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BBEdit 2.2.2
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Introduction to BBEdit
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Introduction to BBEdit
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Text Editors and Word Processors
Text Editors are differentiated from word processors by their performance and
by the features they offer.
The term “text editor” refers to an application which is used strictly for
editing and transforming text. The term “text” is used to describe a stream of
characters (letters and numbers, as well as special symbols); lines are
separated by a carriage return (the character generated by typing the “Return”
key on your keyboard).
A “word processor” is best defined by example: applications such as Microsoft
Word, MacWrite, and FrameMaker are word processors (although these days, the
line between word processors and page-layout programs is getting blurry).
Word processors offer an array of “powerful” features such as automatic text
wrapping and pagination, embedded graphics, multi-column formatting, style
sheets, footnotes, endnotes, spelling checkers, grammar checkers, and live
hyphenation. (The term “powerful” is marketing hype; “enabling” might be better,
if it didn’t sound like psychobabble.)
Text editors, on the other hand, are much leaner. They usually include a
facility for changing the display font of the entire document, and that is the
extent of their text formatting abilities. Because of reduced overhead, text
editors are usually faster at display and scrolling than word processors. Text
editors often contain features that aren’t found in word processors, such as
multi-file search and replace, line-oriented text manipulation, and more
esoteric types of text transformation.
Text editors usually have a much smaller memory footprint than word processors;
by example, the Microsoft Word 5.0 application occupies 850K on disk, and
requires 1MB minimum partition size to run, with 2MB the recommended size.
BBEdit 2.2, at this writing, occupies 190K on disk, and requires 300K minimum to
run, with 512K the recommended size. In this age of cheap RAM and disk storage,
these differences may not seem significant, but a smaller footprint often means
the difference between being able to run on a 1MB Mac Plus or not. For this
reason, many people are turning to text editors for use as scratchpads and for
basic text composition.
Text editors are also used heavily by programmers. Because of their
line-oriented nature, program source files are unsuited for editing with a word
processor. Also, most development environments on the Mac these days have text
editors built in; this ready availability of an editing facility for source
files means that there is no incentive for programmers to use anything else to
edit source files, in spite of the fact that they often gripe about the
limitations of the built-in editor.
BBEdit is a text editor.
By the definition above, BBEdit is not a word processor, because it doesn’t
include any of the “powerful” formatting features of word processors. It is
perfectly suited to the high-performance display, editing, searching, and
transformation of text files. It does include a few display and formatting
features, but this is not its main focus. Through its interface with the
dominant development environments on the Macintosh, BBEdit provides an excellent
substitute for those environments’ built-in editors.
Feature Overview
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BBEdit offers the following functionality which is unique among available Mac
text editors:
• Support for MPW’s ToolServer. ToolServer is an application which provides
the ability to run MPW shell scripts and tools without requiring the use of the
MPW Shell itself. This means that you can now use BBEdit as the basis for all of
your text editing, application building, and so on without MPW’s memory and disk
footprint. Also, because the MPW script and tool services are managed by a
separate application, you won’t have to reserve large chunks of memory for tasks
which you may only use some of the time.
• Support for the MPW “411” on-line Macintosh programming reference. This
support is provided through ToolServer.
• Importing and Exporting of foreign file formats via the Claris XTND™
mechanism. BBEdit ships with XTND translators for MacWrite 5.0 and MacWrite II,
and can use any other installed translators. (Symantec GreatWorks 2.0 ships with
many translators, including some for Microsoft Word and most other popular
word-processor formats.) This capability enables you to read files that are
stored in any word processor format for which there exists a Claris translator,
even if you don’t have the application that created it. You can also export
BBEdit-composed plain text files to any format for which there is a Claris
translator.
• Support for On Location™ for text searches. On Location 2.0 has the
ability to be used as a Apple Event-driven text search engine. BBEdit takes
advantage of this ability to speed up multi-file searches.
• Stationery documents. You can create a stationery document with BBEdit;
whenever you open that document with BBEdit, its contents, format information,
and window position will be used to create a new untitled window. You can also
create a “global” stationery document which will be used as a template for all
new windows.
• Open Several. This variation on the standard “Open…” command enables you
to open multiple files at once from multiple locations in the file system. You
can also specify aliases to files, and those aliases will be resolved all at
once.
