Bluefish

Text editors are easy to find. Most are limited by using slow old Java. Bluefish is written in C for a fast start, fast editing, and low overhead, the type of editor you need on a server. When Bluefish finally gets a Windows version, so you can use it on every computer, Bluefish could be renamed Cluefish.

XML

I need at least one editor that can edit XML using a DTDs or schema for validation. For everything else, an editor with syntax highlighting is enough. Bluefish has autocompletion for XML tags but no more. Bluefish is enough to edit XML parameter files and sample data files where you can immediately test the file. I would not use Bluefish for an XML file that you have to send to a remote site because you cannot validate the file before transmission.

Eclipse Competitor?

Eclipse is a development environment aimed at the top end of the development market where you need to work with projects. Bluefish does not manage files by project. You could use Bluefish with an external source control mechanism if you need source control only on a small percentage of your projects.

GTK, not Java

A lot of editors are based on Java; which means they are slow, unreliable, and work only on some operating systems. Java has improved over the years, in part due to Microsoft bring out a better version and creating competition, but Java is still a long way from first choice and still fails to be upwards compatible. I shudder every time I look at the huge number of Java versions need to run a simple desktop application environment if you do not work hard to find alternatives to Java based software.

Bluefish uses GTK and C, both of which work, work efficiently, and work on every useful operating system. One of the first programs I install on every workstation is GIMP, the original source of GTK, which means GTK is on every computer I use for any sort of development. When Bluefish is available for Windows, Bluefish can follow GIMP onto every Windows, Linux, and Unix workstation.

Editing

I tried an early version of Bluefish for a couple of minutes on a Linux machine as an alternative to vi. Heaven.

One Unix bigot told me the advantage if vi is that vi is totally standard and available everywhere. In an environment with Solaris and two versions of Linux, vi was hidden all over the place. Even on Solaris, vi was on different places on each server. Worse still, every version of vi used different keyboard shortcuts and none of them matched the reference chart on my workstation wall.

Using a visual editor means you never have to depend on a keyboard shortcut again, you simply click what you want. If you are not stuck on a Mac, you can right click and scroll the wheel to do exactly what you want without having to think about the editor. Hopefully Bluefish now works with multiple mouse buttons and one or two scroll wheels.

Unix bigots laugh at Windows Blue Screen of Death but then work through a command line all day. You can see over 12 million colours but Unix users want to limit us to 2 colours. Bah! Humbug!. Colour highlighting saves time. I measured the impact and found source code editing is 60 percent more efficient in full colour. IBM researched limited colour and found a minimum of 35 percent improvement. Intelligent source code highlighting in colour also reduces errors by prewarning you about basic typographical errors. Bluefish gives you some highlighting without a massive overhead.

Source Access and Control

Bluefish connects via FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and WebDAV. If they have full Subversion control through WebDAV then that is everything I need. I would still use Filezilla or equivalent for uploading images and downloading backups. Perhaps Bluefish will develop FTP to the point where you can drag an image or a directory from your local computer to the target computer, which will do away with the need for Filezilla.

Open Source

You can check open source software for traps including adware, automatic virus installation, and those horrible licence registration and renewals that stop you dead at the worst possible times. Bluefish is open source.

Conclusion

I do not use Bluefish because some of my work is on Windows. Jedit provides a slower alternative that works on Windows and has some plugins not yet available on Bluefish. I will look at Bluefish again when it has a Windows version. If you never use Windows and do not need project management, try Bluefish.