I started programming on Macs in the early 90s, and I used BBEdit the entire time that I was on the platform. I no longer work on Macs, but I would love to see a Linux version. Never going to happen, but it's one of the few pieces of software that I still miss.
I believe you can create a TTF font with embedded bitmaps in it. At the specific size, it should use the bitmap font. At other sizes ... , well, don't do that.
I’d be really interested in reading a history of the codebase: from classic Mac Toolbox to whatever it looks like today. Is it still mostly C? A weird mishmash of C, C++, Obj-C, and Swift? What UI toolkit does it use?
I believe it's still mostly C, and it definitely uses some custom text field stuff. If it were using the Cocoa textfield it would have smooth scrolling, but BBEdit still retains line-by-line scrolling.
BBEdit can (and always could) read text files significantly larger than RAM without thrashing VM. This has always required a custom text engine, first because it was the only way to do that, and more recently I assume it still provides highest performance.
When it started, the native text editing on the Mac was limited to 32K chunks! Need anything more, you could start with the raw APIs that lay out a single line of text and do it by hand.
Looks like Objective-C, C++, AppKit, some other bits and pieces. QuartzCore has Core Animation in it which can either be used to create flashy animations or be used to create some very solid, high-performance text views (if that’s how you use it).
I've been using BBEdit since college and I love it. I was and is my primary text editor for all of my development (except Java and Swift which basically require an IDE).
Also, it's funny: I am only marginally older than BBEdit. I can't imagine running a software project for so long, let alone so successfully.
TM 2 was great, albeit somewhat abandoned, until Apple Silicon came along. There’s some sort of bug in the app that makes it regularly hang on launch on my M1 and M1 Max laptops.
Sublime Text 2 (its first cross-platform version) came on the scene around that time and I think drew away a lot of the crowd that had been waiting for TextMate 2.
Use it as my main editor still, absolutely love it. Still gets updated a few times a year. Just find it more snappier to work with than webtech based editors and the shortcuts and workflows are all more native on MacOS than VSCode. Also a big fan of the mixed font/size/styling when working with Markdown docs.
Order won't complete (after Paypal payment confirmed) -- "you must accept terms and conditions" message shows up, but no checkbox or other way to accept T&Cs.
(Is the BB order website incompatible with Firefox on macOS, or failing due to load?)
i've been using textmate and bbedit since college for notes, essay drafts, as a scratch pad, my first programming editor... everything! i still use it as a scratch pad and for random text/code editing (especially big regex-based changes) almost every day. i finally felt like a big-boy programmer when i'd earned enough to justify upgrading to the paid version and i hope it lasts another 30 years so others can find as much use in it as i have.
Because there’s a bunch of Hackernews trying to mimic the superficial trappings of their tech heroes by using extremely obfuscated interfaces and they get extremely loud when they’re not catered to.
The risk in adding something like “`vi` keybindings” is that it’s never going to be enough for the people demanding it. They tend to always want more and deeper integration because oh, gee, this one particular bit of line noise is critical to my workflow! And this repeats until they’ve turned their target into `vi`.
If you want `vi` just use and extend `vi` and let the rest of us be. Personally, I only find it ergonomic when used with an HP 9000-300 HIL keyboard, which puts the escape key in an odd place, and with an ADM-3A because all of the design decisions the cargo-cult thinks are so ingenious are really just accommodations for that particular terminal’s inadequate keyboard. Hence why I use a Macintosh, and a Macintosh editor.
BBEdit is invaluable to me and I will use it forever. That said, it has some persistent window focus bugs that spill over into finder that I dearly I wish that they would iron out. Otherwise, it is one of the most stable, reliable, and useful pieces of software that I have ever touched.
I love BBEdit and use it daily as my main text editor, and have since classic MacOS days! I'm hoping they add a couple of features:
- Ability to auto-format using Prettier.
- AI Large Language Model auto-complete for code. The field is moving fast, but I'd love to be able to use open models here. I don't want to send all my code to GitHub co-pilot.
BBedit has an excellent built in text-filter functionality and I've written scripts to send selected text as a prompt to various LLMs, but built-in would be ideal!
My late `09 Mac Mini blew up a few years ago. I had a spare one a friend gave me that I fired up and when I sent an email to the BBEDit folks asking if could download and unlock that version they gave it to me without any hesitation. All they asked for was my email address. Same with the folks at "Fetch".
Adobe basically told to piss off when I asked for a copy of the version of Photoshop I'd paid for. I downloaded a version of Pixelmator for free instead and haven't given Adobe a nickel since, and I won't ever buy anything from them again.
I caved and purchased a license of Fetch some 3 years ago after shamelessly pirating it for something like 15 years. It's such a fantastically simple piece of software and really filled the void WS_FTP created when I swapped from Windows to Mac.