• Powerful multi-file search (there’s that word again). BBEdit offers the
usual multi-file search, in which a disk directory is scanned and the files are
opened one at a time; however, BBEdit can also display the search results in a
window for easy browsing (and selected entries in the window can be opened for
display). The search can also be limited to files that are already opened for
editing in BBEdit, or to files which were already found in a previous multi-file
search. BBEdit also offers multi-file replace capability for automated “search
and destroy” operations.
• Built-in compare utility for determining and viewing the differences
between any two text files.
• Zero cost. BBEdit is free, with no qualification. It’s not shareware, and
it’s not commercial.
BBEdit also offers the following :
• High quality. BBEdit has achieved a remarkable level of stability for
freeware; it has received years of in-house and external testing. The user
interface is the result of extensive user feedback and polishing.
• File size limited only by available memory. BBEdit's default partition size
is 512K of RAM. This can be set as low as 300K, to make BBEdit the ideal
constantly-resident editor for small to moderate tasks, or turned up as high as
necessary to edit many large files or perform large-scale search-and-replace
operations. If you’re running under System 7.0, BBEdit automatically takes
advantage of available system memory, so that you don’t have to adjust its
partition size to edit large files.
• No hard limit on number of files open. The number of files that BBEdit can
have open at once is limited by available memory, and can be increased or
decreased by adjusting BBEdit's partition size as appropriate.
• Easy manipulation of multiple files at once. The "Open Several…" command
makes it possible to open multiple files from different folders at once, and the
Save and Print commands can operate on all open files at once.
• Pattern (“grep”) searching. Matching patterns can be constructed so that
strings other than exact literal matches can be found and replaced; for example,
converting Pascal comments to C comments, or converting C++ comments to C
comments.
• System 7 awareness. Besides supporting all of the basic System 7
functionality such as 32-bit mode, virtual memory, and the like, BBEdit also
takes advantage of specific System 7 functionality wherever possible in order to
either improve performance or to improve its appearance. This is done without
sacrificing System 6 compatibility. BBEdit also includes help balloons for most
of its menus and dialogs. Some of BBEdit’s advanced features, such as the
ToolServer and On Location interfaces, require System 7.
• High performance. Try and enjoy.
Distribution
------------
A Note about Shareware vs. Freeware
I have released a number of shareware programs over time, and I have found that
the cash return is so small as to be useless. From a user's point of view, I
object to being “guilt-tripped” into sending some amount of money for a program,
and I object to being told that “If you use the program for 15 days you must pay
the shareware fee”. I can see no justifiable reason to expect others to do what
I'm no longer willing to do. For these and other reasons, I am releasing BBEdit
as “freeware”: I ask for no money for the right for others to use it and give it
away. My reward will come, hopefully, in seeing BBEdit being used by people who
value its utility.
Some Minor Legal Stuff
---- ----- ----- -----
Although BBEdit is free, it is not “public domain”. It is copyrighted, and the
copyright will be enforced whenever appropriate; therefore:
• The source is not available.
• BBEdit cannot be sold, either by itself or in combination with any other
product, without my express written permission.
• If you're a user group which is publishing a CD-ROM or floppy collection,
you may include BBEdit and all of its included files without restriction, save
that the original package is included. Contact me for up-to-date versions and
information.
• If you’re a hard disk company which distributes PD, shareware, and freeware
on your disk drives, you’re welcome to distribute BBEdit. Contact me for
up-to-date versions and information.
• Commercial publishers and distributors of CD-ROM software collections may
not distribute BBEdit on CD-ROM without my express written permission.
• BBEdit may be posted on an information service which charges its users for
general connection time and downloading, but it may NOT be posted to an
information service which will charge for the specific right to download BBEdit,
without my express written permission.
• BBEdit may be given away as a support utility for a package which is
itself to be given away. People who need to distribute BBEdit as a support
utility should contact me for up-to-date versions and information.
BBEdit is copyright ©1992 by Richard M. Siegel. All rights reserved. Questions?
Problems? Praise? Suggestions? Want to be a beta site? Address correspondence
to:
Rich Siegel
1 Larkspur Way #4
Natick, MA 01760
Internet/Usenet: bbedit@world.std.com
If you need an up-to-date version, send written correspondence with a stamped,
self-addressed floppy mailer, and either a floppy or $5.00 to the above address.
MacWrite and XTND are trademarks of Claris Corporation.
GreatWorks is a trademark of Symantec Corporation.
MPW and ToolServer are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
On Location is a trademark of ON Technologies, Inc.
StuffIt is a trademark of Aladdin Systems Inc.