BBEdit for Writers

[Stories & Novels]

I put together a short guide that might be of interest to someone new to BBEdit and wondering if it would work well for writing prose.

BBEdit for Writers: A Guide and Appreciation (storiesandnovels.com/bbedit)

[F. Alfredo Rego]

Very well done, Franz.

Thanks.

Alfredo

[Gregory Shenaut]

Interesting. I would differ only in a few minor points. (1) I prefer to type either “these quotes” or "these quotes" depending on the context, so would leave use typographer's quotes unchecked. (2) I hate Markdown in all its varieties and manifestations, but I have used BBEdit successfully with *roff and *tex. (3) I love Scrivener, so when I write fiction, I use it instead of BBEdit.

That said, sometimes the greater control provided by BBEdit makes it preferable to Scrivener et al., generally in situations where some or all of the text is generated or filtered by scripts or apps. I personally use BBEdit most often for writing programs and sometimes for HTML texts or random plain text-only documents.

Cheers,

Greg

On Oct 11, 2017, at 10:10 , Stories & Novels <fr...@copyanddesign.com> wrote:

I put together a short guide that might be of interest to someone new to BBEdit and wondering if it would work well for writing prose.

BBEdit for Writers: A Guide and Appreciation (storiesandnovels.com/bbedit)

--
This is the BBEdit Talk public discussion group. If you have a
feature request or would like to report a problem, please email
"sup...@barebones.com" rather than posting to the group.
Follow @bbedit on Twitter: <http://www.twitter.com/bbedit>
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BBEdit Talk" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bbedit+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to bbe...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/bbedit.

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

Very interesting.

In your "Why not use" section, I would have put Emacs.app. I'd guess the objections would look like Scrivener's, or maybe would be the foreign shortcuts.

Jean-Christophe 

On Oct 12, 2017, at 2:10, Stories & Novels <fr...@copyanddesign.com> wrote:

I put together a short guide that might be of interest to someone new to BBEdit and wondering if it would work well for writing prose.

BBEdit for Writers: A Guide and Appreciation (storiesandnovels.com/bbedit)

[john mckenzie]

Very nicely done, thanks! A suggestion: perhaps you could mention how to <!-- make a comment --> in a markdown file. Handy for leaving yourself editing notes.

[@lbutlr]

On 11 Oct 2017, at 13:49, Gregory Shenaut <greg.s...@me.com> wrote:
> I hate Markdown in all its varieties and manifestations

OK, I’ve resisted commenting on this for nearly a week now, but I find this statement extremely odd.

I can’t understand why anyone would hate markdown. I mean, I can see not using it, but since all it is is a quick way to write something that will become HTML without littering your text with HTML I don’t understand how it could possibly enrage anyone to the level of hatred.

A markdown file is perfectly readable to someone who has never heard of markdown, which is a huge advantage over most formats for text files. It’s portable, the interpreter for it is dead-simple, and it’s widely supported.

And I say all of this as someone who very rarely uses markdown.

--
Apple broke AppleScripting signatures in Mail.app, so no random signatures.

[Dave]

Unfortunately, it is becoming a de-facto standard. For example, github README files will only be displayed on a project page if they are in markdown. It has a totally non-semantic syntax, which makes nearly impossible for many, like me, to learn it; since the characters it uses are often part of the content, certain content can't be represented without complicated escapes, and some can't be represented at all; its HTML repertoire is severely limited, for example, some implementations allow tables, but not if you need cells to span multiple columns or rows; implementations vary widely, which not only adds to the learning curve but also limits what you can express where. When a presentation language places limits on what you can express, forcing you to dumb down your message, and learning it, including its limitations and idiosyncratic implementations, takes a huge investment in time for something that was intended to save time, those are pretty good reasons for hating it.

[Marc Simpson]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 5:12 AM, Dave <dave.l...@gmail.com> wrote:

Unfortunately, it is becoming a de-facto standard. For example, github README files will only be displayed on a project page if they are in markdown.

