Draft:Bluefish (software)

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Bluefish
Developer(s)Olivier Sessink
Initial release1999; 25 years ago (1999)
Stable release
2.2.15[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 17 March 2024 (17 March 2024)
Written inC
Operating systemCross-platform (POSIX)
TypeText editor
LicenseGPL-3.0-or-later
Websitebluefish.openoffice.nl/index.html

Bluefish is a free and open-source software advanced Source-code_editor with a variety of tools for programming and website development. It supports editing source code such as C, JavaScript, Java, Python, as well as markup languages such as HTML, XHTML, XML. It is available for many platforms, including Linux, macOS[2] and Windows,[3][4] and can be used via integration with GNOME or run as a stand-alone application. Designed as a compromise between plain text editors and full programming IDEs, Bluefish is lightweight, fast and easy to learn, while providing many IDE features[5]. It has been translated into 17 languages. The source code is available under the GNU General Public License.

Features[edit]

Bluefish's features include syntax highlighting and auto-completion for 47 different markup and code languages (including Mediawiki syntax [6]), code folding, auto-recovery, upload/download functionality (on systems where GVfs is available), a code-aware spell-checker, a Unicode character browser, project support, code navigation and bookmarks[7]. It has some advanced search and replace functionality with regular expression support, and multi-file search and replace support. It has a multiple document interface that can quickly load large (hundreds of files) codebases or websites[8].

For web development it has wizards and a toolbars with all HTML tags that can be used to assist in task completion[9] and Zencoding/emmet[10] for quick web development[11].

Bluefish is extensible via plugins and scripts. Many scripts come preconfigured, including statical code analysis, and syntax and markup checks for different markup and programming languages.

History[edit]

Bluefish was started by Chris Mazuc and Olivier Sessink in 1998 to facilitate web development professionals on Linux desktop platforms[12]. Originally it's editor design with syntax scanning was inspired by the NEdit, but the user interface was design by Homesite. It was originally called Thtml editor, which was considered too cryptic; then Prosite, which was abandoned to avoid clashes with web-development companies already using that name[13]. The name Bluefish was chosen after a logo (a child's drawing of a blue fish) was proposed on its mailing list. Since version 1.0, the original logo was replaced with a new, more polished one. The 1.0 release was even featured on Slashdot[14]. In 2005 a Bluefish fork of 1.3 was made to create Winefish, a LaTeX editor [15].

The 2.0 release[16] was a big rewrite, changing to the GTK-2 GtkTextView widget and a new syntax scanning engine based on a deterministic finite automaton[17]. The 2.2 release[18], which is the current stable branch, supports both GTK-2 and GTK-3.

Source code and development[edit]

Bluefish is written in C and uses the cross-platform GTK library for its GUI widgets[19]. Markup and programming language support is defined in XML files that are loaded with Libxml2. The optional plugins require libenchant, python and libgucharmap [20].

Bluefish has a plugin API in C, but it has been used mainly to separate non-maintained parts (such as the infobrowser-plugin) from maintained parts. A few Python plugins exist as well, but they need a C plugin to interact with the main program. Bluefish also supports very loosely coupled plugins: external scripts that read standard input and return their results via standard output can be configured by the user in the preferences panel. Building is done with Automake and Autoconf to configure and set up its build environment. Both llvm and GCC can be used to compile Bluefish. On Windows, MinGW is used to build the binaries.

Development of Bluefish is coordinated on SourceForge. Initially CVS was used for code version control, later the code was moved to SVN. Bluefish was one of the early projects on Sourceforge, it joined in the first few months after launch, mainly promoted by Robin Miller who was a heavy Bluefish user[21] and worked for Geeknet that owned Sourceforge.

Reception[edit]

Tech writer Robin Miller (Linux.com, Time.com) wrote GPL-licensed Bluefish has become an excellent “production tool” for those of who earn our living writing for Web sites, full of little “speed you up” features[21]. Tech writer Jack Wallen (Techrepublic, Linux.com) wrote For those Linux (and BSD, and Mac, and Windows) users, the tool by which most measure the standard is Bluefish[22]. A Softpedia review found the software powerful, feature-rich and easy to use.[9]. A review on thegeeksclub found Bluefish an excellent choice if you’re serious about web development [23]. An extensive review at lifeofageekadmin.com concluded As we can see Bluefish is a powerful web editor that runs on many platforms and is well suited for development to meet many needs. Although it does not have WYSIWYG capabilities it is easy to use other programs to fill in the gaps. Bluefish also adds the power of templates to allow for speedier development to common tasks used by the coder [8]. A review at htmlcenter.com summarized Bluefish is simply an application to put all of your favorite coding elements at your fingertips without overpowering you with a bunch of annoying suggestions [24]. Steve Litt wrote for Linux Productivity Magazine: If you write HTML professionally, you should check out Bluefish too[11].

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Error: Unable to display the reference properly. See the documentation for details.
  2. ^ "Download Bluefish for Mac - Macupdate". 23 Jan 2017.
  3. ^ Bluefish installation instructions
  4. ^ Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier (10 March 2010). "Linux Weekly News - Bluefish 2.0: Slim but powerful".
  5. ^ Scott Nesbitt (14 October 2020). "Editing HTML (and More) with Bluefish".
  6. ^ Wikipedia:Text editor support § Bluefish
  7. ^ "Bluefish features". Retrieved 2024-05-03.
  8. ^ a b Mark Harris (2 November 2016). "Using Bluefish as Your Web Editor". Retrieved 2 May 2024.
  9. ^ a b Mihai Marinof (18 April 2007). "Bluefish Review". Softpedia. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  10. ^ Olivier Sessink (2012). "Bluefish 2.2.1 released". bluefish-dev (Mailing list).
  11. ^ a b Steve Litt (2013). "Linux Productivity Magazine - Bluefish: Quality and Speed".
  12. ^ Dave Crouse. "An interview with Oliver Sessink - Bluefish Developer". USA Linux user group. Archived from the original on 2010-06-20. Retrieved 2024-05-03.
  13. ^ "Bluefish history". Retrieved 2024-05-02.
  14. ^ "News for nerds, stuff that matters - Bluefish 1.0 Released". 13 January 2005. Retrieved 2024-05-02.
  15. ^ "Winefish". GitHub. Retrieved 2024-05-02.
  16. ^ Olivier Sessink (February 2010). "Bluefish 2.0.0 released!". bluefish-dev (Mailing list).
  17. ^ Olivier Sessink (14 August 2010). "Bluefish editor widget design". Retrieved 2024-05-02.
  18. ^ Olivier Sessink (November 2011). "Bluefish 2.2.0 source code released - please help with binaries". bluefish-dev (Mailing list).
  19. ^ "Bluefish Code".
  20. ^ "Free software directory - Bluefish". Free Software Foundation. 12 February 2002.
  21. ^ a b Robin (Roblimo) Miller (10 September 2002). "Bluefish: My favorite Linux HTML editor". Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  22. ^ Jack Wallen (29 Oct 2010). "Use Bluefish as your HTML editor".
  23. ^ Nitin Agarwal (November 29, 2011). "Bluefish: A cross-platform HTML Editor – Review".
  24. ^ Curtiss (22 April 2012). "Bluefish Editor, HtmlCenter blog".

External links[edit]

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