![]() ![]() The downside of this new functionality? The answer to that depends on how you work. Sound tedious? It was, but no longer: now you can switch at will between the find dialog and document windows. That meant, among other things, that if you needed to work on a complex regular expression (i.e., grep) in a separate window before using it to find something, you had only two choices: 1) launch a separate text editor just to tweak your complex regular expression, or 2) continually use a “don’t find” keyboard shortcut to close the find dialog, then change to a different text document to tweak your expression, then change back to the document you wanted to search, then open up the find dialog again to paste in your expression. For years, BBEdit employed a modal dialog box for its bread-and-butter find capability. No, I’m not being facetious: a completely non-modal find dialog box for BBEdit really is a big deal. Wow, Modeless Find! (But is it a Mixed Blessing?) ![]() With that nod to BBEdit’s depth and breadth of skill out of the way, let’s get on with it. If you haven’t encountered BBEdit before, I’d also encourage you to have a look at the earlier reviews of versions 8.5 and 8.0 (“ BBEdit 8.0” and “ BBEdit 8.5 Upgrade”) for more on why someone working online in the mental health area might be interested in it in the first place. So if you’re a newcomer to this particular software package, I hope you’ll keep that context in mind as a backdrop for some of my more critical comments below. Yes, at least one competitor is closing the gap, but as far as I can tell, as of right now BBEdit is still the King of Text Processors. In this review, I feel a bit like that imaginary commentator, criticising some parts of the BBEdit 9 upgrade while still realising that as far as I am aware, this is the single most capable text processor available anywhere, on any platform, at any price. What a faux pas! Can you imagine, bending a knee on a sequence like that? On the other hand, this is an Olympic gymnast, and there might only be a handful of other people in the whole world who can even come close to performing a sequence like that, knees bent or otherwise. ![]() Imagine an Olympic gymnast executing a triple back somersault with one and a half twists dismount and the commentator saying “hmmm, that right knee was slightly bent…that’s going to cost her”. Some Context on the King of Text Processors Text Completion, Projects and Scratchpad.Wow, Modeless Find! (But is it a Mixed Blessing?).Some Context on the King of Text Processors. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |