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5 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Contact Info: http://www.barebones.com
Platforms: Mac OS
Forward Text editors are an odd category of software, especially so on the Mac, which has long been known for its WYSIWYG style of editing. All good Mac users are trained from [Mac]birth to edit the appearance of their documents simultaneously with the content. And text editors just don't do that. That's not their role in life. They [gasp!] edit text. Text editors appear to be descended from other platforms and earlier times. UNIX gurus have for decades (or so it seems) reveled in the power of the arcane command line, using what came to be called regular expressions to do powerful things to files and their contents, and to do them at great speed. The command line interface in which they performed these wonders itself evolved, growing more lines, a scroll back buffer, borders with scroll bars, finally achieving the exalted status of text editor, all within an operating system that required no more than the most basic of User Interfaces. BBEdit is clearly the result of this long chain of evolution, but is also thoroughly and completely a Mac program. Digression: I am a Graphical User Interface fan[atic]. I read about GUIs and analyze them. I've designed them for custom databases. I depend on their predictability. That's why I Mac. I've argued against the coming of the CLI (command line interface) to Mac OS X, claiming it's an admission of failure to design a sufficiently powerful GUI. My view of software is inevitably colored by this attitude. I first became aware of BBEdit round about version 4.x, so I can't attest to its appearance or behavior before that. But I paid for it after using the free BBEdit Lite version for only a few days, so I can attest to how impressed I was at that point in its evolution. And everything done to the program since then has been an improvement, culminating in what surely is the best-by-far text editor on the Mac today. So what is a text editor for?
Edit This! I use BBEdit to edit HTML files for the several web sites with which I'm involved as web master. HTML is simply text, and doesn't become anything other than that until it's interpreted by your web browser, which then draws the nice bold headings, and inserts the graphics where they belong and so on. Creating this text code that runs in your web browser is a form of programming. And that is (mostly) what people do with text editors -- they program. But they also write text -- what a surprise! I'm using BBEdit right now to write this column. Although I usually create documents in AppleWorks, in this case someone else is going to create the appearance of the review, so I only need to create the content, and a text editor is fine for that. Not surprisingly, the creators of text editors know this and provide all sorts of tools and add-ons and plug-ins that make the life of a programmer or author easier and more productive. The good folks at Bare Bones are no exception. To even list all the features BBEdit provides would likely fill up the entire review, so I'll just mention those I use most often and let you drop in to the BB web site to get all the rest. Since I don't program for anything but the web, using only HTML and its ilk, and sometimes JavaScript, I'll just mention in passing that BBEdit integrates with CodeWarrior, Dreamweaver, ToolServer or SourceServer, TeXtures and LaTeX; can act as the editor for MPW, the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop; and can use as references to all this the THINK reference, Toolbox Assistant, Obiwan or MPW 411. Since I don't know a lot more than that about these capabilities, you'll need to ask others for their opinions if that's the kind of thing in which you're interested.
Just the Bare Bones Let's start off then by taking a stroll through this text editor's most excellent Mac interface. (Check out the screen shots while you're strolling.)
The Tools menu provides a list of the many tools built into BBEdit. Selecting from this list pops up a dialog with useful settings for the relevant tool. As well, there's a pop-up window to select from the tools if you prefer not to access the menu bar too often.
The Windows menu gives you choices for opening up helper windows of various sorts. I use it for example to open the HTML Entities or the Web Safe Colors windows when I need to refer to them. You can also arrange your windows here, get info about them or reveal the files in them in the Finder. Next in line is a globe icon, signifying the web of course, and giving access to various web related programs and the Internet control panel. Following this is the Scripts menu, signified by a script icon; then a camel icon if you have MacPerl installed on your system. Each of these lets you open the relevant program, make certain settings, or run an AppleScript script or Perl filter or script. Finally there's the Help menu, giving you direct access to the Bare Bones web site in general or its tech support, FAQ or updates pages. A large number of the basic menu items change their behavior if you hold down either the Option key or the Shift key when selecting them. So many choices, so little time! Besides the regular menus, BBEdit offers a brief contextual menu if you hold down the Control key while clicking selected text or at the location of the insertion point. And if you're not yet weary of choices, and don't quite like the keyboard shortcuts that are on by default in BBEdit, you can change them! Just go to Set menu Keys in the Edit menu and hack away at the interface. You can make similar changes for glossary items, scripts, Perl filters/scripts and stationery as well.
How To... Learning BBEdit, though a long task if you want to benefit from all of its many options, is made as easy as possible by the wealth of documentation from various sources. Start at the beginning with the excellent manual. Still in paper (thank you BB folk!), it exhaustively explains every detail of the program. Move on to the other manual, in PDF form on the CD (A4 or Letter formats) if you prefer that delivery system. Move on again to the Bare Bones web site, where you can read the FAQ, sign up for one of the three mailing lists that BBEdit users frequent, download glossaries, plug-ins and scripts to add to BBEdit, or check out their bookshelf for recommended books. I find the mailing lists particularly valuable, as they are all monitored by Bare Bones staffers who contribute on a daily basis. When you start using BBEdit, you enter a large and very useful family. So if you're not all that up on Perl or AppleScript but could use a little help to munge that file, just ask on the appropriate list and the help will come tumbling in.
Next Steps At this point I feel a little helpless. It would be difficult to give just one example of using BBEdit, since it can do most anything that you do with text. And as I thought would happen I pretty much filled up the review just trying to give you an idea of what the program looks like and what it can do. To give it a whirl yourself, you can download the free BBEdit Lite v4.6 from the Bare Bones site, say thank you very much, and go to work. Or you can download the BBEdit v6 demo, which is fully functional but expires after 24 launches. Either of these will allow you to see for yourself why BBEdit 6.0 is worthy of a 5 Smileys rating. Believe me, if you're doing Mac programming, especially if you're creating and maintaining web sites on a Mac, you need BBEdit. It's that simple.
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The
Markup menu is again a long list of tools and functions that you can access
either directly from the menu, or by popping up the HTML Tools Palette.
Since I work in HTML constantly I have that palette set to open when I
start the program.