When it came time recently to start from scratch when I purchased a new (used) MacBook Pro, I finally just caved on the license.
One of those I told myself I'd 'purchase when I had the money eventually' and actually did, heh. Zero regrets.
Long LOOOONG ago, I had a good relationship with Adobe. For instance, I was one of the beta-testers for Photoshop 3.0 (which was the first to do native CMYK). Would talk with them all the time over the phone.
But those guys have long since left the company and the "bean counters" took over the company and it has been downhill ever since. I too will never give them another dime. I don't mind their products, I just can't abide the management and company.
I've had the same experience as you did with BareBones though. They always came through for me with BBEdit. I told them one time they have a customer for life, and I've kept that promise.
I can remember emailing Ambrosia Software in the late 90's and having to tell them what my email address had been when I purchased license keys. They didn't give me any trouble at all.
Companies with solid products and solid support really stand out.
I, too, have been using this delightful editor since the early 1990's -- once known as TextWrangler. Still going strong!
Their mission statement is spot on:
We don’t have investors to impress, so we don’t need a “mission statement.”
We enjoy writing and shipping great products
that address the needs of ourselves and our customers.
I’ve been using it for most of those years, and still use it every day. We recently had to wrangle a bunch of 400Mb+ XML files, and everyone else’s editor struggled even to open them, while I happily regexed my way around extracting various data.
However, I reluctantly have to say that when working with TypeScript codebases specifically, I do feel the lack of IDE features for recognizing imports and cross-referencing symbols across files. Any other BBEdit diehards in this position? What have you ended up doing?
>We recently had to wrangle a bunch of 400Mb+ XML files, and everyone else’s editor struggled even to open them, while I happily regexed my way around extracting various data
Way back with version 4 (I think), I used it to work on a CSV that was way larger than the amount of RAM I had in the computer. Amazingly responsive. Not that long ago I used it on some XML monstrosities that were pushing a gig in size. Still worked.
I still use it as my main environment today. Over the years you accumulate a variety of little snippets and scripts (in all sorts of languages, including AppleScript) and whatnot that help with your particular workflow. It's very much like a prettier, pointy-clickier version of Emacs in this way.
I really miss BareBones Mailsmith, which was like BBEdit for mail. In today's world where everybody uses HTML email (boo!), it wouldn't be so great, but man alive it was good.
BBEdit was one of the best apps on my very first Mac in 1995, and I've been using it ever since. No other software I use has more years of service under its belt. 68k, PowerPC, Intel, ... — that alone is such a rare achievement. I don't know any other commercial software with such a track record.
They will pry it from my cold, dead hands once I'm gone.
136 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadTextWrangler. TextEdit is the editor built in to macOS.
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/97#issuecomment-5...
BBEdit (architecture x86_64): libz.1.dylib libbz2.1.0.dylib Accelerate AppKit CrashReporter ApplicationServices AudioToolbox Automator Carbon CoreAudio Quartz DiskArbitration Intents IOKit QuickLook Security SystemConfiguration UserNotifications WebKit CandiedYams Titlecase UpdateKit Foundation libobjc.A.dylib libc++.1.dylib libSystem.B.dylib CFNetwork CoreFoundation CoreGraphics CoreServices CoreText ImageIO QuartzCore
Looks like Objective-C, C++, AppKit, some other bits and pieces. QuartzCore has Core Animation in it which can either be used to create flashy animations or be used to create some very solid, high-performance text views (if that’s how you use it).
BBEdit is 30 years old today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008290 - April 2022 (104 comments)
BBEdit 14 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27905644 - July 2021 (159 comments)
BBEdit 13.0 Release Notes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156348 - Oct 2019 (1 comment)
BBEdit is turning 25 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602488 - Dec 2018 (14 comments)
Bare Bones Software Celebrates BBEdit's 25th Anniversary - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17052289 - May 2018 (2 comments)
What's new in BBEdit 12 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15487561 - Oct 2017 (1 comment)
TextWrangler to Be Retired as Bare Bones Software Focuses Development on BBEdit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779768 - March 2017 (3 comments)
Why would a front-end developer on OS X use any editor besides BBEdit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9214963 - March 2015 (11 comments)
Back to BBEdit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8479905 - Oct 2014 (3 comments)
Macintosh Text Editor BBEdit Turns 20 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3833672 - April 2012 (32 comments)
Bare Bones releases BBEdit 10, cuts the price - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2781942 - July 2011 (3 comments)
Also, it's funny: I am only marginally older than BBEdit. I can't imagine running a software project for so long, let alone so successfully.
Keep up the great work BareBones!