This isn't true; see https://github.com/github/markup#markups for the list of supported formats.

 

--
This is the BBEdit Talk public discussion group. If you have a
feature request or would like to report a problem, please email
"sup...@barebones.com" rather than posting to the group.
Follow @bbedit on Twitter: <http://www.twitter.com/bbedit>
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BBEdit Talk" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bbedit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[@lbutlr]

On 18 Oct 2017, at 06:12, Dave <dave.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It has a totally non-semantic syntax,

I’m not sure what that means.

> which makes nearly impossible for many, like me, to learn it; since the characters it uses are often part of the content, certain content can't be represented without complicated escapes, and some can't be represented at all; its HTML repertoire is severely limited, for example, some implementations allow tables, but not if you need cells to span multiple columns or rows;

No, because it is not intended to be a replacement for HTML. It is intended to be “I have a text file which if I do a few things to it it still looks like a text file to anyone reading it, but can also be easily converted into simple HTML.” Complex tables are not part of that. In fact, I don’t think tables are supported in Markdown at all. Maybe you hate some markdown fork?

<https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax>
"Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.

Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.”

> implementations vary widely, which not only adds to the learning curve but also limits what you can express where. When a presentation language

Yeah, it’s not a presentation language.

> places limits on what you can express, forcing you to dumb down your message, and learning it, including its limitations and idiosyncratic implementations, takes a huge investment in time for something that was intended to save time, those are pretty good reasons for hating it.

A high investment of time? I have one document that has all the basic markdown in it (about 20 lines of text) which I open as a reference if I want to do something in markdown I’ve forgot to. Otherwise, 99% of it is just writing the text and formatting it basically the way I would anyway.

[Tom Robinson]

As an aside, if you’re looking for a reference, CommonMark is gaining traction including in BBEdit 12 via cmark:

http://commonmark.org/

Cheers


> On 2017-10-19, at 09:28, @lbutlr <kre...@kreme.com> wrote:
>
> <https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax>

[DavidWeinberger]

Markdown is a reduced instruction set language, as its very name indicates. It's therefore a poor choice for documents that need the structures and control over display that it does not provide. Having to use it to address needs it does not support would make me angry, too. But that's not a problem with Markdown. It's a problem with forcing its use on projects for which it is an inappropriate tool. 

I write books and articles using Markdown more or less for the same reasons I use a fountain pen to write on paper: I like the way it feels. It gets me closer to a sense that it's just me and the words I'm writing. That's really about it. And obviously that's not an argument why anyone else should use it.

For the sort of work I do, I don't need tables, equations, or even graphics. I do need endnotes, which are slightly clunky in Markdown. So I use a Keyboard Maestro macro that inserts the markup, lets me type in the content, places the endnote at the end of the document, and returns me to the endnote's insertion point. I also sometimes use centered asterisks as intra-section dividers, but Markdown -- not being presentation markup -- doesn't know about centering. So I use a bit of HTML for that, also inserted via a macro. If I needed a lot more, I'd give up on Markdown and perhaps go back to writing in HTML. 

In truth, I am also a bit more favorably disposed toward Markdown because my late and dearly missed friend Aaron Swartz was a contributor to its development. His fingerprints remain on much that is good about the Internet.

[Jan Erik Moström]

On 19 Oct 2017, at 15:17, DavidWeinberger wrote:

It's with a bit of hesitation I add my opinions to this thread. First of
all, I firmly believe that the choice of writing tools is very personal
- for example I love my Lamy 2000 fountain pen, not to mention my multi
colored Pilot G-Tec-C4, add paper of good quality and I'm quite happy.

But it's not practical for me to use these tool all the time, I need to
produce electronic documents and here my tools of choice are BBEdit and
Ulysses. I haven't used Word or any other word processor for the last 25
years (except for a few times when I've been forced to). And as you
might guess I've been using some kind of markup language, a few examples
are roff/nroff/groff/troff, latex, tex, markdown, html and a few more.

