At 13:39 -0600 1/11/08, Errol Sayre wrote: >On Jan 11, 2008, at 1:31 PM, Doug McNutt wrote: > >Worksheets are kinda wonky... pseudo CLI within a file :-)
Yep. But you should use them. As of BBEdit 7 or so they are plist files as opposed to ordinary text files and that change frustrates me because they're now impossible to interchange with MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop - from Apple) files on this 8500 running OS 9.1. I can no longer write a short tool in C and include the compiler commands between comments #ifdef nonsense cc this file link *.o exit #endif so I could execute the source file to compile and link it. >Do you use worksheets for all your work? Or is there some hidden way to >convert a normal text file into a worksheet? I use worksheets as a replacement for Finder and I have done so since OS 5 or so on a Mac-II. Login always starts up a worksheet which retains a record of where I have been and what I have been doing. I can "open -a Vectorworks someCADstuff" and be right back where I was. Converting between worksheets and text files is a PITA now that worksheets are different. The simplest way is to make a new text or worksheet and copy-paste the text you want. Just changing the HFS file type works not. And you can't put #!/usr/bin/perl at the top of a worksheet and execute it though you once could. >Could you give some examples of why worksheets are more valuable than a text >file? You can select and ENTER to execute commands in the shell of your choice. Output from the command is placed right after the command line(s) you executed. With a text file you're reduced to copy and paste into Terminal.app. >"ls -laG >> myfile.txt" works just as well as "ls -laG" within a worksheet >from my experience -especially since BBEdit updates open documents when it >activates, though generally cutting and pasting works best for me. ls -laG | bbedit mynewfile.txt # is another option that will create and open a new document But you have to type, or copy-paste - that into terminal. With a worksheet you just select the existing line and ENTER. Using the mark menu allows you to flag areas of the worksheet so you can get there easily but you can't alphabetize the marks the way MPW does it. Yes I miss the ability to redirect output into the current selection in an open file that was possible in MPW. You can only redirect to the end of an existing file and that will show up at the end if its open in BBEdit but you better be careful with saving the target file before you do it. I never used BBEdit until worksheets became available and now that MPW is unsupported by Apple and will never be ported to OS neXt I have become a BBEdit fan though I do tend to use MPW and OS 9 on this 8500 for real text-based operations. There I have Nisus I can use for playing with tab separated data with divers column widths and mixed line ends that need to stay that way. The worksheet I use for web site maintenance has a bunch of scp commands using ssh. I have a certificate set up on the server and I can define shell variables that make moving files around pretty simple, documented, and reproducible just because the worksheet retains all of the commands. I like it better than BBEdit's ftp capabilities. You can also pipe ssh command output to the bbedit tool so that you get a local file to look at. My worksheets have AppleScripts buried in them awaiting execution. zB osascript << ENDSCRIPT Tell front window of application "Finder" to update every file ENDSCRIPT In short, BBEdit worksheets are a great interface between the OS neXt CLI and its GUI. Better than Finder if you know what you're doing. My only wish is that Bare Bones would take MPW compatibility a whole lot further. gedit is something I have been looking at and, with open source code, I can add MPW-like things myself. dash - a flavor of bash - looks as though it will process commands using a piped interface. I have been trying, without success, to use a BBEdit worksheet on OS neXt and deliver its CLI commands for execution on a Linux machine. Do try worksheets. I have waxed too cynical about my pet peeves. -- Applescript syntax is like English spelling: Roughly, though not thoroughly, thought through. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Have a feature request? Not sure the software's working correctly? If so, please send mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, not to the list. List FAQ: <http://www.barebones.com/support/lists/bbedit_talk.shtml> List archives: <http://www.listsearch.com/BBEditTalk.lasso> To unsubscribe, send mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
