Interestingly, I recently read an article about HIG (Human Interface Guidelines), but that article was targeting one-button mice versus other mice. You see, one of the reasons to love BBEdit is that it provides the same keystrokes as MPW, Metrowerks and XCode and this is more or less standard for the OSX platform. Word, as an example, has different keystrokes for similar tasks, making it a pain to use.

Other reasons to love BBEdit is that it uses so many interface features from the Mac itself: drop a folder to get an ls like listing, using the proxy icon, dragging content for move or copy actions, open and save dialogs. And it opens almost anything, even if it is binary, so you can get an impression of what a file is about.

But again, it is the similarities in use it shares with other major editors (even Mail or AppleWorks) that makes it such a solid product. However, if you like other keystrokes, you can set them. And products like MetroWerks and XCode will allow you to use BBEdit as external editor.

With FTP, WebDAV, Windows sharing, NFS and other alternatives can a Mac application open/save files from/to other platforms. Editors like BBEdit can so extend their usefullness. (BBEdit understands different line-endings to make it even easier for cross-platform use, a feature many Windows or Unix editors seem to miss.)

As an independent software developer, I do all my coding on a Mac (mostly MetroWerks) even for Windows development or web development. BBEdit I use for any file that is not code.

So, I see editor religion and raise it to platform religion. Any takers?