BBEdit for iPad?

[Cheeseburger Brown]

I adore BBEdit and have been using it as my primary editor for many
years. For the purposes of portable sketching, I will soon be acquing
an iPad. I was disappointed to discover upon searching Apple's App
Store does not currently carry an iteration of BBEdit compatible with
the iPhone/iPxd OS.

Is there any hope of such a beast appearing in the future? I'd love
to be able to code on my iPad!

(I just thought I'd sound off just in case the Bare Bones fellows
assumed there'd be no interest in such a product.)

Yours in portability,
Cheeseburger Brown

[Lynne]

You KNOW we will buy it if you write it, BareBones. And I seriously
need it by August, when I will be travelling and want to ditch the
MBP.

On Mar 23, 11:10 am, Cheeseburger Brown <cheeseburgerbr...@gmail.com>
wrote:

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[Keith X]

I've been a satisfied BBEdit customer for a very long time. My
Powerbook blew out yesterday and I'm replacing it with an iPad. I
*really* need BBEdit for my iPad, which will arrive in about two
weeks. Thanks for a great product!

-Keith

On Mar 23, 10:10 am, Cheeseburger Brown <cheeseburgerbr...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Fritz Anderson]

On 20 May 2010, at 6:32 PM, Keith X wrote:

> I've been a satisfied BBEdit customer for a very long time. My
> Powerbook blew out yesterday and I'm replacing it with an iPad. I
> *really* need BBEdit for my iPad, which will arrive in about two
> weeks. Thanks for a great product!

Um. You used a laptop computer for the kind of text-editing task that demands a power tool like BBEdit. You are replacing it with a device that doesn't have a keyboard,* and has a system for storing and exporting documents that is, to be kind, very awkward. The screen is much smaller, so examining more than one document would be painful. You're willing to make the leap on the faith that before you get to the other end of the leap, there will appear a product that hasn't even been hinted at. And it will satisfactorily replace the power tool you ran on your laptop.

Do you see flaws in this? I never, ever say this, but if you _need_ a keys-mouse-and-hard-drive computer, and you can't afford a $600 + KVM Mac mini, your iPad money is better spent on a Linux, or even Windows, box. They're cheap (to use a very precise term).

An iPad BBEdit would require an incredible amount of rethinking (it can't be the same product), and I would guess that most of it would have to be done from scratch. I'm not saying that it's beyond the considerable powers of Bare Bones;** I'd be delighted to see what they made of the iPad. If it were less than $40, I'd buy it sight-unseen. But I would not expect it to be easy, soon, or a complete substitute for Mac BBEdit.

— F

* Yes, there are hard keyboard options. My experience of the Apple Bluetooth keyboard is that Apple's text system is sluggish with it; and of course there are no command keys. If you need responsiveness, resign yourself to sacrificing a third-to-half of the screen for a non-tactile screen keyboard. Also, the experience of the talented author of iSSH is that things like arrow and function keys work with the Apple text system, but aren't available as events to third-party applications. That would be a huge constraint on the developer of a text editor.

** Those powers don't include being two places at once. I see that BBEdit is under active development. I wonder if a company that had been fully occupied with a Mac product could with the same resources support the Mac product as it does, while creating a completely-new editor for a completely-different machine. But I'm speculating as much as anyone else is. The complete absence of comment from Bare Bones cuts both ways.

[aoimedia]

My Powerbook blew out yesterday and I'm replacing it with an iPad.

I *really* need BBEdit for my iPad, which will arrive in about two weeks.

At the risk of sounding facetious (not my intention) you should always look at the software that you need to run first ~ then purchase the hardware platform that will allow you to run it.

~ John

[Keith X]

Thanks for the feedback Fritz, I'm aware of most of the issues you
raise.

I understand that I will need to link the iPad to my wonderful Apple
Bluetooth keyboard to use a tool like BB Edit most of the time. I
also know that with the current version of the iPad OS that file
handling is clunky at best. However I have little doubt that "cloud"
file handling will get a lot better soon, probably sometime this fall.
If there is a way to make a file go from my Dropbox HTML & PHP file
collection to my web server I'll be a happy camper.

