{"id":882,"date":"2004-08-30T20:05:25","date_gmt":"2004-08-31T00:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=882"},"modified":"2004-08-31T12:22:58","modified_gmt":"2004-08-31T16:22:58","slug":"bbedit-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/30\/bbedit-8\/","title":{"rendered":"BBEdit 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nBBEdit\r\n8<\/a> is now shipping, and there are copious \r\nrelease notes<\/a>, far too many to discuss. If I don’t mention one of\r\nthe new features, it doesn’t mean that I dislike it (or that like it),\r\njust that I didn’t have anything in particular to say about it.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nBBEdit’s interface, long derided as behind the times, has been re-done\r\nusing Nib files, and it uses sheets and drawers—where they make\r\nsense—as well as the font panel. The spelling checker is now non-modal.\r\nAlthough under the hood the changes were likely major, on the surface\r\nthe differences are minor. Overall, BBEdit 8 still feels like BBEdit, only\r\nbetter.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nThere is one major interface change, though: BBEdit can now open more\r\nthan one document in the same window. This is similar to how Xcode and\r\ntabbed browsers work, and I’ve never really been a fan of this kind of\r\ninterface. I think that’s because I’ve never seen it done right. BBEdit\r\n8 gets it almost right, though, and as a result this feature has been\r\ngrowing on me. I often have many different documents open in BBEdit,\r\nfrom different projects, and grouping them into a few windows makes\r\nthem easier to manage. There’s less overhead than in using BBEdit’s\r\nFile Groups, and as a result I am using the Documents drawer more\r\noften. The main problem is that the resulting window arrangements are\r\ntoo ephemeral. They should be saveable, along with the palette\r\npositions, in Workspaces, or else someone should write an AppleScript\r\nthat saves and restores window states. Also, I can’t tab into the\r\nDocuments drawer; I have to click in it, which almost defeats the\r\npurpose of type-selecting.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nCodeless Language Modules are here at last. There is already a module\r\nfor Apache\r\nConfiguration Files<\/a>. BBEdit still uses its code-based language\r\nmodules for most of the built-in languages, and so it kind of offers\r\nthe best of both worlds: speed and accuracy for the common and\r\ndifficult-to-parse languages, and easy extensibility for languages with\r\nstandard tokenization. However, we’re not quite<\/em> there yet,\r\nbecause the codeless language modules are a little under-powered. They\r\ndon’t support regular expressions so, for example, the Apache module\r\ncan’t color the pseudo HTML tags. Only one set of keywords is supported\r\nper language. And there is no way to take advantage of BBEdit’s\r\nexisting language modules, e.g. to embed your new language (or one of\r\nthe built-ins) into HTML. Language modules are still limited to\r\ncoloring and the function pop-up; there is no language-sensitive\r\nindentation or navigation assistance, as in Emacs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\nOther notes:\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n