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

[Mark Smith]

Chris Thomas wrote:


>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. :)

Thats fair enough.

I'd add:

superbly organized and granular AppleEvents model / AppleScript dictionary. (Probably doesn't seem important to a lot of developers nowadays, but it remains an important part of some of Apple's markets. Consider that BBEdit is often deployed alongside InDesign, Quark Xpress, MS Word and maybe even in iView MediaPro or Cumulus etc and AppleScripts are used to automate some BBEdit processing of text in these files from these apps. It also integrates well with both ScriptDebugger and Affrus. I seriously doubt that any editor will ever encroach on BBEdit in this space.)

An unrivalled set of intra-app text processing tools. Sure, with the advent of OS X, a lot of what these tools can do is *readily* available via Perl, Python and Shell scripts, but many users will still find BBEdit's easy to use GUI tools preferable.

Although BBEdit only recently got a projects drawer and one which is considerably less able than TextMate's, it has had "File Groups" and "File Browsers" for a long, long time. In fact, I think BBEdit was amongst the first editors on any platform fo have GUI implementations of these features.

Text Factories. This may be considered as "Automator for Editors". Again, a competent unix user will be able to achieve the same with pipes in his/her preferred scripting language, but that's not the point. Text Factories are so easy to set-up that any idiot can do it.

Another aspect for which BBEdit is often praised is its worksheets, especially its MPW implementation and its codewarrior integration. I've never used either so I can't comment.

Completely configurable menu keys.
A granular "palette" model
Stationery

We've (or at least I've) also got BBEdit to thank for the fact that we have a single GUI email client on the platform in which one can actually edit and process text effectively.

I think Bare Bones could also be credited for the fact that they have two of the best carbon-based apps on the platform. Look around at everything else carbon (exceptions being iView MediaPro and Intaglio). There is always something not correct or missing or jarring. Bare Bones have really gotten this right and I suspect their attention to detail in this department had probably cost them quite a bit in the last 4 years in terms of feature addition. With BBEdit 8, it would seem that a lot of underlying transition work has been completed. So [speculation] once they have done the same with Mailsmith and undertaken the nigh impossible in adding IMAP support to Mailsmith w/o breaking the way it works [take some time to think about this if you are interested, its really a tremendous challenge], we might see the rate of feature addition pick up again.

There is a tremendous support community. The BBEdit-talk and BBEdit-scripting lists are excellent resources with many experts on the app itself and also on Regex, Perl, Python and AppleScript.

Finally, despite what a lot of people say, I like the guys at Bare Bones and though it certainly does not produce rapid feature addition, I like their approach and their attitude. I think its a fairly wise approach all things considered. It will grate with some nowadays with the advent of open source and instant access and the fact that there is so much choice in software and so many users wanting everything yesterday. Bare Bones have not adapated to this at all. It remains to be seen whether they will have to adapt or not.

mark.