[HN Gopher] BBEdit is 31 years old
___________________________________________________________________
BBEdit is 31 years old
Author : rvense
Score : 237 points
Date : 2023-05-11 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.barebones.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.barebones.com)
| ycken wrote:
| It doesn't suck
| submeta wrote:
| I read about BBEdit on HN a few months ago and realized it has
| one use-case where it excels: text transformation and regex
| search/replace across files. When it comes to this, no other
| editor I know can hold water: neither Sublime, nor VS Code, nor
| Vim. And forget about Emacs, as regexes need to be awkwardly
| double or triple backslashed.
|
| Text transformations can be done via regex, predefined functions,
| or any scripting language, where the scripts will be listed in
| the menu.
|
| Regex search/replace has a history of used patterns, so you can
| reuse them.
|
| All in all, it is a very lightweight editor with excellent text
| transformation features that no other editor can offer.
|
| I use VS Code for coding, Emacs as a Lisp machine and its macro
| recorder for repetitive tasks, and BBEdit for all other text
| transformation tasks.
| yelling_cat wrote:
| That was the killer BBEdit feature for me, back when I was
| building my first static web sites. Making precise global
| layout changes without using a web template system felt like
| magic.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| This is why BBEdit is still my absolute go-to as a technical
| writer. I've found other editors that are _prettier,_ but it's
| just so darn good at text manipulation it's hard to believe.
|
| While I drifted away from BBEdit for coding a while ago, BBEdit
| 14's LSP support has pulled me back to some degree. I put
| together a decent Elixir package for it and, to my own mild
| surprise, like it more than Panic Nova or Doom Emacs. (Nova has
| tremendous potential, but it feels like it's still tripping
| over its own shoelaces a little too often.)
| axus wrote:
| Notepad++ has a decent interface for that, I assume BBEdit did
| it first.
|
| I'd be surprised if vim couldn't do it as a command. After
| doing a search, what did surprise me was Vim having it's own
| Fandom wiki. Maybe extreme Vim commanding will be the next
| popular livestreaming topic.
| tomcam wrote:
| I bought a license for it out of gratitude for TextWrangler,
| their free editor.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| BBEdit is one of the few apps I miss from the Mac world.
| ResEdit/Resourcerer are up there as well, being able to naively
| open up the resource fork and customize applications and
| sometimes make massive changes to them was great fun.
| paulrpotts wrote:
| Truly it was a different world. I learned so much investigating
| and modifying resource forks!
| ofalkaed wrote:
| While I remember those times fondly and with great nostalgia,
| I think the Apple ecosystem of the system 7 days hindered my
| learning, it was just too easy. I could open up AppleScript
| and hit record, perform some actions and then naively change
| some things to variables and I would have my script. I could
| open up HyperCard and make a game just by guess and check. I
| could open up an app in RedEdit and start changing
| applications. I never had to actually learn anything. My
| parents bought me a programming book back in those days and I
| saw little point in making the computer say "Hello, World"
| and reading through a book when I already had so much power
| that was effortless to get.
|
| But maybe I just did not see a need for applications beyond
| the ones I could already get so saw no need to learn to write
| applications from scratch or was more interested in
| exploring. Too long ago to remember my motives.
| nerdbert wrote:
| I hate subscription pricing for software.
|
| But BBEdit is so good and has been such a key part of my
| livelihood for decades that I gladly pay to upgrade every time a
| new major version comes out, even if I don't need any of the new
| features.
|
| That's the way to keep revenue coming without subscription
| extortion: make something genuinely useful that people truly like
| using.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| been using BBEdit since I got my first mac after graduating
| university, absolutely wonderful editor
| paulrpotts wrote:
| However old it is exactly, I've used this editor for decades and
| I love it. Most recently, I use the Worksheet feature to execute
| a series of scripts that do all the file conversion and make the
| RSS feed entries for my podcasts. It's easier to understand than
| a Makefile (although I do use Makefiles to build my blog posts)
| and it's all archived; if I need to regenerate anything I can
| just scroll back and re-run the commands right from the Worksheet
| file.
|
| I know the Worksheet concept wasn't invented by Bare Bones - I
| think they borrowed it from the original MPW (Macintosh
| Programmer's Workshop), which used to be what the cool kids used
| to build Mac software before there were competing IDEs. But Bare
| Bones definitely perfected it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even the free version (formerly TextEdit IIRC) is very good.
