BBEdit

BBEdit

Developer(s)	Bare Bones Software
Initial release	April 12, 1992; 24 years ago (1992-04-12)
Stable release	11.6.4 / December 13, 2016 (2016-12-13)
Operating system	macOS
Type	Text editor
License	Proprietary
Website	www.barebones.com/products/bbedit

BBEdit is a proprietary text editor made by Bare Bones Software, originally developed for Macintosh System Software 6, and currently supporting macOS.

The first version of BBEdit was created as a "bare bones" text editor to serve as a "proof of concept"; the intention was to demonstrate the programming capabilities of an experimental version of Pascal for the Macintosh. The original prototypes of BBEdit used the TextEdit control available in versions of the classic Mac OS of the time. The TextEdit control could not load files larger than 32 KB. The Macintosh Pascal project was ultimately terminated, but the demonstration program was reworked to use the THINK Technologies "PE" text editing engine used for THINK C, which was much faster and could read larger files. BBEdit was the first freestanding text editor to use the "PE" editing engine, and is the only one still being developed.

BBEdit was available at no charge upon its initial release in 1992, but was commercialized in May 1993 with the release of version 2.5.[1] At the same time, Bare Bones Software also made a less-featured version of BBEdit 2.5 called BBEdit Lite available at no cost. BBEdit Lite lacked plugin support, scriptability, syntax coloring and other features then deemed as mainly for advanced users. Bare Bones Software discontinued BBEdit Lite at version 6.1 and replaced it with TextWrangler, which was available for a fee, although significantly less than BBEdit. In 2005, TextWrangler 2.0 was released as freeware and subsequent versions continue to be distributed as such.

Throughout its history, BBEdit has supported many Apple technologies that failed to gain traction, including OpenDoc and PowerTalk. The failure of PowerTalk, and the desire of developers to have email integrated to their text editor, led to the development of Mailsmith, an email client that uses BBEdit's editor component. Formerly developed by Bare Bones as a commercial application, in 2009 Mailsmith was transferred to Stickshift Software LLC and would continue to be developed as a labor of love and released as freeware.