BBEdit 8 Notes

Good:

• Page guide is better than the old Philip bar.
• ATSUI rendering means BBEdit no longer looks freaky when copying and pasting from OmniOutliner.
• Multifile searching is no longer app-modal.
• Can specify multiple folders to search at once.
• "Compare Two Front Documents" eliminates Michael's AppleScript from my scripts menu.
• bbdiff may come in handy.
• Doc-modal sheets have replaced numerous app-modal dialogs. Mostly a good thing, until a sheet obscures your document's content...
• Integration of HTML Tidy is very convenient. It allows be to write minimal HTML and say "now add all the closing tags" and it Just Works.

Bad:

• The big multiple-docs-per-window leaves me unimpressed. It's the first thing I turn off on a fresh Xcode install. The new workspace looked interesting until I learned it's only about palettes. What I want is really "workspaces, for document windows".
• No subversion support.
• No "Check spelling as you type".
• Command-W was broken for me out-of-the-box. I had to use "Set Menu Keys..." and set it.
• No automatic migration of my saved regular expressions. The release notes said they ought to have been, but it didn't happen for me.
• New UI for searching multiple folders is confusing. What's this "My Files & Folders"? How come I can click on the checkbox even when it's disabled?
• "smiley face enabled" dies, killing a little piece of joy in my life.

Monday, August 30, 2004
09:14 PM