From Rich Siegel to Guy Kawasaki

The lead developer of BBEdit explains why he's psyched about the combination of Frontier and BBEdit.

May 2, 1996

Hello Guy,

I wanted to drop you a line and let you and the Evangelistas know about some cool new tools that Bare Bones Software and UserLand Software have produced.

UserLand has developed a macro processor, hosted in Frontier (their system-level scripting system), which provides some really powerful preprocessing of Web pages. Some of the features it offers are:

• an extensible Glossary database; just refer to something in "double quotes", and it is expanded out to whatever text you like, automatically;

• automatic substitution of HTML entities and escape sequences when you use Macintosh special characters. Instead of having to write bizarre HTML escape sequences, you can type naturally, and the Frontier processor does the rest.

• automatic generation of links for URLs and email addresses. For example, instead of having to write complicated HTML anchor tags, just type the URL, and the macro processor will construct the correct HTML for you.

• easy uploading of completed pages to your server, whether it's on a Mac (accessible via file sharing), or on a remote Unix or Windows NT server (in which case Frontier activates Fetch to do the uploading).

• one-key processing and previewing of pages.

The key term here is "automatic"; the Frontier end of the system takes a lot of the repetition out of composing HTML, and lets you compose naturally, without having to worry about many of the nasty ins and outs.

This macro processor is united with BBEdit through Frontier's menu sharing system; this allows BBEdit users to take advantage of this automation, while continuing to make the most of BBEdit's capabilities.

In addition to the new Web authoring power with BBEdit, the Frontier solution integrates with the Internet tools that Mac users use: Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Eudora, Fetch, Anarchie, StuffIt, FileMaker, and even the Finder.

I am really jazzed about the work that UserLand has done, at several levels:

• as the developer of BBEdit, I've worked really hard to establish integration with external application services like Frontier, so I'm gratified to see this stuff come to fruition.

• as an author and Web site manager, this system is going to make my life tons easier;

• as a Mac guy, I see the collaboration between Bare Bones Software and UserLand Software as the sort of thing that could only have been executed by two serious Mac companies, who had the joint goal of producing a solution that runs only on a Mac, and which was created by and for people who use the Mac to get real work done.

Anyone who's interested in this new Web authoring power can find out more about it at http://www.scripting.com/apps/bbedit.html.

Regards,

Rich Siegel
Founder, President & CEO
Bare Bones Software, Inc.
siegel@barebones.com

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