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Add to SafariWhen comparing Femto Emacs vs BBEdit, the Slant community recommends BBEdit for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source text editors for programming?” BBEdit is ranked 27th while Femto Emacs is ranked 37th. The most important reason people chose BBEdit is:
BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Well documented
A long and well written tutorial teaches how to program in femtolisp and write extensions for Femto Emacs.
Pro Highly compatible with Emacs
If you know Emacs, you can start using Femto Emacs immediately.
Pro Very small footprint
The size of the executable file and the femtolisp library add up to only 500 k. The C source code is also small and well documented, so one can easily modify it. You can also use the source code to learn how to program a text editor.
Pro Very fast startup time
For small files, Femto Emacs starts up faster than emacs or vim.
Pro Stable development, been around for decades
BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992.
Pro Can open very large files
Pro Just about every feature is already built in
No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work.
Pro Great customer support
The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions.
Pro Native application
Follows platform standards.
Pro Built-in FTP/SFTP browser
BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).
Pro Great JAMStack environment
You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful.
Cons
Con No syntax coloring for Latex
The distribution comes with syntax coloring examples for many languages, like Haskell, C, Lisp, Python, etc. However, there is no scheme for Latex. If you need syntax coloring for Latex, you will need to add your own color scheme.
Con Source distribution only
Femto Emacs is distributed only in source form. Therefore, you need to install ncurses, gcc and compile it with make and make install. There is no binary distribution. If you want mouse support, you need to program it in femtolisp or in C. This should not be a problem if you are a programmer, but can become an issue if you don't know Lisp or C. If you want to use femtolisp on Windows, you will need mingw and ncurses.
Con Featureless
Con Expensive
It's US$49.99 a single user license.
