Bluefish vs GNU Emacs
Bluefish
bluefish.openoffice.nlGNU Emacs
gnu.orgSide by side
| Figure | Bluefish | GNU Emacs |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Editor Software | 8.8 (#2) | 8.7 (#4) |
| Spec score · Text Editors | 8.7 (#10) | 9.0 (#4) |
| Spec score · Code editors | 8.5 (#12) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Customization options | Bluefish is highly customizable and includes customization tips. | Users can customize it with Emacs Lisp code or a graphical interface. |
| Editor type | desktop | It is a customizable text editor with an Emacs Lisp interpreter at its core. |
| Extension support | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 1998 | 1990 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing page | The pricing URL returns a 404 error, and no prices are stated. | The referenced pricing page returns a 404 page-not-found message. |
| Security limitation | The official Flatpak's strict security blocks integration with system tools such as make, pylint, weblint, and the web browser; internal functionality works as expected. | Loading Emacs Lisp can execute code, so the manual advises loading Lisp files only from sources you trust. |
| Support | The volunteer-run project offers community and support mailing lists, directs bug reports to its bug tracker, and lists commercial support by contacting the project. | Users can seek help through the help-gnu-emacs mailing list or gnu.emacs.help newsgroup, and report bugs with M-x report-emacs-bug. |
| Supported platforms | Linux, Mac OSX, Windows, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. | GNU/Linux, BSDs, Haiku, Windows, macOS, and Android. |
Plans
In their own words
Bluefish
Bluefish is a free, open-source desktop editor for programmers and web developers. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and supports more than 30 markup and programming languages. The editor is designed for websites, scripts, and programming code, with project support for working across multiple projects while restoring each project’s settings. Bluefish can load and save remote files through FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, and CIFS via gvfs. Editing tools include regular-expression search and replace, snippets, unlimited undo and redo, crash recovery for modified documents, code folding, bracket and tag highlighting, autocompletion, and automatic tag closing for many languages. It can open more than 1,000 documents, with the features page reporting tests above 10,000 simultaneously. External programs and custom scripts can be integrated. The official Flatpak’s strict security blocks some system-tool and browser integrations.