I just bought BBEdit a few days ago; I'm right in the middle of switching from TextMate. I'm not a particularly demanding user -- I don't regularly search/replace for regex patterns in over 300+ documents, nor code software demanding hundreds of interconnected files -- mostly I write prose (and some HTML/CSS). For these uses, as the label says, it does not suck.
I considered the switch to BBEdit, probably, more seriously than what kind of car to buy. The amount of time I will spend using BBEdit, and learning its features and quirks, dwarfs any amount of money I'll put into it. My primary concern was to ensure I was investing in good software and a good company. The demands of writing prose in a text editor are light, but just exploring the menu items reveals a wealth of powerful features that even I find incredibly useful. For example: all the tools provided for creating and modifying hard-wrapped text. BBEdit is stable and well designed. When using it you can feel the careful consideration of every feature, you can feel the logic behind the way it wants you to do things, you can see that your needs have been anticipated by the designers. This feeling of completeness, of careful consideration, is an indescribable change from most of the software I'm accustomed to working with. You may not see it at first, like someone stepping into foreign culture, but learn the language and you will. Bare Bones is proven serious about consistently improving their product. Just look at the release notes for BBEdit over the years and you'll find that they regularly make major improvements to their software, and they aren't afraid to change fundamental parts of it if they believe the change improves BBEdit. Learning the app is made easier by the great number of neck-beards who have been using BBEdit for many many years - if I have a question there's bound to be someone out there who is willing and able to help, which is very important when learning a new editor. Just the other day someone on this list created an AppleScript for me to create numbered lists, something I never would have been able to do on my own. BBEdit has excellent documentation. Learning TextMate was a frustrating exercise in keeping up with the mailing list, asking questions on IRC, and digging through the built-in bundles. Having a well-written and comprehensive manual that explains everything the application can do is wonderful. On the features which make BBEdit unique: Most of the user-visible-features are focused on languages used in webpages - HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. BBEdit does not provide the same depth of tools, for example, for LaTeX users. However, it does provide a robust, language-agnostic, and well thought out tool-set for searching and replacing, rearranging, and marking up text (which can be batched using Text Factories). There are three primary ways to customize BBEdit's features: Text Filters (processes selected text via shell scripts), AppleScript (which seems to be primarily useful for customizing your interaction with the app), and clippings (which can also contain scripts - though I've never found a great example of how this works). So far I'm thrilled with BBEdit. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "BBEdit Talk" discussion group on Google Groups. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at <http://groups.google.com/group/bbedit?hl=en> If you have a feature request or would like to report a problem, please email "[email protected]" rather than posting to the group. Follow @bbedit on Twitter: <http://www.twitter.com/bbedit>
