Chocolat 2 2 3 – Native Cocoa Text Editor
Chocolat is a new text editor that combines native Cocoa with powerful text editing tools. Features: Split editing Code completion Live errors Folding Symbol list Blockedit Vim mode Jump to. Chocolat is a text editor app for Mac OS X, that combines native Cocoa with powerful text editing tools.
Or, 'why I won't be buying it again'.
Some of you might have heard of Chocolat. Some of you might not have, so here's a quick summary. It describes itself as a 'Native text editor for Mac'.
I found Chocolat earlier this year, and kind of liked it. It had pretty good JavaScript support, and as I write a reasonable amount of JavaScript on random projects usually involving QML, I found it worthwhile enough to buy it for the few bucks it cost. I was quite happy with it. The user interface was also neat. I bought it in May, and was pretty happy.
But soon after, OS X Yosemite bursts onto the scene.OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014. The public beta was released on June 24, which I upgraded to on day one. I work on a lot of software, so it's kind of natural that I'm on the close-to-bleeding-edge, so I can make sure that things work.
Chocolat, unfortunately, didn't work on Yosemite. It crashed. As I don't use it all that much, I didn't mind, figuring that this would get sorted out sooner or later. Aside from that, my Yosemite story has been pretty painless and enjoyable.
This week, I finally decided to give Chocolat another try, figured out that version 3 supposedly doesn't crash on Yosemite, and got redirected to http://chocolatapp.com/3/. Right up there, in green font is this:
Why, I hear you ask, is the pricing different? Good question.
It costs money because, well, it's a major upgrade. Not too much visible on the user end, but apparently there was a lot of technical debt that needed to be paid down. I can respect that.
On the other hand, it's free for Mavericks users because 2.x crashes on Yosemite, and if it wasn't free for users before they upgrade, there would probably be a lot more pissed off people.
Meanwhile, everyone who stuck with Mavericks gets it for free, because otherwise, there would be no 'smooth upgrade path' (read: a lot more pissed off people). I'm sorry, but where the hell is my 'smooth upgrade path'?
What am I going to do about this? Well, I'm definitely not going to buy Chocolat for the second time in a year. Apparently, it's pissedenoughotherpeople off that they had to write a 'FAQ' page about it. But an FAQ page doesn't give me the working software that I paid for already.
Chocolat 2 2 3 – Native Cocoa Text Editors
Sad, really.
As an aside, I was originally not going to write about this, and just let it slide (it's not like it's expensive software). But then I actually talked to the author about it, and the answer I got could be tl;dr'd down to 'well, but don't you think I should get paid for the work I did on v3?' to which my answer is 'sure, but I already paid you two months before I stopped being able to use it'. And that got me annoyed enough to write this post.
I'll be clear here: I have nothing wrong with the authors of software getting paid so they can keep writing software.
What I do have problems with is buying a product and not being able to use it two months later. And still not being able to use it once the admittedly beta operating system I was on at the time is out in public release. Especially when everyone else is able to upgrade without a second thought.
And that's why I'll be avoiding Chocolat in the future.
BBEdit editing its own Wikipedia article | |
Developer(s) | Bare Bones Software |
---|---|
Initial release | April 12, 1992; 28 years ago |
Stable release | |
Written in | C (through Carbon API) |
Operating system | macOS |
Type | Text editor |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www.barebones.com/products/bbedit |
BBEdit is a proprietarytext editor made by Bare Bones Software, originally developed for MacintoshSystem Software 6, and currently supporting macOS.[2]
History[edit]
The first version of BBEdit was created as a 'bare bones' text editor to serve as a 'proof of concept'; the intention was to demonstrate the programming capabilities of an experimental version of Pascal for the Macintosh. The original prototypes of BBEdit used the TextEdit control available in versions of the classic Mac OS of the time. The TextEdit control could not load files larger than 32 KB. The Macintosh Pascal project was ultimately terminated, but the demonstration program was reworked to use the THINK Technologies 'PE' text editing engine used for THINK C, which was much faster and could read larger files. BBEdit was the first freestanding text editor to use the 'PE' editing engine, and is the only one still being developed.
