I have written some plug-ins for the Macintosh text editor BBEdit that allow BBEdit to act as an external editor for two other Macintosh programs: Textures (an implementation of the TeX typesetting language) and MacPerl (an implementation of the Perl programming language). This page contains information about these BBEdit plug-ins (BBEdit plug-ins were called BBEdit extensions in versions of BBEdit prior to 4.5).
Textures is a commercial implementation of the TeX typesetting language for the Macintosh. I have written BBEdit plug-ins that facilitate the use of BBEdit as an external editor for Textures.
There are three releases of the plug-ins that work with various versions of Textures and BBEdit. Release 3.0.1 works with Textures 2.1 and BBEdit 5.1.1 or later. Release 2.0.1 works with Textures 2.1 and BBEdit 3.5.2 or later. Release 1.2 works with Textures 1.8 or 2.0 and BBEdit 3.5.2 or later. Some of the plug-ins in Release 1.2 also work with BBEdit Lite 3.0.1 or later. The release 3.0.1 plug-in is a PowerPC plug-in that can only be used on PowerPC Macintoshes. Releases 2.0.1 and 1.2 of the plug-ins are 68K plug-ins that can run on a PowerPC or 68K Macintosh.
These plug-ins do not work with BBEdit running under Mac OS X. I have created a preliminary version of the plug-in that works with BBEdit running under Mac OS X (this will be version 3.1 of the plug-in). At this time there is not a Mac OS X version of Textures. While Textures will run in Classic under Mac OS X there is a communication problem between Textures running in Classic and BBEdit running in Mac OS X that prevents the plug-in from working. I hope this problem will be solved when a Mac OS X version of Textures is available.
The external editor interface was significantly enhanced in Textures 2.1, so the plug-ins for Textures 2.1 offer quite a bit more functionality than the plug-ins for Textures 1.8 or 2.0. Release 3.0.1 uses some new features of the BBEdit plug-in interface introduced in BBEdit 5.1.1 which make the interaction between BBEdit and Textures much smoother than was possible in previous versions of BBEdit. It is highly recommended that BBEdit 5.1.1 or later and Release 3.0.1 be used with Textures 2.1.
Download release 3.0.1 of the plug-ins for Textures 2.1 and BBEdit 5.1.1 (StuffIt archive)
Download release 2.0.1 of the plug-ins for Textures 2.1 (StuffIt archive)
Download release 1.2 of the plug-ins for Textures 1.8 and 2.0 (StuffIt archive)
StuffIt Expander can be used to extract the files from a StuffIt archive after downloading.
Of related interest is the excellent TeX/LaTeX Software for Macintosh web page created by Gary L. Gray.
Integrated MacPerl support was introduced in version 5.1 of BBEdit. The integrated MacPerl support in BBEdit 5.1 and later supercedes these plug-ins. If you are using a version of BBEdit prior to 5.1 I recommend you upgrade to the latest version of BBEdit and use the integrated MacPerl support provided in BBEdit rather than these plug-ins. These plug-ins will not work with BBEdit running under Mac OS X.
MacPerl is a Macintosh port by Matthias Neeracher of the Perl programming language. The MacPerl Pages are a good source of information about MacPerl. I have written six BBEdit plug-ins that facilitate the use of BBEdit as an external editor for MacPerl. The six plug-ins are
Each of these plug-ins can be used with either BBEdit or BBEdit Lite, except for the Edit MacPerl Script plug-in which only works with BBEdit, not BBEdit Lite. Detailed descriptions of these plug-ins and instructions on how to use them are contained in the on-line manual.
The plug-ins come with a Perl Palette written by Lindsay Davies. The Perl Palette displays a floating palette containing buttons for each of the six BBEdit plug-ins. The Perl Palette only works with BBEdit, not with BBEdit Lite.
I have also written a BBEdit plug-in named Perl Filters that works with MacPerl to allow Perl scripts to act as text filters on text selected in a BBEdit window. The current version is 1.1.4. A description of the Perl Filters plug-in and instructions on how to use it are given in the on-line manual. The Perl Filters plug-in does not work with BBEdit Lite.
Download all plug-ins and manuals (StuffIt archive).
Download all plug-ins and manuals (Binhexed StuffIt archive).
StuffIt Expander can be used to extract the files from a StuffIt archive after downloading.
Last updated: May 20, 2002