Any one have any recommendations for a good text editor for OSX?

I have used BBEdit for the last few years and have loved it and only wish that they would release a Carbon or Cocoa version of it. Until then I would like to find a good developers text editor that I could use without starting classic.

Thanks,

RJ

[Kristoff]

Originally posted by zscgeek:
Any one have any recommendations for a good text editor for OSX?

vi BABY!

The father of BSD UNIX is none other than Bill Joy, who also wrote the best text editor of all time....vi. vi is more widely distributed than even Joy could have ever imagined. It comes will all UNIX and Linux distributions--OS X included.

What more do you need???

vi --Learn it, Use it, Love it!

[This message has been edited by Kristoff (edited 10-05-2000).]

[Hap]

I recomend PICO for a text editor from the command line (also included in OSX). VI is like a loaded gun thats allways pointing at your head. PICO is much more user friendly whereas VI is very powerfull but requires alot more knowlege to use and if you hit the caps lock key by mistake be prepaired for suprises.
The GUI text editor in OSXPB looks pretty good to but does not have the ability to save straight ASCII text as far as I can tell.
Hap

Yes I know about vi. I have worked with unix systems for years and have gotten very good at vi. :-)

However what I am looking for is something along the lines of a BBEdit style editor that has COLOR syntax highlighting, powerful find and replace and the ability to use the mouse when I want to and use the keyboard if I want to. I do mostly perl and XML editing. Any ideas?

Thanks,
RJ

I was struggling with the same problem. I don't want to run Classic but I really miss BBEdit. I've been switching between vi, TextEdit (Apple's replacement for SimpleText) and jext (which works with Java2 VMs). jext (www.jext.org) is pretty good with features (e.g. color coding, etc) but is kind of slow on my machine and a little too windowzy for my test. I can't wait for BBEdit to be carbonized!

-Alex

[jblakeh1]

html edit does some syntax highlighting, and when the developer tools are released, Project Builder might work... I don't know of any other app besides bbedit that has the batch find/replace, though, so you may not have much choice. I tried jEdit, a java based editor, but it isn't very mac-friendly (It doesn't recognize the command key).

[Kristoff]

Originally posted by zscgeek:
that has COLOR syntax highlighting, powerful find and replace and the ability to use the mouse when I want to and use the keyboard if I want to. I do mostly perl and XML editing. Any ideas?

gvim!!!!
It's a graphical version of vi that supports multiple language highlightning...even customizable! way powerful search and replace, and the ability t use the cursor keys and mouse!!!

Where can I get gvim? And has it been ported to OSX?

Thanks,
RJ

Get vi, vim, or Emacs. You should be able to get them from http://www.gnu.org/.

If you're looking for books to learn them, go to the O'Reilly & Associates catalog page at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/ to get the title names/ISBNs before heading off to Amazon.com, BookPool, or your local geek bookstore to buy them.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Unix and the command-line.

chuckdude

[ali]

Someone mentioned TextEdit. It is fairly barebones, but if you add Mike Ferris's "TextExtras" package, you get a few additional features that make it more useful to developers and power users. These include:
- go to line
- match brace
- indent regions
- auto-complete
- etc.

Not everything you're asking for, but some... As a bonus, it comes with source, and as an additional bonus, these additional features work in all Cocoa apps, including Mail.

You can get TextExtras from:
http://www.lorax.com/FreeStuff/TextExtras.html

I believe version 1.5 for Mac OS X Server will work for Mac OS X.

Ali

Originally posted by zscgeek:
Yes I know about vi. I have worked with unix systems for years and have gotten very good at vi. :-)

However what I am looking for is something along the lines of a BBEdit style editor that has COLOR syntax highlighting, powerful find and replace and the ability to use the mouse when I want to and use the keyboard if I want to. I do mostly perl and XML editing. Any ideas?

Thanks,
RJ

Well, there is an x version of Emacs (actually, even a Mac version, I understand). So I imagine it won't be too long before it gets ported.... Not that I use Emacs (I know it exists, and have friends who swear by it, but vi is easier to learn...)

I too, hope that BBEdit gets carbonized asap...

Ricky

Originally posted by Pukku:
Well, there is an x version of Emacs (actually, even a Mac version, I understand). So I imagine it won't be too long before it gets ported.... Not that I use Emacs (I know it exists, and have friends who swear by it, but vi is easier to learn...)

I too, hope that BBEdit gets carbonized asap...

Ricky

There is the command line version of emacs ported but I am looking for a editor that I can use the mouse when I want to. If someone know where I could get info on the NextStep GUI version that was done a few years back I would love to take a look.
RJ

Though Apple's TextEdit isn't a good code editor (I LOVE rainbow editors), I thought I'd add a little to the community's knowledge. You can use it for simple text editing -- the same kind of editing I do with 'vi' (Some of us aren't stuck in the 20th Century

I assume some already know this, but there may be a few, like me, who didn't...

First of all, you can call TextEdit from the command line. (Though this may not be noteworthy, what follows may be). I made the following alias in my ~/.alias file:

alias TextEdit '/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &'

... which allows me to simply type, TextEdit

Unfortunately, it does not seem to take command line parameters, so you can't do:

>TextEdit ~/.alias

There are a few things you can do with TextEdit in this mode:

1. You can actually have multiple copies of TextEdit running when you start it from the command line. Each time you start it, you'll see another TextEdit icon in the Dock.

2. When you start it from the command line, the Open/Save dialog defaults to the directory from which you launched it.

3. When you start TextEdit, it uses the file permissions from the account you started it from. For instance, if you've su'd to root, then you'll be able to edit root files.

4. You can edit and save .rtf AND plain text files. (I personally didn't realize this until yesterday, which bothered me)

That's it.

I too look forward to a good rainbow code editor....

[ali]

Originally posted by MacBigot:
alias TextEdit '/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &'

Unfortunately, it does not seem to take command line parameters, so you can't do:

>TextEdit ~/.alias

The reason this isn't working is because your alias contains "&", so the argument ends up getting listed after the command. Dropping the "&" makes the command work (but by default it's not backgrounded in the shell), or you can do:

alias TextEdit '/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit \!* &'

This takes the argument to the alias and puts it in the right place.

BTW, there's also the "open" command, which opens documents. The special "-e" flag allows you to open documents in TextEdit. This will also contact an already launched TextEdit if you have one:

open -e ~/.alias


Ali



[This message has been edited by ali (edited 10-11-2000).]

Thanks for the info. I didn't know about the open command. Very useful. I did know about '\!*' before the '&', but I had a typo which prevented it from working, so I assumed it didn't work -- thus my comments.


Thanks.

Trans-tex software has a carbonized version of Tex-Edit available (shareware) now. It doesn't have many of the developer-oriented features that BBEdit has (e.g. syntax coloring) but it's a decent substitute for the time being.

Also, the ProjectBuilder editor looks pretty nice.
http://216.25.53.29/trans-tex/index.html

[jblakeh1]

Here's a java based text editor that has much of the functionality of BBEdit- ftp, syntax highlighting, perhaps more:
http://jedit.sourceforge.net/

It has syntax highlighting for every programming language you can think of, and although you have to launch it via the command line, it is not a command line text editor. It operates like BBEdit, meaning you can put your mouse in the window to select text, etc.

The only major drawback is that since it's a java app, the command and control keys are backwards- meaning control-c to copy... but the author promised me the next version would have pre-defined key maps.

If you decide to try it, download the beta version: 2.6pre8
And follow the UNIX installation instructions on the site.

And before you start using it, go to the Global Options (Preferences) panel and set the Look/Feel to Mac OS, for the nice new Java AQUA GUI.