BBEdit was available at no charge upon its initial release in 1992 but was commercialized in May 1993 with the release of version 2.5.[3] At the same time, Bare Bones Software also made a less-featured version of BBEdit 2.5 called BBEdit Lite available at no cost. BBEdit Lite lacked plugin support, scriptability, syntax coloring and other features then deemed as mainly for advanced users. Bare Bones Software discontinued BBEdit Lite at version 6.1 and replaced it with TextWrangler, which was available for a fee, although significantly less than BBEdit. In 2005, TextWrangler 2.0 was released as freeware and subsequent versions continued to be distributed as such[4] up until 2017, when it was sunsetted and incorporated into BBEdit.[5]
Throughout its history, BBEdit has supported many Apple technologies that failed to gain traction, including OpenDoc and PowerTalk. The failure of PowerTalk, and the desire of developers to have email integrated to their text editor, led to the development of Mailsmith, an email client that uses BBEdit's editor component. Formerly developed by Bare Bones as a commercial application, in 2009 Mailsmith was transferred to Stickshift Software LLC and would continue to be developed as a labor of love and released as freeware.[6]
In 1994, taking advantage of BBEdit's then-novel plugin support, third party developers started writing plug-ins to easily create and format HTML code. In fact, the developers at Bare Bones Software first learned of the existence of HTML through users inquiring about these plug-ins. Barebones later bought the rights to the plugin code from their author and included them as part of the standard BBEdit package. The tools were included as an optional palette in version 4, and were progressively more integrated, gaining their own menu in version 5.0.[7] In version 4.5, Bare Bones introduced BBEdit Table Builder as an additional tool for web designers and developers to visually design HTML tables, then the main technique for layout control on web pages.[8][9] Table Builder was removed in version 6.0, since enhancing it would involve replicating the features of existing visual HTML editors, and BBEdit was at this time bundled with Dreamweaver.[10] BBEdit's plugin support was removed in version 9.6, in favor of the expanded selection of scripting languages available on Mac OS X.
BBEdit was one of the first applications to be made available for Mac OS X, as a Carbon app. On macOS BBEdit takes advantage of the operating system's Unix underpinnings by integrating scripts written in Python, Perl, or other common Unix scripting languages, as well as adding features such as shell worksheets that provide a screen editor interface to command line functionality similar to MPW Worksheets and Emacs shell buffers.
BBEdit's creator codeR*ch
refers to Rich Siegel, one of Bare Bones Software's founders and the original author of BBEdit.
Features[edit]
BBEdit is designed for use by software developers and web designers.[2] It has native support for many programming languages and custom modules can be created by users to support any language. BBEdit is not a word processor, meaning it does not have text formatting or page layout features.
The application contains multi-file text searching capabilities including support for Perl-compatible regular expressions. BBEdit allows previewing and built-in validation of HTML markup and also provides prototypes for most HTML constructs that can be entered into a dialog box. It also includes FTP and SFTP tools and integrates with code management systems. BBEdit shows differences between file versions and allows for the merging of changes. Support for version control, including Git, Perforce, and Subversion is built in.[2]
A number of applications and developer tools provide direct support for using BBEdit as a third-partysource-code editor.
BBEdit supports the Open Scripting Architecture and can be scripted and recorded using AppleScript and other languages, as well as having the ability to execute AppleScripts itself.[11]
Language support[edit]
BBEdit supports syntax highlighting for a wide variety of popular computer languages. As of version 10.1, these include: ANSI C, C++, CSS, Fortran 95, HTML, Java, JavaScript, JSP, Lasso, Object Pascal, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Perl, PHP, Python, Rez, Ruby, Setext, SQL (including Transact-SQL, PL/SQL, MySQL, and PostgreSQL), Tcl, TeX, UNIX shell scripts, XML, and YAML. BBEdit's SDK allows users to develop additional language modules.[12]
Freeware versions[edit]
BBEdit Lite[edit]
BBEdit Lite was a freeware stripped-down version of BBEdit,[13][14] that ceased development in 2003. BBEdit Lite had many of the same features as BBEdit such as regular expressions, a plug-in architecture and the same text editing engine, but no programming and web-oriented tools such as syntax highlighting, command lineshell, HTML tools or FTP support. BBEdit Lite 6.1 comes in two forms: a Classic version for use under Mac OS 7.5.5 to Mac OS 9, and a Carbon version that runs under Mac OS X natively. Note: the Classic version does not run under the Classic environment.[15]
TextWrangler[edit]
Developer(s) | Bare Bones Software |
---|---|
Initial release | February 25, 2003; 17 years ago |
Stable release | 5.5.2 / September 20, 2016 |
Operating system | macOS |
Type | Text editor |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ |
In 2003, Bare Bones introduced the commercial text editor TextWrangler, an enhanced version of BBEdit Lite,[14][16] which ceased further development. Later TextWrangler 2.0 was made available free of charge.[17] In 2016, BBEdit 11.6 introduced a free mode that matched TextWrangler's feature set, and in 2017, Bare Bones sunsetted support and development for TextWrangler. [18]
A plain text editor like BBEdit, TextWrangler did not have a robust set of formatting and style options. It has features common to most programming text editors, such as syntax highlighting for various programming languages, a find and replace function with regular expression support, spell check, and data comparison. TextWrangler also included scripting support using AppleScript, Python, Perl, shell scripts, and BBEdit's native Text Factories. It supported text reformatting, and could read and save files in encodings including various Unicode encodings, ASCII, Latin-1 and Latin-9.
