I use BBEdit a lot for several different tasks and really find it
irreplaceable. I have a couple of comments/questions about it
though. This is more meant to generate discussion; are there things
that I'm missing? Are there things we could do as a community (maybe
with the help of Barebones) to collect scripts, clipping sets, etc. to
make the program more usable?

The biggest thing I can think of is the fact that even though BBEdit
is incredible powerful, most people don't realize all that it can do.
Built in capabilities like Tag Maker and Clippings seem to escape many
users. Clippings in particular are very powerful. It's a shame there
aren't better built in clipping sets to demonstrate their usage and
provide with better out-of-the-box usability.

The same goes for Applescripts. One of BBEdit's best features is it's
ridiculous scriptability. However, a lot of people can't seem to get
their head around Applescript. I know I can't. I do some some stuff
with it in BBEdit, but when I just want to really crunch some text, I
usually write a Unix filter instead. I just found a great Applescript
to pipe text through command line utilities, written by Jim C. Why
aren't scripts like this shipped with BBEdit, or at least made
available in one place as a separate download?

I really wish BBEdit was more scriptable with Unix scripting
languages. Unix filters are great for what they are, but it's hard to
make them do much more than filter. The Unix scripts function seems
to be seriously hampered. If only the scripts run from the Unix
scripting menu were given a bit more information, one could do a lot
more with them. Is there anyway those scripts could be passed
information through the environment (or as arguments)? It would be
greatly appreciated if the currently active file and line number/
character position was made available. I could do away with a lot of
hybrid Applescript/shell scripts I have and greatly simplify things.

Sorry if this is just a couple of half-baked thoughts...

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