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TextWrangler to Be Retired as Bare Bones Software Focuses Development on BBEdit
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Quoting the license policy for TextMate from the MacroMates website:
Version 2.0 of TextMate is being developed as open source. This doesn’t change that TextMate is a commercial product, and while current prebuilt binaries work without a license key, they may need one in the future.
If you're using it "free", you're violating the license agreement. If you just mean the source code is available, Vim and Emacs beat TextMate to that punch by decades. BBEdit is a nice, robust, and well-liked editor, just not to my taste. Wishing ill will to someone or something just because they're not your personal favorite is kind of heartless.
After three rounds of questions with their tech support, they’ve been unable to answer my simple question - basically, what are the differences between the “free” version of BBEdit and the paid version? They keep pointing me to the comparison chart between TextWrangler and BBEdit (LINK) but cannot answer my simple question as to whether any TextWrangler features are not in the free BBEdit or whether the free BBEdit offers anything more than TextWrangler.
They've been around a looooooong time, so it doesn't really fit in the modern style (or the style before that, or that, or that), but is very recognizable to anyone in the industry. Also, with a product as good as BBEdit, they can put any icon they want on it.
Since it doesn't cost anything up-front, you could download it and see what you think. The license agreement states:
While running in demo mode, BBEdit will operate with full functionality for up to 30 days. Once the demo period has expired, BBEdit will remain permanently functional with a revised feature set that includes its powerful text editing capabilities but not its web authoring tools or other exclusive features; these features will present a reminder dialog instead of functioning when chosen.
When the product is unlicensed, all menu commands corresponding to these exclusive features are badged with a "Demo" icon. BBEdit's exclusive features may be re-enabled at any time with a purchased license.
When the product is unlicensed, all menu commands corresponding to these exclusive features are badged with a "Demo" icon. BBEdit's exclusive features may be re-enabled at any time with a purchased license.
Sounds like if you download it, you can skim through the menus and see what is tagged "[demo]".
Where do you work? Most places are using Windows PCs, and it seems like most Macs in use in corporations and colleges are BYOD. It's rare to find a company that actually uses Macs. Did you request your Macs or does everyone at your company use Macs?
Visual Studio Code is really impressive. I think it has the best UI of all these modern editors. For me, Atom wins out over it only because of the vast number of useful plugins. Between linting, git blaming, and other add-ons I'm using, I can't believe I lived without this stuff before.
The only thing better than BBEdit at large files was MPW. MPW was bar none the best text editor on any platform for handling huge files.
Visual Studio Code is very different from Atom. The only thing they share is the Electron framework they are based upon. Everything else is different so they only share the common bugs of Electron.
Microsoft uses their online Visual Studio editor on top of Electron which is faster than Atom. Many of the big companies such as Microsoft themselves as well as Red Hat and IBM have created some rather nice extensions such as Java support, full support for MS SQL Server (so you can write and run your SQL scripts in vscode) but also things like various themes. It also comes with Microsofts IntelliSense and many other things that are not in Atom by default. Some you can add via an extension but not all. In some areas Atom has the better score though; their minimap support is excellent.
Visual Studio Code is just another code editor that is very extensible. I think that's the big problem for TextWrangler and BBEdit. They are faster to start up but not as extensible as the other code editors.
The superslowness is only with starting it up, once started everything is fine (aside some bugs in the Electron framework when it comes to large files but those seem to be an issue in any editor or IDE). They are still faster than most IDEs (it is heaps better than Xcode, Visual Studio (vscode is actually Microsofts lightweight and fast alternative for Visual Studio), SMSS, PyCharm/IntelliJ et al, etc.) and Microsoft does have an ongoing project to increase the performance. Each release has some of those improvements be it small or big (the bigger ones usually get mentioned in the release notes).
Startup performance is one thing, there are many other things that determine if an editor is good or not.
No, that is not true at all. From the GPL FAQ: Does the GPL allow me to require that anyone who receives the software must pay me a fee and/or notify me?
Which states:
In other words, if the developer would do what you say, he's in violation of the GPLv3 license he attached to the source code. The small print here: this is only on a moral level, legally it is his own code and he gets to do with it whatever he wants. The only thing he can't do is withdraw the license (whatever is licensed as GPL stays licensed as GPL).
