How can I edit web form text in an external editor?

TidBITS Talk
1

Can anyone suggest a way to easily use an external editor (specifically BBEdit) to write text on a web page, such as in this fine forum?

By “easily” I mean of course more easily than copy-paste, especially if, like me, you end up editing your message several times.

Many years ago I remember a browser extension that did this very well. But at some point it must have stopped working, and I never found a replacement.

I found several advantages to writing web text like this. I’d get a nice big window that wasn’t jammed at the bottom of the page. I could be confident that making a new paragraph wouldn’t trigger a premature post. I got smart quotes in web editors that didn’t provide them natively. And I could scroll up the page in question without losing sight of my text.

I’ve tried GhostText and it works well with Visual Studio Code and various other editors. But as far as I can see it doesn’t currently support BBEdit, which is my scratchpad of choice.

The server model GhostText uses, which keeps text in sync at all times between the web form and the editor, is also perhaps overkill. The ancient app I’m thinking of simply copied the text back to the browser in a one-off operation, I think when you attempted to save or close the text editor document.

I like scripting and I use LaunchBar all the time. But I can’t think of a really really simple way to automate this, and I don’t want to switch to VSC.

2

I use BBEdit similarly, using copy/paste. BBEdit is great for extensive undos and persistence of text after accidental quits, even without saving. That said, and extension like GhostText that works with BBEdit would be very interesting to try. Have you tried contacting the developer to ask about BBEdit?

3

This may be one for an independent BBEdit enthusiast. The GhostText developer has published how it works so that other people can create plugins for their chosen editors. Similarly, I wouldn’t expect Bare Bones to treat it as a core thing. A web search didn’t turn up any projects.

I wish I could remember the name of the original app. There’s a strong chance I first read about it in TidBITS – but maybe 20 years ago :man_white_hair:

4

This also sounds to me like a task for which Selenium/Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey could be helpful.

1 Like
5

Now there’s a thought. Thank you.