[TxMt] Re: [OT] BBEdit, virtues thereof

[Chris Thomas]

On Mar 18, 2005, at 3:51 PM, David Lee wrote:

> I'm curious about BBedit (having never really used it), becuase it  
> was the One True Mac Editor. and becuase it costs so much.

Originally, BBEdit was a simple editor that could handle text files  
greater than 32 KB in size, with an unambitious plugin architecture.  
Simplicity aside, I suspect there are several reasons people scrawl  
'BBEdit is god' in the pavement:

* It's better than Windows Notepad, TextEdit, etc for editing basic  
text, by virtue of providing a basic set of very useful manipulations  
(which you can find in TextMate's Text Utilties and Text > Convert  
menus) that some people need to perform rather frequently.

* The HTML tools -- originally in the form of a set of third-party  
plugins. I think it was just after the disappointment of the first  
generation of graphical web page generators began to sink in that the  
HTML tools became available. Good timing.

* Support for editing files over FTP (I believe this was originally  
coordinated with Anarchie, now Interarchy).

* BBEdit's developer never abandoned the application. It's been in  
more-or-less continuous development since it was first released.  
Several other text editors -- sometimes unquestionably more advanced  
than BBEdit at the time -- simply died when their authors decided to  
move on.

BBEdit has historically been very slow to accumulate new features,  
and they're almost always seen elsewhere first. The pace has actually  
quickened in recent years, as the user base has grown larger and more  
cross-platform.

That's my perspective, anyway; I don't know how well it matches with  
objective reality. :)

Chris