Bare Bones Software has released version 9.0 of BBEdit, my preferred text editor on the Mac, and what I'm using to type these very words.
Some of the many new features in this release include:
- The text views in browsing windows (disk browsers, search results, P4 opened, and similar) are now editable; rather than having to open a file into a new window from such a browser, you can just edit it right in the window.
- Scratchpad:
There is a new command on the Window menu: Show Scratchpad
The Scratchpad window’s purpose is to be a space where you can manipulate text by performing transforms, manual edits, or batches of copy/paste.
It is ideal for quickly beating text from one source into submission before pasting it elsewhere.
The Scratchpad window automatically saves its content and state, eliminating those pesky “Save Untitled 237?” warnings when closing a window, or quitting BBEdit.
The Scratchpad is also available from BBEdit’s dock menu.
Finally, there is a new item on BBEdit’s Services menu: Append Selection to Scratchpad. This command will take the selected text, and place it at the end of the scratchpad, attempting to preserve any selection that was previously present. The Scratchpad window does NOT need to be open to use this command. Any text appended in this fashion will be present the next time the window is opened.
- Improved Ruby support
- "Save as Styled Text” and “Copy as Styled Text”
- Reorganized Find. For a long time, BBEdit had what was in my opinion the single best find and replace implementation ever seen in a text editor. It wasn't flawless, just better than everything else. This actually got a little worse in the last couple of releases, but this release corrects at least some of the flaws. Unfortunately it introduces one big new UI flaw that's pretty serious. The Find and Multifile Find dialogs have been split in two.
- Much improved Ruby support (BBEdit's biggest weakness relative to TextMate)
- Improved Python support
- Objective C 2.0 support
- Ponies
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Text completion. This is incredibly annoying, and I think I'll have to turn it off. If I don't want pop-ups in my web browser, why would I want them in my text editor? I may be right in the bottom of the trough for this feature: too fast a typist to need it, and too slow a typist to finish my thought before the pop-up appears. What's really weird about this one is it isn't doing simple code completion like most IDEs. It's actually trying to complete ordinary words as I type this very text.
Furthermore, when faced with the word don't, the autocomplete looks for completions that begin with the letter "t": table, take, taking, etc. That makes no sense at all.
The pop-up even stays open when there's no possible completion.
I try to ignore the popups and look at my keyboard like the bad two-finger typist I am. However even then I occasionally find an arrow key or the return key, navigating through the pop-up instead of the text. Worse yet, if a pop-up is open and I click the mouse to reposition the insertion point somewhere outside of it, the pop-up goes away but the insertion point doesn't get repositioned. I end upm typing at the old location instead of the new.
Enough is enough. I'm turning this misfeature off now. I think this is an experimental feature that got out the door way before it was ready.
Barebones fixed at least one of the annoying bugs I reported in the HTML tools with 8.7. However the paragraph tool still pops up an annoying modal dialog, and the acronym and abbreviation tools don't. This really needs to be corrected.
Upgrades cost $30. New copies cost $125. If you bought 8.7 this year, upgrades are free.
Mac OS X 10.4 or later is required.