Originally published at: BBEdit 14 Adds Simple Notes Management - TidBITS
Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 14 with a new Notes feature that recognizes the extent to which many users keep numerous untitled documents open in BBEdit at all times. The release also provides significant enhancements to source code editing thanks to support for Microsoft’s Language Server Protocol.
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This is one program that I always update with any new version; not because I may want or need any of the new stuff, but just because it has always been so good, and they deserve continued support. BBEdit is my go-to program every single day for everything from making or updating web pages to making quick multiple changes in a file to … well, you get the idea. If any of the folks at BBEdit are reading this, Thank you for making my life easier every day!
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Hey Folks,
BBEdit is extraordinarily useful in and of itself, but it is also scriptable – so what you can do with it is limited mostly by your imagination.
I’ve used it since 1992, and it’s run 24/7 on my systems since 1995.
Just upgraded my license for v14.
-Chris
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The Clipboard window has returned. Access it from Edit > Show Clipboard, and click the arrows in the upper-left corner to cycle through past clipboards.
Wahoo, the decline of Western Civilization has reversed.
BBEdit 14’s support for Microsoft’s Language Server Protocol.
This is huge for those working in oddball languages. BBEdit’s built-in language support dates to a primitive millennium, and won’t let you define (in my case) JSON5 as just like JSON except for not ruthlessly forbidding comments.
Check the date:
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BBEdit is my one exception to my “Age of Update Automatically Is Over” Rule (check out their Release Notes for why), so I was delighted to welcome the Clipboard Window back (I was one of many to request its return, long years ago). Language Server Support was less thrilling for my needs: Bazel Starlark (né Skylark, presumably an allusion to the seminal space opera starship The Skylark of Space) is still working on an LSP module, and:
Caveats
- BBEdit does not use language servers to enhance syntax coloring; do not expect any changes in coloring behavior.
- BBEdit does not use language server data to populate the function menu or generate folding information; this remains under the control of the language module plug-in.
Otherwise the upgrade was painless over a day’s work; even my SFTP browser to a Docker container reopened seamlessly.
As a long time user of BBEdit, I excitedly went to the Bare Bones website to read about the LSP support, but was disappointed to read that contrary to Adam’s article:
“BBEdit does not use language servers to enhance syntax coloring; do not expect any changes in coloring behavior.”
As Flash mentioned, BBEdit’s syntax highlighting/language support has been around for a awhile, and is more than a little difficult to deal with. I’ve played with the XML based Codeless Language Modules, which are quite limited in functionality, and looked at the more robust language module support, but it requires writing text parsing in C, which feels as dated as it sounds.
It’s one area where many of the newer text editors leave BBEdit behind, and many of which support the same or similar highlighting definitions. Yet I still use BBEdit more often than any other, and like Adam describes always have more “untitled documents” than I can keep track of.