Understandably, many Mac OS X users are anxious for Microsoft Word to be Carbonized. I wouldn't mind seeing it myself. But since I'm a web author, MS Word isn't my critical text application -- BBEdit is. And BBEdit is ready to roll right now on Mac OS X.
BBEdit is, of course, Bare Bones Software's multipurpose text editor for web authors, programmers, writers, and anyone else who wants to generate clean text without lots of special characters and gobbly-gook mixed in. We're talking clean text here.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about the new Full version of BBEdit today and highlight some of its unique capabilities. Even though most Mac developers are familiar with the app in a general sense, many don't realize how nimble it really is in the cross-platform universe of web authoring and CD publishing. I'm going to mention some of my favorite features, and then give you a general feel for how the Carbonized version performs on Mac OS X.
Bare Bones has also released BBEdit Lite for Mac OS X. This is the free version that gives you unlimited use of its features. The Lite version doesn't have all of the goodies the Full version does, but it is amazingly capable and an absolute "must download." I'll mention its features throughout this article as appropriate.
When you open your first BBEdit document, you're greeted with that beautiful Aqua dialogue box. If you've partitioned your hard drive the way I outlined in the Disaster-Free Upgrade to Mac OS X, you can open your existing BBEdit documents on the OS 9 partition, plus any other text document created by applications such as SimpleText, TextEdit, or even Microsoft Word as long as you saved it as a text file (.txt) and not a document file (.doc).
|
What you might not have realized, however, is that you can also open QuickTime movies, JPEGs, and Pict files. You can't edit and save these files, but you certainly can view them, and this is a very handy feature of both the Full and Lite versions.
|
|
The Full version of BBEdit is particularly friendly to AppleScript and Perl authors. Each camp has its own set of tools available via a drop-down menu located on the top bar of the application. AppleScripters are provided with a script editor and a terrific scripting dictionary, plus lots of other goodies. Perl scripters get a very nice tools palette and lots of other features that facilitate speedy authoring.
The one thing I absolutely love about BBEdit is the ability to save a document with the file creator, "save state," and line breaks of my choosing. This functionality is included in both the Lite and Full versions.
I like this feature because it allows me to easily create documents that launch the application I want to use for viewing them when double-clicked. If I write a ReadMe file, I want SimpleText to open when that ReadMe file is double-clicked. On the other hand, if I have an HTML document, I can save the file in BBEdit so that it will launch IE 5.
In the following illustration I've listed the same file saved four different ways using these controls in BBEdit. Notice how the icons are exactly as you would expect. This is a terrific way to create Apple Help documents that automatically launch the Help Viewer.
|
The key to controlling these save states is understanding how to use the Options button. When you choose "save as" for a BBEdit file, click the Options button to reveal a new dialogue box that provides choices for the various save states. All you have to do is select the formats you want and click OK.
When creating documents for other platforms, such as ReadMe docs for Windows on a CD you're preparing to burn, set up your options like this:
If you burn your CD on a Mac using ISO 9660 or another DOS-compatible format with the above parameters for your text files, they will look terrific on any Windows computer.
As you can see, the Options dialogue Box in BBEdit provides a wealth of flexibility, and is one of my favorite feature areas.
|
It's true: There aren't 12 different types of resume templates loaded into BBEdit, and you won't find a know-it-all paper clip tapping at you every time you try something new. But if you can live without these features, there are plenty of professional text-handling tools that enable BBEdit to be used for most of your markup and writing needs. Here are a few I really enjoy:
You also have a complete font menu, line-break control, printing options, line numbering, and so much more.
Another feature-rich area I want to mention is the Markup drop-down menu in the Full version. These tools can save you time as you prepare your text for web display and are worth the price of the upgrade alone.
Your first option in this drop-down menu is the HTML Tools Palette. This floating palette gives you quick access to just about every HTML tag you'll need for quick markup. For those of you who like to have your Dock always displayed in Mac OS X, go to BBEdit Preferences, choose HTML Palette, and then select Short Button Height. If you don't do this, the palette will drop all the way down into your Dock and drive you crazy.
Another one of my favorite markup functions is under Utilities -- the Make Tags Lowercase option. Because we're an XHTML shop, I constantly have to convert authors' markup tags from uppercase to lowercase. This slick utility coverts all the tags in one swift motion.
And finally, I want to mention BBEdit's compatibility with the Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe GoLive text editors. You can, for example, open your BBEdit HTML document in Dreamweaver by selecting Choose Dreamweaver. Also, if you open a GoLive document in BBEdit, then select GoLive Cleaner, BBEdit will remove some of the gnarly code that GoLive generates (such as font tags with no semantic value) and tighten up your entire document. Nice!
BBEdit 6.1 for Mac OS X is a terrific example of how smooth a properly Carbonized application can run. The look is fantastic, the performance is solid, and the feature set is rich.
Now that BBEdit Lite is available for Mac OS X, you can have a powerful text editor available in your new favorite working environment. If you rely heavily on a text editor for mission-critical projects, however, you'll want to upgrade to the Full version that contains so many useful features it would take me three or four review articles to cover them all.
I've only touched on my personal favorites today. These are the pliers and screwdrivers that have become indispensable members of my publishing toolbox. You will undoubtedly discover other features that are equally important to you. (If you have a feature or two that you really like, post a Talk Back and share with others.)
One last comment that is pure opinion: The companies that have provided us with solid Carbon and Cocoa applications early in the history of Mac OS X deserve special acknowledgement, especially when done well. I've already written about OmniWeb, Graphic Converter, and now BBEDit 6.1. Microsoft has also done a nice job as it continues to improve the Carbon version of IE 5.1. Thanks to the efforts of these developers who were willing to take a risk on this new operating system, we're given the opportunity to explore Mac OS X while accomplishing our daily tasks. As any good Mac user knows, the only way to really learn something new is to use it as part of your daily work.
BBEdit is one of the first apps I open each and every day.
Derrick Story is the digital media evangelist for O'Reilly. He is the author of The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers, The Digital Photography Companion, and Digital Photography Hacks, and coauthor of iPhoto: The Missing Manual, with David Pogue. You can follow him on Twitter or visit www.thedigitalstory.com.
Return to the Mac DevCenter.
Copyright © 2007 O'Reilly Media, Inc.