90% of my laptop use is web and email. I need to use it for web work
primarily when I'm on the road, for things like updating ad rotations
for a new ad campaign. I'd rather use an iPad than a laptop most of
the time, when I need to do heavy lifting I have a desktop system for
that.

I don't need anything like full BB Edit functionality for the iPad. I
need keyword coloring for PHP, HTML, & CSS. I need to open, save,
create and delete *.html, *.css, & *.php files. If that's all iPad BB
Edit did it would be better than anything currently in the App store.
Search and replace would be nice to have too, then it would be
infinitely better than anything currently available for the iPad.

Yup, I agree, we're talking about a v1.0 rethinking of BB Edit. If I
could buy it today I would.

As for the perceived shortcomings of tablet vs. mouse & keyboard, that
wouldn't affect me at all. If it's marginally slower with iPad OS 3.2
or 4.1 I don't care. I'm not going to write 10,000 lines of code with
it.

Lastly, regarding the Barebones resource issues, think about this: OS
11. I'm willing to bet that most of the work done on today's iPad
products will carry over to OS 11, ie. touch for Mac. If I were in
the software business (rather than the internut business) I'd be
investing most of my future R&D on the iPad OS.

-K

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/bbedit?hl=en

> If you have a feature request or would like to report a problem,

> please email "supp...@barebones.com" rather than posting to the group.

[RobS]

While I too would be extremely interested in BBEdit Lite for iPad,
there is, in fact, such an editor already available. It's available at
the app store for $3.99 and includes all the features people have
mentioned above as being sufficient. It's called "Editor for iPad". I
haven't tested it because I don't have an iPad yet. But soon, ...
soon.

That price -- $3.99 -- is enough to give pause to any developer. Dare
we ask Barebones to create BBEL for iPad and then sell it for less
than ten bucks? I know I wouldn't want to be within a stones throw if
I were suggesting it to them. >:-]

Rob

[Keith X]

I've looked over everything in the app store now, read the reviews,
and according to the people attempting to use them, they suck. Some
suck a lot and some suck a little. I would pay for BB Edit.

[Keith X]

On May 22, 6:28 pm, aoimedia <j...@aoimedia.co.uk> wrote:
> > My Powerbook blew out yesterday and I'm replacing it with an iPad.
> > I *really* need BBEdit for my iPad, which will arrive in about two  
> > weeks.
>
> At the risk of sounding facetious (not my intention) you should always  
> look at the software that you need to run first ~ then purchase the  
> hardware platform that will allow you to run it.

If I had followed that advice I wouldn't have bought a Mac in 1984 ;-)

-K

[Fritz Anderson]

Yes, it would suck less.

— F

[Robert Occhialini]

As I said on this list in January when the iPad was announced:

"I think a well done text editor would be an essential “work in a
pinch” app to have on a device like this.

I doubt that app would need to be as full featured as BBEdit, but
someone has to fill that void on the iPad. I wonder who might do a
good job of it? ;-)”

[sawatzky]

BBedit is the only text editor I have ever used on the Mac, but for
quick edits on the road I use FTPonTheGo on my iPod-Touch. Small yes.
One document at a time - of course. But it's quick and easy to use.
BBedit on an iPad with my Bluetooth keyboard... that would be nice.
That could become my primary web tool.

Mind you... a big part of what I do in BBEdit requires Applescript, so
if that is not supported by the iPad, I'm no better off with BBEdit
than FTPonTheGo.

[Jakob Peterhänsel]

On 14/06/2010, at 16.39, sawatzky wrote:

Mind you... a big part of what I do in BBEdit requires Applescript, so
if that is not supported by the iPad, I'm no better off with BBEdit
than FTPonTheGo.

Have you seen AppleScript mentioned Anywhere on Apple's sites???

Sorry, no AS on iOS!