05.31.09
Diff/Patch Language Module for BBEdit and TextWrangler
I’ve mentioned before some of the many things I like about TextWrangler, the free younger brother to Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit. One thing I didn’t mention before is the support for language modules (particularly codeless language modules, which in theory even I could write) for extending the types of files for which syntax coloring is supported. Bare Bones maintains a small list on its website, but slogging through Google you can find a plethora of others.
While working on some of the symbols generation/upload bugs, I discovered this language module from pudge.net for diff/patch files. I always sanity-check my diffs before I post them in bugs, and I often have to look at other peoples’ patches, and this language module has made those so much easier. Be sure to read the comment at the top of the .plist to help set up the colors.
This diff/patch module was a bit hard to find, and a couple of people have asked me about it since I first mentioned it, so I thought I’d write about it here to make it easier to find in the future. (I should also mention that for those of you who spend lots of time in BBEdit/TextWrangler with Mozilla .idl files, sheppy has a nice IDL language module available.)
It would be cool if BBEdit/TextWrangler could allow modules to use background colors and would treat some language modules as “overlays” so that you’d get native syntax coloring for the files in addition to marking which lines were added/removed, and I’m still looking for an AppleScript language module, but the pudge.net diff/patch module has been a big step up in usefulness. 
Update (2009-11-10): The pudge.net diff/patch module is now listed on the small list on the Bare Bones website!