| restes wrote:
| >formerly TextEdit IIRC
|
| TextWrangler. TextEdit is the editor built in to macOS.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the one!
| Someone wrote:
| And TextWrangler formerly was BBEdit Lite
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBEdit#Freeware_versions)
| jtbayly wrote:
| And now there's just BBEdit, which is free, but has some
| features turned off unless you pay. I use the free version,
| and it is powerful!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Something ironic about a "bare bones" editor getting a
| 'lite' edition.
| mattl wrote:
| TextEdit is similarly old to BBEdit, just a little younger---
| shipping with OPENSTEP in 1996.
| dmd wrote:
| It was also 30 years old last year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008290
| dang wrote:
| Ha, I missed that. Ok, we've incremented its age in the title
| above. Thanks!
|
| (Submitted title was "BBEdit is 30 years old")
| rsfinn wrote:
| It looks like the occasion is the 30th anniversary of Bare
| Bones Software (the company):
| <https://www.barebones.com/company/>. Perhaps the original
| submitter mistakenly interpreted the "30th Anniversary
| special pricing" text as applying to the BBEdit program
| itself.
| lapcat wrote:
| "On this day in 1993, Bare Bones Software (not yet "Inc.")
| released the first commercial version of BBEdit."
| https://mastodon.social/@bbedit/110350464886512663
|
| The new title now seems inaccurate, or not reflecting the
| intention, given that, and given that the linked page says
| "30th Anniversary special pricing! Use the coupon code
| "BBEDIT30" at checkout to get BBEdit for US$30 for a
| limited time."
| SllX wrote:
| The situation is confusing because of a little bit of
| history.
|
| BBEdit was 30 years old last year because it really was
| around in 1992, but it wasn't commercially available. It
| was basically Rich Siegel and his friends. 1993 is when
| it became commercially available at version 2.5.
| lapcat wrote:
| I think you were too trigger happy in changing the title.
| It's a poor reflection of the link now.
| snarkyturtle wrote:
| Gotta love off-by-one errors
| inkywatcher wrote:
| 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.
| theonemind wrote:
| Have you filed bug reports? I've found the developers pretty
| responsive.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I remember attending an early 90s Mac users group at MIT where
| Rich came and demoed the then-new BBEdit, ran through the basic
| features, answered a few questions, and raffled off a license. A
| colleague won it. Glad to hear he's still at it.
| cstross wrote:
| 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?)
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Ad blocker?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Resize the browser window? I've seen UI magically appear when I
| do this. Worth a shot.
| mackid wrote:
| Love BBEdit, but you can also get Rich to fix your KitchenAid
| Stand Mixer. (No joke) Must be an interesting story on how this
| second career came about.
|
| https://www.mixerology.com/
| manv1 wrote:
| Still using it since longer than I can remember. From 68k to M1!
| It's been launched by "F1" on my keyboard forever.
|
| It's find differences is still unmatched IMO on any platform.
| "Compare folders" has been a real lifesaver for a ridiculously
| long time.
| BadThink6655321 wrote:
| I don't remember when I first started using BBEdit. Perhaps not
| long after the demise of MPW. I still use it for everything but
| Lisp development.
| xcrjm wrote:
| 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.
| voakbasda wrote:
| 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.
| Lammy wrote:
| Plus even if there were a Linux version it is now impossible
| (post-Pango-1.44) to make it display text in bitmap Monaco 9 :)
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pango/-/issues/386
| [deleted]
| ksherlock wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/97#issuecomment-5.
| ..
| Fnoord wrote:
| Sublime Text is suffice for me. Cross-platform and extendable.
| timestretch wrote:
| I've thought of switching to Linux, but until BBEdit is ported,
| I'll stay on the Mac.
| timestretch wrote:
| 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!
