Balthisar Tidy Classic at Mac App Store analyse

This is a GUI app wrapping the classic tidy utility, very helpful if you’d like to bypass fiddling with command line issues for quick experimentation. A drawback that will hinder some is that it appears to enforce an html file extension, so won’t open xml or other files. It would be useful to have the ability to hide the options and messages panes to maximize screen real estate for input/output review. Also, it would benefit keyboard-centric users to have keyboard shortcuts to set options, eg the pane show/hide functionality, toggling tidy settings, etc. Other than these minor issues, it’s a worthy repackaging of the great tidy functionality.

After a spirited discussion on the BBEdit forum, I installed this to see what the talk was about. I opened two files, one an HTML file and the other a PHP file. My very first impression was that it gave a warning about being a 4.1 Transitional Doctype. A warning? Really. It was written that way on purpose. Then it said there was no <title></title> when there was. Nothing was altered, nothing was saved from Balthisar Tidy. After returning to BBEdit to get some work done, I found that all of my PHP files’ icons had been changed to Balthisar Tidy icons. NOT what I requested. I was NOT asked, the program changed a system wide setting without my approval. I am not a happy camper. This one goes in my trash.