BBEdit's settings/preferences on Dropbox / iCloud

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Vlad Ghitulescu

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Jan 5, 2016, 1:46:43 AM1/5/16
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Hello and a happy new year to you all!


2016 begun with a new challenge for me: all of a sudden my iMac got a kernel panic!
I have TimeMachine, two local backups (one of it only 2 hours before the crash) and even 21 days of AppleCare left :-) so everything is as good as it can be :-/ … but right now I'm typing this email on my iPhone and planning a better world: a world with **two** Macs! ;-)

A recent question in BBEdit-Talk reminded me that it is possible to configure BBEdit to have all the setting/preference-files on Dropbox / iCloud.
Is this correct?

And if so: what would you recommend, Dropbox or iCloud?

Any comments / advices are highly appreciated - I'm still recovering from the kernel disaster! :-(

Thanks!


Regards,
Vlad

TJ Luoma

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Jan 5, 2016, 7:38:03 AM1/5/16
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Dropbox, for the simple reason that you have a web-based interface that you can use to retrieve any files which were deleted _and_ previous versions of files going back 30 days.

I know that iCloud now has some mechanism for retrieving deleted files via icloud.com but Dropbox's is much more feature-rich and intuitive to me.

I also prefer the fact that it is much easier to see when Dropbox is working to sync files via the menu bar icon, rather than iCloud, which continues to try to hide everything behind a shroud of “Trust us, it just works!”

TjL

p.s. - also note that the “Keep Historical Backups” feature in BBEdit can use the sync folder as well.

p.p.s. - [Off-Topic]  if you want to sync _other_ files or folders but don't want to use Dropbox/iCloud or can't (due to space limitations), checkout BitTorrent Sync. It will allow you to sync _any_ folder, without having to move it. So you could sync your ~/Documents or ~/Movies/ or ~/Pictures/ folders, for example. The only thing to be careful of is apps that store database files (i..e Photos, iTunes) which may not sync well. I get around that by moving them out of the default folders (for example my iTunes library goes in ~/iTunes not ~/Music/). See http://forum.bittorrent.com and http://www.getsync.com for more, or feel free to contact me off-list.




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Patrick Woolsey

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Jan 5, 2016, 12:05:34 PM1/5/16
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On 1/5/16 at 1:46 AM, Vl...@Ghitulescu.de (Vlad Ghitulescu) wrote:

>Hello and a happy new year to you all!
>
>2016 begun with a new challenge for me: all of a sudden my iMac
>got a kernel panic! I have TimeMachine, two local backups (one
>of it only 2 hours before the
>crash) and even 21 days of AppleCare left :-) so everything is
>as good as it can be :-/ … but right now I'm typing this
>email on my iPhone and planning a better
>world: a world with **two** Macs! ;-)

Dang, sorry to hear that--kernel panics are always a pain.


>A recent question in BBEdit-Talk reminded me that it is
>possible to configure BBEdit to have all the
>setting/preference-files on Dropbox / iCloud.
>Is this correct?

Not quite :-):

You can relocate your BBEdit app support folder to Dropbox as
detailed in the section titled "Sharing Application Support &
Preferences Data via Dropbox" :-) in Chapter 2 of the PDF manual
(Help -> User Manual).

Further, BBEdit 11.5 (both the existing pre-release and final
versions) will support using iCloud in a similar manner, as follows:

+ BBEdit now supports the use of iCloud Drive for sharing
application support and setup items. This works similarly
to the
existing Dropbox support: in your "iCloud Drive" folder,
create a
folder named "Application Support", and then within that create
a folder named "BBEdit". You can populate that folder with the
contents of your existing BBEdit application support folder
(/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/).

+ BBEdit now supports the use of iCloud Drive for a shared
backup folder: in your "iCloud Drive" folder, create a folder
named "BBEdit Backups", and if you have turned on Use
Historical Backups, BBEdit will use this folder.


Please note however that most of BBEdit's preference options
(i.e. the options which appear in its Preferences window) other
than key shortcuts are stored locally to each machine, due to
how OS's preferences mechanism works.


>And if so: what would you recommend, Dropbox or iCloud?
>

That's entirely up to you; we have no official preference. :-)


Regards,

Patrick Woolsey
==
Bare Bones Software, Inc. <http://www.barebones.com/>

Vlad Ghitulescu

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Jan 5, 2016, 3:31:07 PM1/5/16
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Hi, TJ!


Ok, then let there be Dropbox (when the iMac will come back).

Thanks for the hint to BitTorrent Sync. I'll take a look and mail you off-list after it. 


Regards,
Vlad

Vlad Ghitulescu

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Jan 5, 2016, 3:32:29 PM1/5/16
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> Am 05.01.2016 um 18:05 schrieb Patrick Woolsey <pwoo...@barebones.com>:
>
> That's entirely up to you; we have no official preference. :-)

:-D
Ok, than it's only TJ's recommendation that led me to Dropbox. ;-)

Bucky Junior

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Jan 6, 2016, 7:35:40 AM1/6/16
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I would imagine that, like me, most who are using the Dropbox “cloud” for Application Support, did not feel the need to say “Me too.” That was possible first, so that’s what I’m doing. For me it has been “set and forget”.

Isn’t our shared product wonderful and the people who support it actually supportive?

ascarter

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Jan 7, 2016, 12:50:48 AM1/7/16
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Dropbox does work well but so does iCloud. I switched from Dropbox since I already was paying for lots of space and no need to pay twice.

I created a symlink ~/iCloud to the iCloud Drive folder to make it as easy to work with as Dropbox. I really see very little difference for individual usage that way.

Rick Gordon

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Jan 7, 2016, 1:08:42 AM1/7/16
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Symlinks (but not aliases) will also work for any other files or folders
that you want to sync with Dropbox. Make the symlink from the original
file/folder (for instance, ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit or
anything inside it) and place it downstream from the Dropbox folder.

Rick Gordon

---------------------
On 1/6/16, 9:50 PM, ascarter wrote:
> Dropbox does work well but so does iCloud. I switched from Dropbox since I already was paying for lots of space and no need to pay twice.
>
> I created a symlink ~/iCloud to the iCloud Drive folder to make it as easy to work with as Dropbox. I really see very little difference for individual usage that way.
>
___________________________________________
RICK GORDON
EMERALD VALLEY GRAPHICS AND CONSULTING
___________________________________________
WWW: http://www.shelterpub.com
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