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I also experience the slowness when no windows are open and the application has been idle. There is really no excuse for this, it is not the way Mac apps should be. Given that all Electron-based applications are like this on my Mac, I am inferring that this is a major reason why.
There is not much of a point in comparing full-blown IDEs to code editors, as IDEs are meant to be such beasts. I am actually quite happy with Xcode, it runs fine even on my old MacBook and works like you would expect a Mac app to work. Just the code completion hangs occasionally (and of course it has tons of bugs and crashes). Still, I prefer using Xcode over the likes of Eclipse (shudder).
I have not developed with Windows IDEs, so I cannot say anything about those.
I'm always amazed that an expensive code editor without package, linter, build, git, ctag, multi-pane, mini-map, merge, variable refactor, and multi-selection can still be alive. It's 2017 now. Go get Coda, Atom, Sublime Text, or at least, TextMate. BBedit was a great application, but it can die now.
First thing I did when I installed 10.0 beta was open a terminal and type "emacs". Doesn't matter what editor I'm using, I eventually wind up with something where I need to fall back to emacs to do the job properly.
Yes, I understand how the GPL works. And yet, this quote really is from the Macromates site, on the page called license_policy:
Version 2.0 of TextMate is being developed as open source. This doesn’t change that TextMate is a commercial product, and while current prebuilt binaries work without a license key, they may need one in the future.
You can call that inconsistent, but your argument is with the developer of TextMate, not with me.
I gotta learn how to use emacs now.
Great thread, BTW. All I've used so far has been Atom and SublimeText; I knew about BBEdit, but that was before I started learning code, and our classes went straight to Atom and SublimeText. Just downloaded CotEditor to see what it's like, too.
Textmate is not free. Textmate is GPL. That's a fundamental difference that the Linuxies always miss.
*Right now*, you can download Textmate builds by Allan and not pay for them. That does not mean the practice will continue once 2.0 is released.
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It hasn't? Funny, their commit history in Github, among other things, would seem to give the lie to that. I'm sure you know better than their development team, though.
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Except you don't, obviously. MacroMates is under zero obligation to give you binaries. Source, that you can make your own binaries with, sure. It's licensed under the GPL. But the fact that right now you enjoy MacroMates distributing binaries for free puts them under no continuing obligation to do so absent a license.
Thanks for the reply I will look into it meanwhile I downloaded a program called Brackets I tried it and it's just okBBEdit IS THE Textwrangler replacement. Textwrangler always was just a lite version of BBEdit (it even was called BBEdit lite before). If you know TextWrangler you will know BBEdit and you can just use the free version of BBEdit, which already has more features than TextWrangler. Not much changes except for name, icon and that you get more features for free. (Change the icon and name of BBEdit to Textwrangler's ones and you may not even notice the difference…)
I too like Sublime. It is great and with plugins even better. Occasionally I have wanted to spot check MySQL backups and I will say TextWrangler opens them much quicker than Sublime. So there may be occasions when a less feature rich editor has advantages.
Could depend on what you are doing with it and which extensions you have installed. I'm using it on 4 different Macs and vscode works fine and speedy on all of them.
Then you clearly do not understand the GPL or what the developer is saying. The developer and the GPL are both saying something very different from you. The GPL allows what the developer is doing: asking a fee for the prebuilt binaries. It doesn't say anything about the source code itself, that's where the GPL comes in. This is very common with open source software, the source is free for everyone to tinker with and build but the binaries are not. X-Chat is a good example of this, their Windows build costs money.
So no, nobody is going to be breaking any license when they build the software from source or get a build via someone else (unless they are asking a fee for it). They are when they use the builds from the developer because only those require a license. Again, source and binaries are two different things and that's the part you are not understanding.
No, the Linuxies do not miss anything, they usually don't define "free" (speech and beer)
TextMate isn't free nor is it GPL. The TextMate source code is licensed under GPLv3. That's the fundamental difference (hey, if we are going to be talking semantics...).
But in this case it doesn't matter. The only thing to understand is that the GPL allows the developer to ask for a fee for the software as well as other people and it allows you to build your own binaries. By building your own binaries you are not in violation of the developers license.
Ok, after a couple more rounds, they’ve updated the comparison link above - now it shows the differences between BBEdit “free” and “licensed” with the added features of BBEdit “free” vs. TextWrangler in a chart below the first one.