Bare Bones Software ships BBEdit 9.0
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 28, 2008 at 1:12pm
Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 9.0 , an upgrade to the HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. The upgrade introduces such new capabilities as Projects, non-modal Find and Multi-File Search windows, editing in browsers, text completion, and a Scratchpad.
BBEdit 9 also offers revamped Ruby language support, enhanced JavaScript support, updates to the ObjC, Obj-C++ and YAML language modules, transparent support for bz2 compression, and more. The new Projects feature supplants file groups by offering direct editing within the Project window, and direct manipulation of items within a project, including the ability to rename, create, and delete files and folders. Projects can contain any combination of directories and individual files, and their contents can be directly searched as well as processed by text factories.
BBEdit’s search and replace power is now channeled through modeless Find and Multi-File Search windows, which sport new options and still offer extensive keyboard controls for streamlined operation. BBEdit 9 can also directly search Xcode projects.
The Find Differences command now generates more usable results for file comparisons. It’s now possible to review and apply discrete differences that occur within lines.
Extensive changes to BBEdit’s text engine now support editing text in disk browsers, search results, and other text panes within the application, says Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software. Text completion, another major new feature in BBEdit 9, accelerates the creation of code and content by suggesting completions as typing is paused, or upon request, as desired, he adds. Possible completions include words in the current documents and other sources, such as the system spelling dictionary, BBEdit’s own clippings, and ctags. Text completion support applies to any language and can be configured on a per language basis.
BBEdit 9 provides a new Scratchpad window for quickly editing or transforming text without having to create temporary files. The Scratchpad, available via the “Show Scratchpad” command from the Window menu or Dock, automatically saves its contents.
Siegel says that BBEdit 9 brings improvements in its Ruby language support, including improved support for text folding, handling interpretive strings, and more, as well as in its JavaScript support. The Objective-C and Objective-C++ modules have been updated to include language keywords from Objective-C 2.0. The YAML module has also been enhanced.
BBEdit 9 can now transparently read and write files compressed with bz2. A new Document Statistics display presents the number of characters, words, and lines in each text view’s status bar. BBEdit 9 customers can now automatically sync their BBEdit application support folder via .Mac/MobileMe. Other enhancements include improved awareness of Xcode, support for additional ctags formats, a new clippings set for PHP, enhancements to the HTML and Markdown clippings sets, and more.
BBEdit 9 is available at a suggested retail price of US$125. Any registered owner of BBEdit can upgrade for US$30. Anyone who purchased BBEdit 8.5 to 8.7 on or after Jan. 1, 2008, is eligible to receive a free upgrade. Customers who purchased directly from Bare Bones Software will be notified automatically via email. Educational discounts and site license pricing are also available.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
