So things were greatly complicated this prior week by the birth of our second son, Levi. Because of this, I was unable to really give BBEdit a test run, but the next month is going to provide more opportunity than I could possibly want. With two website deadlines approaching, I’ll have BBEdit open every day from this point forward.
So far, in the little time I have spent with it, I have been forced many times to repeat this phrase in my head:
BBEdit is not TextMate.
It happens to be something I need to keep in my mind as I try to actually evaluate the text editor on its own merits. BBEdit allows you to edit text files … which is already a point in its favor.
To reiterate the reason I’m doing this, BBEdit 10 is a major release that coincided with the release of Mac OS X Lion. BBEdit has been around for a LONG time, but it has been continuously updated not just for Mac OS X Lion, but made the transition from PowerPC to Intel and from Mac OS to Mac OS X. That’s dedication.
That’s the kind of dedication that I take comfort in, knowing that the company behind my tool will be there to continue to update that tool for the future. TextMate, sadly, seems to be all but abandoned right now with no real updates as to the status of TextMate 2 for some time.
There is one thing I am missing at the moment, and that is Command-T, or Go To File. I was hoping that PeepOpen would fill that void, but it does not seem to work with BBEdit at the moment. I’m hoping that a future release will fix that issue.
Otherwise, I look forward to really digging into things in the coming weeks and months.
2 replies on “The BBEdit Trial: A Week In”
PeepOpen is being updated for BBEdit 10, but you can install the “connection” script directly:
https://github.com/topfunky/PeepOpen-EditorSupport/tree/feature%2Fbbedit/PeepOpen-bbedit
The main thing to try and get used to with BBEdit (saying this as a fairly heavy TextMate user) is that it’s pretty much built to rely on AppleScript as its extension language. Getting good with AppleScript — which I’m not, really! — can help a lot.
Thanks! That fixed it for me … thank you so much.
We will see how much I get into AppleScript at the moment. I try top keep as close to “bare bones” as possible with my text editors and rely on my brain to handle the heavy lifting.