BBEdit 9

BBEdit 9 doesn’t seem like as big an upgrade as 8.0 and 8.5 were, but it’s nonetheless a good one.

Hits

• Direct editing in search results windows and disk browsers.
• Separate, non-modal windows for single- and multi-file searches.
• Better interface for selecting favorite multi-file search locations, which can now include projects (formerly file groups) that aren’t currently open.
• When comparing files, you can now accept or reject individual changes within lines.
• Pasting text into a blank window auto-selects the right language.
• Syntax coloring for Objective-C 2.0 and Python decorators.
• Transparent handling of .bz2 files, such as SpamSieve logs.
• Backups are now grouped into folders by date.
• It’s easier to use text folding without the mouse.

Misses

• Projects seem like a good idea, but the interface just doesn’t feel right to me. It’s too hard to open nearby files in the project.
• The text completion shows irrelevant dictionary completions while ignoring words that appear just a few lines away in the same document.
• Unlike in other Mac OS X applications, you can’t single-tap the Escape key to invoke completion.
• Backups pollute the Documents folder instead of using Application Support.
• Working with large files is really slow, due to auto-saving using bzip2.
• Navigating the Find Differences window is slower than before, due to not-lazy-enough computation of intra-line differences.
• No Git integration.
• No API-aware text completion (would be a great fit with the new Tab-to-placeholder feature).
• Still no error browser for xcodebuild.
• Still no easy way to add syntax highlighting and navigation for languages that aren’t minor variations on C.

Unsure

• The Scratchpad sounds useful, but I haven’t found myself using it.
• Ctags support is improved, but I’ve never figured out how to get it to do anything useful.