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Add to SafariHowl vs TextWrangler
When comparing Howl vs TextWrangler, the Slant community recommends TextWrangler for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors for a Mac with a GUI?” TextWrangler is ranked 12th while Howl is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose TextWrangler is:
It starts up fast because is not bloated. It has all the essentials of a text editor.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Keyboard driven
You don't need the mouse to use Howl. Everything can be accomplished with commands and shortcuts.
Pro Fast startup
It's extremely lightweight, making it start up pretty quickly.
Pro Easy to use
Howl is very intuitive and easy to use.
Pro Easy to extend
Plugins (bundles) can be written in Lua or MoonScript.
Pro UI Focused on editting
Non distracted icons, toolbars, pannels, extra spacing, etc.
Pro Language tooling
Has built-in functionality for completion, inline documentation and linting so IDE-like features can be added easily.
Pro Command line palette
Search for your commands in an easy way and see in the list which key-strokes are mapped to which commands
Pro Open source
Howl is an open source project and is actively developed on GitHub(howl-editor/howl). It has a MIT license.
Pro Works on OpenBSD
Pro Fast to start up
It starts up fast because is not bloated. It has all the essentials of a text editor.
Pro Free
Free but capable alternative to BBEdit.
Pro Built-in FTP/STFP browser
Edit remote files easily.
Pro Robust
Cons
Con Lack of Lua examples
Although Howl can be extended in both Lua and MoonScript, almost all bundles are written in MoonScript. This means that it is a bit harder to find examples if you'd rather write your bundle in Lua. MoonScript can be compiled to Lua but the code won't be as clean and understandable as if it would've been written in Lua by hand.
Con No Longer Maintained
Bare Bones, the developers of TextWranger, recently ended maintenance and support for the product. Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/): "We have sunsetted TextWrangler, and we encourage anyone interested in TextWrangler to download and use BBEdit instead."
Con Not Compatible with macOS High Sierra (10.13+)
Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/support/new-os.html): "TextWrangler is not compatible with High Sierra. We suggest that you use BBEdit as an alternative . . . ." Since Bare Bones officially sunsetted the product, it will unlikely be compatible with subsequent macOS release versions either.
Con Featureless