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I switched to CotEditor a few years ago, but before that I used
| BBEdit starting from way back on System 6 on a Mac SE.
|
| Definitely a great utility, but recently a bought the new version
| and just a few weeks later a new version was released that
| required me to buy it again. That soured me a bit on the company.
|
| I really like CotEditor though. Fully native Mac app, works
| great.
| rms2 wrote:
| If you bought a license and then "just a few weeks later a new
| version was released", then you were eligible for a free
| upgrade. And you can still get it; try writing to
| 'sales@barebones.com' and asking. (Odds are that your free
| upgrade email was sent and you didn't see it, or it got spam-
| filtered.)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I did email them, and I was offered a discount, but not a
| free upgrade. I was already checking out CotEditor at that
| point, however, and liked it, so I just stayed with that.
| ssbash wrote:
| As a long time macOS user, I've seen a lot of praise for BBEdit.
|
| 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.
| joshe wrote:
| Congratulations on 30 years of not sucking!
| righttoolforjob wrote:
| I've used it for about 25 years and still love it. Wish you would
| port it to Windows as well!
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| 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?
| trinix912 wrote:
| I'd say Carbon but it wouldn't work on macOS >= Catalina if it
| were true.
| lillywastaken wrote:
| 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.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| 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.
| rvense wrote:
| 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.
| klodolph wrote:
| $ otool -L BBEdit | sed 's#.*/\\(.*\\) (.\\*#\1#'
|
| 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).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| absolutely use this on a regular basis - congratulations "boston"
| edit!
| mattl wrote:
| Boston edit?
| kshay wrote:
| 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?
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >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.
| rms2 wrote:
| Try installing the TypeScript language server. More here:
| https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/lsp-notes.html
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _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)
| abujazar wrote:
| BBEdit is still my go-to editor for plain text files, one-off
| regex text processing tasks and for ssh-ing into hosts to fix
| config files.
| darthnebula wrote:
| I've been using BBEdit since version 4. It is still the most
| useful app on my Mac after almost 30 years. If someone put a gun
| to my head and told me I could install only one app on my Mac, it
| would be BBEdit.
| sonicrocketman wrote:
| 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.
|
| Keep up the great work BareBones!
| xattt wrote:
| You've perfectly captured the reason why people won't let go of
| emacs.
| favorited wrote:
| The last app using ATSUI for text layout.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| My #1 go-to for dealing with large text files. The Electron based
| stuff like VSCode et. al. completely break down on anything
| greater than a few MB.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Yes. I have used it to open db dumps (SQL files) that are
| hundreds of MB.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| Still a great program. Better than the garbage built-in TextEdit,
| way faster than something like VSCode.
| mprovost wrote:
| At this point how many AirPods does Apple have to sell to buy a
| license and preinstall it on every Mac instead of TextEdit?
| codazoda wrote:
| A couple days ago I started thinking that VS Code had slowly
| morphed into something that was starting to feel bloated. I took
| a look at Sublime, which I once loved, but the customization to
| make it look like I wanted seemed like too much. Maybe I'll give
| BBEdit a try; I don't think I've ever used it.
| sosuke wrote:
| I get lost every now and then trying out all the code editors
| on the market. My current usage in order Webstorm, VSCode,
| Sublime Text. For a long time I only used SciTE.
| baal80spam wrote:
| I am quite new to Mac world. Some time ago I looked around for a
| fast and free notetab-like application, similar to Notepad++ on
| Windows. Lot of people recommended BBEdit so I tried it and I'm
| quite happy with it. The only thing I cannot figure out is where
| is the "reopen all opened files on app restart" option.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Ahh that gets me nostalgic for the pre-VSCode days.
|
| How is TextMate doing these days? I know they spent forever for
| TextMate 2.0, and that somehow fizzled out...?
| 3by7 wrote:
| Textmate 2.0 got open-sourced
| https://github.com/textmate/textmate but it looks pretty much
| abandoned/finished.
| seanw444 wrote:
| https://github.com/CodeEditApp/CodeEdit
|
| Looks promising for you MacOS users.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >How is TextMate doing these days?
|
| 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.
| tesseract wrote:
| 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.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| 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.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Works fine on both my M1 machines, never seen this happen
| once. Maybe try a fresh install and transitioning over your
| settings bit by bit.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| You don't get the SPOD at startup while it tries to replay
| every FSEvent that's ever happened?
|
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| I mainly edit in vim in a terminal, but when I feel like a GUI I
| used BBEdit.
|
| I also use when I'm trying to understand someone else's code. I
| like its multi-file search better than anything else I've tried.
| When you do a multi-file search in BBEdit (or a single file
| search if you use the "Find All" command) it opens up a search
| results window split horizontally into two panes.
