BBEdit 12.5
There is a new command on the “Go” menu: “Commands…”. This brings up a modal panel which lists everything that you can do from a menu in BBEdit: menu commands, clippings, scripts, stationery, text filters, as well as open text documents and recent files.
This is a great way to quickly access commands from the keyboard without having to assign and remember obscure keyboard shortcuts.
Multi-File Search results windows now get a “reload” button, which you can use to repeat the search using the same settings.
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The Multi-File Search window provides the ability to filter files and folders separately. In this way, you can include only those folders that you explicitly wish to search.
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There’s a new command on the View menu: “Merge Windows”. When a non-project editing window is active, this command will collect the open documents from all other non-project editing windows that are open behind it, and will then close those other windows.
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There is a GUI editor for color schemes. If you drop a .bbcolors or .bbColorScheme file on the application, a color scheme document window will open for that scheme. You can make changes to the colors, similar to the fashion in which the “Text Colors” preferences does it.
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A simple Swift language module is now included with the application.
This is perhaps underselling it. I’ve been using the Swift language module for a while now (replacing my CLM) and am very happy with it.
“We are still hard at work on bringing BBEdit back to the Mac App Store,” explained Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software, Inc. “Rest assured: as soon as we have news, we will let everyone know.”
Previously: Mac App Store Sandboxing, IAP Trials, Multiplatform Services.
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The Mac App Store thing is so weird. The WWDC announcement made it seem like there was some change that would get developers back on board but nothing has been announced. And the headline apps, Transmit and BBEdit, are not in the MAS yet.
Despite its very long history and maturity, BBEdit is one of a dwindling number of technology products whose updates I look forward to. New releases, like this one, often include unexpected delights and genuinely useful refinements, and they never include changes that disrespect the user. Bravo!
Longtime TextWrangler/BBEdit user as I far prefer its clean no-nonsense interface over newer trendier text/code editors, bug have to say I've soured a bit on it recently (weak proportional font support, atrocious Arabic (RTL) support, and an AppleScript bug that broke the damn app every time it ran, requiring numerous relaunches to get through the job). Anyone think of any alternatives that might be worth comparing?
> Anyone think of any alternatives that might be worth comparing?
I still own a license for BBEdit, and I'm using it for random text files or random multi-file full-text searches, but for actual projects where I'm editing a number of files concurrently, and where Coda isn't a good fit, I'm either using Atom or Brackets. I also heard Visual Studio Code was pretty good, but I haven't used it extensively.
Really depends on what you want. I'm pretty happy with Sublime Text, as it is stable and efficient; for a multi-platform text editor it doesn't treat the Mac as an afterthought. However, it's not big on UI, with text-based config files and the like. I haven't tried the Web-based text editors (e.g. VS Code, Atom) however, mostly for concern about being dependent on something with that amount of resource use.
Proportional fonts work fine, however it looks RTL doesn't; there's just a plugin workaround for RTL (https://github.com/doobleweb/RTL-Mirror).
