Bluefish Editor 2.2.0 enhanced with new syntax scanning abilities

The GTK-based programmer and web designer's editor Bluefish has been updated to version 2.2.0 with a reworked syntax scanner, a refreshed search and replace function and more supported languages. The first release of the new 2.2.x series now works with GTK3, though it still supports GTK2 and runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows.

The reworked syntax scanner has enabled a number of new features such as a select block command, auto-completion of user defined functions, jump to function and context-aware commenting. The select block feature can select, in context, the current block of code and repeated use of it then selects the parent of that block each time. The appropriate style of comments – such as <!-- --> or // or /* */ – can be automatically inserted into, or removed from, a document with the context-aware commenting, even when different types of code are in one document, like an HTML document with embedded JavaScript and CSS. Auto-completion is also aware of function names defined in the document, and there is also the ability to jump to any defined function too thanks to the new syntax scanner.

Support for Google Go, Vala and Ada has been added to Bluefish's language support, which already includes Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, R, Perl, Lua and SQL. Features enabled by the language support include code block folding, block highlighting, in-line reference information and auto-completion. The list of languages is now so long that the developers have also added an "include in menu" option to allow users to display only languages that are relevant to them. The developers note they have also been improving the existing features of BlueFish. A video by them talks about, and demonstrates, the new 2.2.0 features.

Bluefish 2.2.0's new features demonstrated

Bluefish can be downloaded from the project's site and a wiki page explains how to install a binary package on many platforms, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, AltLinux, Gentoo and Slackware Linux. Bluefish is licensed under the GPLv3 and the project is sponsored by the Typo3 company. One of the developers says that the 2.2.1 release will also include plug-in support for zen coding.

(djwm)