|
| The top pane shows all the matching lines, grouped by file. You
| can collapse the matches for any given file.
|
| When you select a line in the results pane an editor opens in the
| bottom pane for the file containing that line, with the cursor on
| that line. You can make changes if you want there or in the
| regular editing window that the file is in or both.
|
| You can have multiple multi-file search results windows open. I
| might be looking at a function in a file, do a multi-file search
| to find all mentions of that, and then while looking at a caller
| in another file see something that needs changing, and start
| doing that right in the bottom pane of the results. While doing
| that I might need to check something else out, do a second search
| for that, see something that needs fixing there, and do that from
| that results window's bottom pane.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Nobody has mentioned the manual. It is fantastic!
|
| 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.
| leejoramo wrote:
| Completely agree. One of the best software manuals ever
| written. And I too refer to the Regex chapter.
|
| I believe John Gruber wrote a significant portion of the manual
| back in the late 1990s
| Lammy wrote:
| TIL https://daringfireball.net/2002/12/bare_bones_disclaimer
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Is this documentation on the web somewhere? Going to dig and
| will post if I find anything..
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Think I found it: https://s3.amazonaws.com/BBSW-
| download/BBEdit_12.5.2_User_Ma...
|
| Referenced here: https://daringfireball.net/2019/01/on_gettin
| g_started_with_r...
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Is this it? https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/BBEditGr
| epQuickRefe...
| jtbayly wrote:
| No. That's just a cheat sheet.
|
| Here's one version: https://s3.amazonaws.com/BBSW-
| download/BBEdit_12.5.2_User_Ma...
|
| See chapter 8, starting on page 171.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Thanks! I think I also found it right as you posted :)
| file wrote:
| when any regex interpretation doesn't work like bbedit regex, i
| still feel like it's broken
| user2342 wrote:
| Bought my first license of BBedit a few minutes ago (impulses I
| can't control).
|
| I don't know yet what to to with it, but I will probably explore
| writing language modes for it. I used to do this for Sublime
| Text, but I think Sublime lost its Mojo at the point of not
| adding native support for language servers.
| tempodox wrote:
| 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.
| akhayam wrote:
| I have also been using BBEdit for a decade now, but didn't know
| that it had such a history behind it.
|
| Long live BBEdit + Vim...
| haroldp wrote:
| I think I got a free copy with WebSTAR back in the mid-90s and
| switched from SimpleText for coding. Nothing compares!
| s1mon wrote:
| Hmmm. Seems like it's 31+ years old. Here's Gruber on the 30th
| anniversary:
| https://daringfireball.net/2022/04/30_years_of_bbedit_not_su...
| rsfinn wrote:
| I believe it is Bare Bones Software (the company) that is
| having its 30th anniversary this month
| <https://www.barebones.com/company/>, rather than BBEdit (the
| program).
| lapcat wrote:
| "On this day in 1993, Bare Bones Software (not yet "Inc.")
| released the first commercial version of BBEdit."
| https://mastodon.social/@bbedit/110350464886512663
| oblib wrote:
| 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.
| GoofballJones wrote:
| 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.
| perardi wrote:
| You're getting a little doddery, old man. CMYK support was in
| 2.0, and _Layers_ came about in 3.0.
|
| ...I say as someone who used Photoshop 1.0. (And HyperCard.)
| lostgame wrote:
| 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.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| 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.
| yarrel wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| I love BBEdit.
| racl101 wrote:
| MacOS had two amazing editors before SublimeText and VS Code came
| along.
|
| TextMate and BBEdit.
|
| TextMate is no longer supported (if I remember correctly).
|
| But BBEdit is still going strong.
|
| To this day, BBEdit's diff utility is still my favorite.
|
| Also, BBEdit always provided free, incredible and comprehensive
| user manual PDF.
| pulvinar wrote:
| I came to BBEdit from TextWrangler, and from Alpha before that.
| I don't think anyone remembers Alpha
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21240488).
| CliffStoll wrote:
| 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.
| mattl wrote:
| TextWrangler was a spin-off product giving some of BBEdit for
| free
| vr46 wrote:
| I think it replaced BBEdit Lite IIRC?
| mattl wrote:
| Yep. Looks like to was paid for, but cheaper, and then
| later free.
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