A while ago I wrote about TextMate and how it compared to BBEdit. I need to update that comparison now, because BareBones has just released a better BBEdit: version 8.5. Okay, it's still BBEdit, they haven't gone and done anything radical. What have done however is yet another incremental improvement, further proof that BareBones is listening to their users.
Among the least sucking new features is code-folding (at last!), a code clippings menu, better svn support and yes -- finally -- an application icon that doesn't look like it came from 1999. I'd like to see a much cleaner interface overall, and maybe version 9.0 will include such a makeover, but for the time being a rock solid application just got a little bit more solid.
Apple's OS X is an amalgamation of several technologies, including the Unix-based Darwin OS. So it isn't surprising that a platypus named Hexley was chosen as the mascot. I recently happened across another platypus on my Mac, this time with a heart of perl.
Sveinbjorn Thordarson has created an open source tool called Platypus which allows scripting languages, such as Perl, to run as native desktop applications. It's very slick, and works like a treat. If you've ever wanted to use perl in desktop applications on a Mac, you should be running to give this tool a try.
Spotted: When doing a search at http://developer.apple.com/ today, I felt the Perl.
In fact, Apple's support of open-source scripting languages is about as good as it gets.
If, like me, you write code on a Mac, you have a history of working with BBEdit. I'm somehow embarrassed to admit my personal history of working with BBEdit goes back almost a decade. Hey, what can I say? I like things that are simple and work. I've tried other editors, but none hit the same sweet-spot of plain old get-it-done-edness. Then I heard about TextMate.
I've been toying with the idea of installing Perl6 on my Mac, maybe playing around with it a little. Unfortunately that's not a trivial task, but today it just got a lot easier. Perl6 isn't done yet. But there is a reference implementation built in Haskell. So you'll need to start by downloading and installing ghc. Then you're in luck, because David Romano has just released Mac installers for the other two parts you'll need: Pugs and Parrot. At least on my 10.4 system, this worked like a charm. Then you can start your next perl script with #!/usr/bin/pugsand follow along with the examples of Perl6 you'll start seeing here and, more and more, all over.