All of these have (had) their uses but the format that have had the
biggest effect for me is markdown. Today, I write web pages, comments to
students, course documents, instruction, slides, documentations, etc all
in markdown or some dialect of it. However, if I'm writing something
that is going to be printed I'm using LaTeX - I actually was thinking
about this earlier this week when I was writing something that is going
to be printed. I found it very cumbersome to write latex and when I get
some spare time I'm going to invest that time trying to find the best
way to write in markdown but convert to latex so I can get the
formatting right (I know about some tools but I have some specific
requirements that I need to investigate).

But back to the subject, for me and for what I'm doing markdown (I'm
including the various dialects I use) is a very flexible, powerful way
of marking up text so I can use it in various ways. My documents usually
include headlines, lists, images, links to various online resources,
source code, etc. If I were to write a book I wouldn't hesitate to use
markdown.

My current tools to achieve this is BBEdit, Ulysses, Marked, Deckset and
Multimarkdown.

But as I said above, the choice of writing tools is very personal and
also depends on factors like what is being written, external
requirements, etc.

= jem

[@lbutlr]

On Oct 19, 2017, at 12:36 PM, Jan Erik Moström <li...@mostrom.pp.se> wrote:
> But as I said above, the choice of writing tools is very personal and also depends on factors like what is being written, external requirements, etc.

Absolutely, and I've never tried to get someone to use markdown or even suggested it because, frankly I don't use it that much myself. It just seemed to me an odd thing to hate.

I mean, I struggled with nroff in the 80s can found it unnecessarily difficult, but I din't hate it, it was just a tool that wasn't particularly suited for what I wanted to do, so I found a better tool.

OTOH, I did hate emacs because I was forced to used it and it never made even the slightest bit of sense to me and the instant I no longer had to use it I ran right back to vi/vim where I've been very happy for decades (on machines that can't run BBEdit).

[John Muccigrosso]

On Thursday, October 19, 2017 at 2:36:54 PM UTC-4, Jan Erik Moström wrote:

I found it very cumbersome to write latex and when I get
some spare time I'm going to invest that time trying to find the best
way to write in markdown but convert to latex so I can get the
formatting right (I know about some tools but I have some specific
requirements that I need to investigate).

I'd strongly suggest pandoc for this, which is probably on your list already. If you have some latex knowledge already, you can play with the template to get output you like.

[jnthnmrgn]

Thanks for your guide. 

The only issue I've found with these settings is that when you use a non-monospaced font like Garamond (my preference as well) with Soft Wrap at character width, you end up with a horizontal scrollbar. This makes scrolling down through the document really annoying! 

Have you found any way around this? I tried BBEdit support, but they just suggested using a monospace font...

[Gerald Davenport]

Thank you for the Guide. gave me some insights into the preferences and what each does. yes, I flipped through the manual and played with a few settings, but not much since when you get a view and layout you like and get used to, why change?

MY QUESTION, to BBEDT or anyone in the know:

Is there a way to have multiple sets of pref settings?

ie, a group or profile, if you will, type of storage that saves settings for this activity I want to do, then when I want to do php, html, and such I can change them by choosing my profile settings instead of checking and unchecking the entire list of settings every-time?

The troublesome thing would be to take a screen grab of each preference tab to remember what the settings were for that particular set up.

Of course I could save the preference file in a different folder and move them back and forth after restarting bbedit.

curiously - gerald

[Ryan Dotson]

Gerald–

On 4 May 2020, at 11:56, you wrote:

> Is there a way to have multiple sets of pref settings?
>
> ie, a group or profile, if you will, type of storage that saves
> settings
> for this activity I want to do, then when I want to do php, html, and
> such
> I can change them by choosing my profile settings instead of checking
> and
> unchecking the entire list of settings every-time?

You can adjust most settings on a per-language basis in preferences. See
the Languages pane, ‘Language-specific settings’.

If you need more granularity, like settings on a per-directory basis,
investigate EditorConfig settings. You can learn more in Chapter 3 of
the manual or at <https://editorconfig.org>

rd.