Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more: text editing on mac

text editing on mac

On Windows, I've been using the very capable UltraEdit for several years. I continue to use it under Parallels on my new MacBook Pro but I'm really interested in finding a comparable text editor for Mac OS X. The stock text editor, TextEdit, is far too lean for my needs. I'm playing with Smultron and like the tabs and line numbering but I miss the more sophisticated regular expression search and replace that comes with UltraEdit.

Do any of you have suggestions for a good text editor on Mac? Years ago when I was using Macs a lot more, I'd settled on BBEdit. Is that still the premier editor on Mac?

Posted by asa on July 9, 2006 1:32 PM

reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.

Yes!

Posted by: Ernst Persson | July 9, 2006 1:47 PM

There's a free-ish version of BBEdit called TextWrangler that seems pretty good.

Posted by: Robert O'Callahan | July 9, 2006 1:52 PM

My friend who is a web developer and programmer SWEARS by this program.

http://macromates.com/

Posted by: Alex Marsh | July 9, 2006 2:06 PM

You could try TextMate

Posted by: marv | July 9, 2006 2:13 PM

Textmate is fairly awesome: http://macromates.com/

Posted by: Junap | July 9, 2006 2:13 PM

I've found skEdit to be quite good, but I also use Smultron.

Posted by: Neil T. | July 9, 2006 2:36 PM

Either TextMate or, if you're the type, Emacs will do you good.

Posted by: Jason Terk | July 9, 2006 2:39 PM

HAR, I've been dealing with that question lately, too.

BBEdit is still one of the best. (I'm interpolating on the "still," since I'd never used it until this year. Recent switcher.) It finally DOES have some real competition in TextMate, which some people mentioned above. Ten to one says you're going to go with one of those two, and each of 'em has really compelling features that the other doesn't. Deciding between them is one of those decisions that tends to hinge on your personality, so I recommend you try 'em both. (I think I've decided on BBEdit for most things, but it was a surprisingly tough call.)

If you feel like going Emacs, the one to use these days is a distribution called "Aquamacs." (http://aquamacs.org/) Best version of Emacs I've ever used, though it's definitely still Emacs. (As in, I refuse to try to write a novel in it.)

And then there's an editor called SubEthaEdit, which is a bit lighter on features than BBEdit or TextMate, but which has a really slick collaborative editing mode.

If you use Ruby on Rails heavily, ignore everything above: get TextMate, full stop.

Posted by: Nick Fagerlund | July 9, 2006 4:40 PM

What about JEDIT?

With all the plugins it has ( tabs, cvs, JDiff, etc.), regex search and replace, and everyone else, I use it for everything.

I'm not saying it is the best, as I haven't tried TextMate, but it's an excellent editor for Mac/Windows and Linux and handles almost any file you throw at it.

Worth a try since it's free and opensource.

Posted by: Jed | July 9, 2006 4:50 PM

Oh, and I ought to add, I've NEVER seen anything that comes even close to BBEdit's find dialog. (TextWrangler's is identical, if you're broke like me.)

Posted by: Nick Fagerlund | July 9, 2006 4:52 PM

Just use xcode.

Posted by: Netherbound | July 9, 2006 7:07 PM

I'm using emacs on all plattforms:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Posted by: Daniel | July 9, 2006 9:39 PM

With all the emacs fans here I must say: vi(m) is also compliled for OSX ;)

Anyway basicly you got BBEdit (and the striped down free version of it: TextWrangler)then you got TextMate which has a tab-completion feature unheared of. There are some others but I have no experience in those.

Posted by: Jo�l Kuiper | July 9, 2006 10:18 PM

Does Smultron 2.0's "advanced find and replace" (Cmd+Shift+F) do what you want with regular expressions?

Posted by: Jesse Ruderman | July 9, 2006 11:15 PM

Smultron is nice, open source which may give you a small fuzzy feeling.

Posted by: Chris McElligott | July 9, 2006 11:16 PM

You're looking for SubEthaEdit
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

Posted by: Mano | July 10, 2006 12:37 AM

I've used Alpha for years, both classic Mac OS and OSX. It has regular expression search and replace, line numbering, text coloring for program languages, markup languages, etc.

The latest version can be found at
http://alphatcl.sourceforge.net/wiki/

Posted by: Roan | July 10, 2006 6:03 AM

I have a longstanding belief that all people who will be doing programming for more than 4 hours per day should suck it up and learn either vi or emacs. Sure the learning curve sucks but you'll never have to learn another text editor and both input systems (though arcane) are far more efficient in the hands of an expert user than the editors that use system conventions. I personally prefer vim but endorse the use of either.

Posted by: Karl Guertin | July 10, 2006 6:50 AM

These are the two resources I use for finding software.

Pure-mac.com is a great categorized database of Mac apps, updated frequently:
http://pure-mac.com/textword.html

Wikipedia.org is usually a good place to research software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_text_editors#Mac_only

- pepp

Posted by: pepp5 | July 10, 2006 7:26 AM

Jesse, thanks! That's a big improvement.

- A

Posted by: Asa | July 10, 2006 9:52 AM

I have been using gvim from the first day I used OS X.

Posted by: cyfer | July 10, 2006 10:29 AM

Got Java? Try "J" the pure-Java text
editor.