How is TextMate doing these days? I know they spent forever for TextMate 2.0, and that somehow fizzled out...?
Seriously, if that could get fixed, I'd still use TM, it's my favorite editor. But I can't even look at the sources because they're GPL3.
Looks promising for you MacOS users.
Use it as my main editor still, absolutely love it. Still gets updated a few times a year. Just find it more snappier to work with than webtech based editors and the shortcuts and workflows are all more native on MacOS than VSCode. Also a big fan of the mixed font/size/styling when working with Markdown docs.
(Is the BB order website incompatible with Firefox on macOS, or failing due to load?)
Update: turns out it's a known bug on their back end service (they're working on a fix). Everything now sorted out manually.
It's find differences is still unmatched IMO on any platform. "Compare folders" has been a real lifesaver for a ridiculously long time.
However I find it unusable without a way to enable Vim keybindings.
It’s great that BBEdit is still going strong 30 years later. But could the team throw us Vim users a bone?
Even Panic’s Nova has Vim bindings built in.
It’s a Macintosh application, it uses the Macintosh key bindings. If you’d rather use vi just use it.
Just because BBEdit existed during the Classic Macintosh days doesn’t mean we should be forced to use those keybindings forever.
I don’t see why providing the option for vi bindings is such a monumental ask? I’m not asking the default to be changed.
The risk in adding something like “`vi` keybindings” is that it’s never going to be enough for the people demanding it. They tend to always want more and deeper integration because oh, gee, this one particular bit of line noise is critical to my workflow! And this repeats until they’ve turned their target into `vi`.
If you want `vi` just use and extend `vi` and let the rest of us be. Personally, I only find it ergonomic when used with an HP 9000-300 HIL keyboard, which puts the escape key in an odd place, and with an ADM-3A because all of the design decisions the cargo-cult thinks are so ingenious are really just accommodations for that particular terminal’s inadequate keyboard. Hence why I use a Macintosh, and a Macintosh editor.
- Ability to auto-format using Prettier.
- AI Large Language Model auto-complete for code. The field is moving fast, but I'd love to be able to use open models here. I don't want to send all my code to GitHub co-pilot.
BBedit has an excellent built in text-filter functionality and I've written scripts to send selected text as a prompt to various LLMs, but built-in would be ideal!
Adobe basically told to piss off when I asked for a copy of the version of Photoshop I'd paid for. I downloaded a version of Pixelmator for free instead and haven't given Adobe a nickel since, and I won't ever buy anything from them again.
When it came time recently to start from scratch when I purchased a new (used) MacBook Pro, I finally just caved on the license.
One of those I told myself I'd 'purchase when I had the money eventually' and actually did, heh. Zero regrets.
But those guys have long since left the company and the "bean counters" took over the company and it has been downhill ever since. I too will never give them another dime. I don't mind their products, I just can't abide the management and company.
I've had the same experience as you did with BareBones though. They always came through for me with BBEdit. I told them one time they have a customer for life, and I've kept that promise.
…I say as someone who used Photoshop 1.0. (And HyperCard.)
Companies with solid products and solid support really stand out.
Their mission statement is spot on: We don’t have investors to impress, so we don’t need a “mission statement.” We enjoy writing and shipping great products that address the needs of ourselves and our customers.
To this day I still open the BBEdit manual (to chapter 30, maybe?) if I want to figure out how to write some Regex.
I’ve never seen such clear and comprehensive instructions on Regex anywhere else.
I believe John Gruber wrote a significant portion of the manual back in the late 1990s
Here's one version: https://s3.amazonaws.com/BBSW-download/BBEdit_12.5.2_User_Ma...
See chapter 8, starting on page 171.
Referenced here: https://daringfireball.net/2019/01/on_getting_started_with_r...
I love BBEdit.
However, I reluctantly have to say that when working with TypeScript codebases specifically, I do feel the lack of IDE features for recognizing imports and cross-referencing symbols across files. Any other BBEdit diehards in this position? What have you ended up doing?
Way back with version 4 (I think), I used it to work on a CSV that was way larger than the amount of RAM I had in the computer. Amazingly responsive. Not that long ago I used it on some XML monstrosities that were pushing a gig in size. Still worked.
I still use it as my main environment today. Over the years you accumulate a variety of little snippets and scripts (in all sorts of languages, including AppleScript) and whatnot that help with your particular workflow. It's very much like a prettier, pointy-clickier version of Emacs in this way.
I really miss BareBones Mailsmith, which was like BBEdit for mail. In today's world where everybody uses HTML email (boo!), it wouldn't be so great, but man alive it was good.
They will pry it from my cold, dead hands once I'm gone.
Long live BBEdit + Vim...