Bbedit 14 review manuals#
Bbedit 14 review software#

Once you get up and running, you’ll see one of BBEdit ‘s strong points. Many preferences control obscure features that mere mortals will never use, so you’ll be safe just accepting the default option. Other reviewers have criticized Bare Bones for succumbing to creeping featuritis, and they may have a point. I’ve been taking memory-improvement lessons just to remember all the features and capabilities I need to learn. Version 8’s preference window has 34 separate sub-menus, each containing several options.

Īnyone can jump into BBEdit and get work done, but the most powerful features of BBEdit take time to learn. Several years later, I’m still learning new techniques to better use BBEdit. All I had to do was learn to use it effectively. Right away, I knew that I had found the right tool. Bare Bones had (and still has) a demo version available, so I grabbed it. I learned about BBEdit back in the version 4 days. Searching across multiple files in different folders was impossible. While I could get the searches done with Word, its interface was less than helpful. Much of my work involves searching for particular strings of text, and analyzing the results. Word’s constant desire to manage my text and document formatting kept getting in my way. I was constantly fiddling with margins, fonts, and point sizes to keep the lines from word wrapping. As my source files came from a Unix computer, I had to fiddle with Unix-to-Mac line ending conversions. Or, “tried to use Microsoft Word.” While Word has it place, it’s the wrong tool to manipulate large text files. I’m tasked with analyzing these reports, and creating summaries that people not familiar with the raw reports can understand.īefore I learned about BBEdit, I used Microsoft Word. Several of the files are close to 2 MB large. Each month, I get eight text files, each hundreds of pages long, that contain all the monthly pilot schedules, as well as masses of other scheduling data. I focus on working with the computer program that builds the monthly pilot schedules. I volunteer for the Pilots Association at my airline, specializing in pilot scheduling. Let me share my BBEdit experiences with you, and you might benefit from them. But I do use BBEdit almost every day, and I’d be hard-pressed to do one of my regular jobs without it. I don’t use even 30% of BBEdit ‘s features. I’m certainly not a web site designer or programmer. It’s jammed with features to make web site coding, and general-purpose programming faster and easier. To be sure, BBEdit is the weapon of choice for Macintosh coders.

Bbedit 14 review software#

One would think that Bare Bones Software doesn’t market for the average user, as many of BBEdit ‘s other features are specifically targeted at web site designers and programmers. So, who should use BBEdit ? Do you need a text editor? Can you put BBEdit to good use? Â€¢ Support for rectangular text selections, including copying/pasting and application of many of BBEdit ‘s text transformations Â€¢ Quoted text rewrapper – makes reformatting or preparing email and Usenet content easy Â€¢ Hard or soft wrap text however you prefer But it has packed with more useful features for text editing and manipulation than any other Macintosh application I know.Ī short list of text editing commands includes: It doesn’t allow fancy page or character formatting, nor does it handle graphics. Word has hundreds of features for exotic text formatting and layout, but not many for manipulating your text.īBEdit is designed to edit text it focuses solely on letting you write and edit your words with speed and power.

Bbedit 14 review manuals#

Word, a “take-no-prisoners” high-powered word processor, is the most powerful of these applications, and millions of trees have been pulped to produce instruction manuals for it. By the way, it just so happens that Bare Bones publishes Mailsmith, a high-powered email client with the guts of BBEditâ€™s text editing engine.

The average Mac-using Joe or Jane using writes text with an email application, ( Mail, Eudora, Entourage, or the like) Microsoft Word, or Apple’s TextEdit, which is included with OS X. Deliberate understatement aside, it’s a great piece of software that you may not even know you need. Bare Bones Software’s marketing slogan for their high-powered text editor BBEdit 8 is “It doesn’t suck.” They’re right it doesn’t suck.