BBEdit 11.6 and up[edit]
In the Summer of 2016, with the release of BBEdit 11.6, Bare Bones Software introduced a free mode of BBEdit[19] that even after the expiration of the 30-day evaluation period of BBEdit's full features, would continue to offer both TextWrangler's features and some additional features beyond TextWrangler's.[20] In response to a user question, author Rich Siegel confirmed that TextWrangler would eventually be phased out, given that the free mode of BBEdit now incorporates all functions of TextWrangler.[21][22]
References[edit]
- ^'Bare Bones Software BBEdit Downloads'.
- ^ abcBare Bones Software (2008). 'Bare Bones Software - BBEdit 9'. Archived from the original on 20 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-20.
- ^'MacTech The journal of Apple technology'. preserve.mactech.com. Retrieved 2019-08-09.
- ^'TextWrangler aims to set the standard for text editors'. Macworld. 2005-01-18. Retrieved 2019-08-09.
- ^'We've officially sunsetted TextWrangler and it's not compatible with High Sierra. Time to switch!'. Twitter. 2017-10-12. Retrieved 2019-08-09.
- ^'Free Mailsmith Is the BBEdit of Email Clients'.
- ^'Review of BBEdit 5.0'.
With BBEdit version 5.0, in a move sure to win applause from many long-time users, the HTML tools have been moved into their own Markup menu (the palette is still available as well).
- ^'BBEdit 4.5'.
Ironically, Bare Bones has added a visual HTML tool to BBEdit 4.5, known as the BBEdit Table Builder. The Table Builder is a separate application and as the name implies, it is used to construct HTML tables.
- ^'Bare Bones Software Company History'.
- ^'BBEdit 6.5 manual'(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 2016-10-11. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
Starting with BBEdit 6.0, Table Builder is no longer included in the BBEdit package. After thorough consideration, we decided that in order to expand Table Builder’s capabilities sufficiently to meet the needs of a majority of our customers, it would be necessary to replicate much of the functionality presently provided by existing visual HTML editors.
- ^Bare Bones Software. 'BBEdit's Other Useful Features'. Archived from the original on 4 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-03.
- ^Bare Bones Software. 'BBEdit's Display Features'. Archived from the original on 19 August 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-03.
- ^MacTech July 1993 Newsbits, http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.09/09.07/Jul93Newsbits/index.html
- ^ abBare Bones Company History, http://www.barebones.com/company/history.html
- ^Gruber, J., Kindall, J., Borenstein, P., Jester, S.,Siegel, R., & Woolsey, P. (2001). BBEdit Lite 6.1 User Manual. Bedford, MA: Bare Bones Software, Inc.
- ^MacWorld, BBEdit, February 2003. http://www.macworld.com/article/9341/2003/02/bbedit.html
- ^Bare Bones TextWrangler FAQ http://www.barebones.com/support/textwrangler/faqs.html
- ^''Bare Bones Drops TextWrangler for BBEdit's 'Free Forever' Demo''.
- ^'TextWrangler'. Bare Bones Software. Archived from the original on 5 August 2016. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
- ^'BBEdit Comparison Chart'. Bare Bones Software. Archived from the original on 2016-08-26. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
- ^'Re: Why is TextWrangler still available/developed given the recent addition of free mode to BBEdit?'. Google Groups. 2 August 2016. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
- ^'TextWrangler to Be Retired as Bare Bones Software Focuses Development on BBEdit'. Retrieved 2017-07-28.
External links[edit]
- BBEdit – official site