Product Reviews

When it comes to collaborating on a text file, TheCodingMonkey's SubEthaEdit occupies a position somewhere between highly useful and essential. Thanks to its use of Bonjour, Apple's zero-configuration networking technology, SubEthaEdit lets you share documents in real time on a local network or over the Internet.

SubEthaEdit works across a local network easily. The person hosting the file announces it, and it appears in the browser window of other local SubEthaEdit users. If allocated access rights, they can then open the file by double-clicking on it. Participants in a shared document appear in a drawer at its side, grouped under their access rights, and each person's edits appear on the page in real time in a different colour.

But SubEthaEdit isn't just a poster-child for Apple technology - it also works speedily, particularly for small files - and boasts powerful text-editing features, including syntax highlighting and a clever tool to add or edit text on multiple lines simultaneously. In version 2.5 you can even open 'hidden' files.

SubEthaEdit offers additional tricks. A 'Follow' mode lets you watch what others are doing to a document - in split

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screen mode you can do this while continuing to work on your own part of the file. You can also connect to other users directly via iChat from the drawer's contextual menu.

You can choose from more than 20 modes - including HTML, Python CSS or Lua. Changing mode adjusts the document's file extension and each mode can be allocated its own font, document background and foreground colours.

You can further extend the usefulness of modes. If you're proficient in XML, you can write your own bundle describing its attributes. In version 2.5, you can also trigger modes when you open a file of a certain type. This doesn't just rely on translating the file's extension. SubEthaEdit can open a particular mode depending on the file's name or its content.

But the most significant new feature lies in the improvement to SubEthaEdit's AppleScript dictionary. It's now possible to script text manipulation routines in AppleScript and other scripting languages. These are housed in a new AppleScript menu, already populated by common text-editing routines such as changing case.

Not only can you manipulate modes directly in an AppleScript, but you can also place scripts in a mode's scripting folder. From here you can add features such as toolbar icons for specific modes.

There's still room for improvement: if SubEthaEdit is to expand its constituency beyond programmers and web coders into educational and business markets, its documents need rich text support.

It's also disappointing that there's no free version of SubEthaEdit 2.5. But the company still offers SubEthaEdit 2.2 free for non-commercial use and, at $35 for a full version, the developer can't be called greedy. If it's collaboration that interests you, SubEthaEdit has no equal.