck

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a saying that became popular within Apple, probably began as a mocking imitation of Steve Jobs, whose compliments were "understated." "This doesn't suck!" became high praise on the Curpertino campus

Does everyone know it is Mac only?

[waynegoode]

It is obvious to many who know what BBEdit is. Not everyone does. Also, just because software is best know for its Mac version doesn't necessarily mean it is a Mac only product..

Yes, many people would know from the article that the software is Mac only. However, not every one would know. The article would have been clearer if the two words "Mac only" had been included.

Re:Does everyone know it is Mac only?

[WCityMike]

The article would have been clearer if the two words "Mac only" had been included.

And, again, I ask you ... finding this news story on http:// APPLE .slashdot.org didn't clue you in?

Re:Does everyone know it is Mac only?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have a valid point, and I think people who say your original post was stupid are the real trolls.

Needs better Services support

[sg3000]

I downloaded TextWrangler because they said it was Mac OS X native (Cocoa, I presume), and they said it supported Services. So I expected that many text manipulation functions would be available as Services. That way, if I need to change all the text to UPPER CASE, or Title Case A Selection, I could go to Services > TextWrangler > blah blah blah. Thus, any application that supports Services could gain those text manipulation features (such as FileMaker Pro). However, the only things it added were Open File and New File with Selection.

Right now, I use something called WordService that does this, if it were tied in with a full featured text editor, I would use that.

Good communication

[waynegoode]

I didn't read it at apple.slashdot.org. I read it at slashdot.org (the front page.) Still, not everything in the Apple category is Apple only. iTunes and QuickTime are both products associated with Apple, but they have Windows versions.

... clue you in ...

The post wasn't for my information. I already knew this. I posted the comment for those who did not know it. If this article had been in a technical print publication, I'm sure the fact that the program was Mac only would have been mentioned in the article. Sure, maybe the reader can guess the missing facts. However, the point is that if the reader has to guess, it is poor communication.

Re:Good communication

[WCityMike]

I didn't read it at apple.slashdot.org. I read it at slashdot.org (the front page).

Although I don't discount that as impossible, I find it interesting that I clicked on the "Yesterday's News" link on the front page all the way back to Friday, January 7, and, despite seeing other Apple-related stories (i.e. the cell phone story), I did not see this as featured on the front page.

Furthermore, news stories that appear on the front page have their section before the title, i.e., "Apple: Steve Jobs Burps" or "Your Rights Online: Bush Goes Apeshit," still making the point.

Still, not everything in the Apple category is Apple only. iTunes and QuickTime are both products associated with Apple, but they have Windows versions.

There's such a thing as reasonable assumptions. It's incredibly reasonable to assume that a program featured in the Apple subpage on Slashdot is an application that runs on the Mac. If I go to the Linux subpage on Slashdot, I'm not going to assume that applications described in there run on Windows. Your arguments aren't holding water.

TextWrangler is not OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

It's CARBON.

The day Rich Siegel can write one freaking Cocoa app I'll look again.

You know why Siegel made TW free? Because he's losing market. Because he's got a dinosaur in a space-age OS trying to run on steroids and looking pretty bad.

TextWrangler is not OS X.

SubEthaEdit

[bodrell]

They're too late for me to bother. I really like SubEthaEdit, and it's been free for longer (for non-commercial use). I was using BBEdit Lite, but it had a horrible bug (at least on my PowerBook G4 with every version of OS X) in which if more than one file was open, the "Save" function would randomly overwrite one of the open files. Very nasty, lost me some data.