[OS X TeX] Re: scripting BBEdit (was Tabular/array macros)

Jason Davies ucgajpd at ucl.ac.uk
Tue Nov 9 21:56:06 CET 2004


>>BBEdit is probably the most scriptable application available!
>
>Perhaps you mean applescriptable, in which case you may be right.
>
>The problem is that AppleScript is kind of clumsy when it comes to
>manipulating text, compared to for example lisp or tcl.  As far as I
>know, BBEdit can execute scripts in any srcipting language, but this
>works by calling an external interpreter, which is also quite clumsy. 
>This is acceptable if from time to time you have some complicated
>operation to perform on your file, but not practical for all-the-time
>typing scripts.

I am happy to be corrected (I had mentioned Applescript several times
and that - IIRC - was the only time I abbreviated it, in my defence!)
but purely for the sake of clarifying the situation for non-BBEdit users
who might be interested, let me say that BBEdit has (I still maintain!)
the best Applescripting support (certainly in all the apps I have used
for text manipulation, which is most of them) available. 

Anyway, if people don't realise, it also xecutes shell scripts and Perl.
I can't say how good the implementation is but I know it is there.

As I say, I merely wish to clarify what is available to Mac users and
make no judgements about other editors (I haven't used all of those
mentioned).

I think this should be the end of my posts on this topic - anyone is
welcome to get me offlist for more information. And let me say there is
no commercial affiliation - though I am on first name terms with many of
them after years of contacting support...
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