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TextMate finally gets an update
- Stinkyfoo 16y agoAlmost a year since the last!
- mishmash 16y agoIt must suck so much to go back and work on old code after years of working on new code (TM v2).
- luckyland 16y agoGood one.
- dedward 16y agoDoesn't that potentially say something about the quality of the existing code? I've been using textmate daily for the last year and haven't had any gripes (not implying their aren't any, especially for programmers - but for my needs it's been stellar. Sometimes a good app is just a good app and doesn't need constant updates)
- X-Istence 16y agoTextMate is my favourite editor on the Mac, only recently have I been using MacVim on my work computer since as a startup they are unable to purchase a license for TextMate. Honestly though, there are some things in MacVim I am now starting to miss in TextMate.
- teilo 16y agoThe longer you use MacVim, the more that will be true. Before you know it, you will hardly miss TextMate at all.
- Legion 16y agoWith a few Vim plugins, there's nothing left to miss. One of particular note for TextMate users, Command-T: https://wincent.com/products/command-t https://wincent.com/products/command-t
- dasil003 16y agoThere are a few things. Because I do so many other things with various text fields on my machine, and vim bindings everywhere is not really feasible (yet?!), being very adept with the Command/Option/Shift/Arrow Keys/Cut/Paste is something that has widespread utility. The vim bindings for this stuff are much richer, and fewer key strokes of course, but the universality matters, and the buffer/clipboard dichotomy is pretty well handled in MacVim, but it's still the type of thing that is quite difficult to really dial-in without building for a specific OS from the ground up. And of course there are a few nice things that developing for a specific GUI affords you where vim even with plugins isn't quite as elegant. However that said, all editors involve tradeoffs, and Vim's ubiquity and raw editing power make it kind of a sure bet until the day we are dictating whole programs to orders-of-magnitude-smarter-than-human AIs. Emacs also gets the nod of course, since there is no chance of either of those going away, and no chance that anyone invents an editor that blows both of those away for all general purpose editing. But I do have to give Allan Odgaard special thanks for forcibly showing me the light: that no matter how brilliant proprietary software may be, if it's my primary tool that I intend to use for the next 50+ years, closed source or a project with a risk of losing critical mass is simply a poor bet over time. And of course I will still buy TM 2 when it comes out if he reverses his decision not to charge for it (which he should, and maybe give it away to individuals that complain, because who shouldn't be paid for years of secret toil?), and I'll likely still use it for its diff syntax highlighting, complex regex ack (because how long does it take to figure out the number of backslashes to escape something through ex, bash, and ack?). But it'll join BBEdit (which I use for encoding munging) in my quiver of specialized tools.
- X-Istence 16y agoI love TextMate but I do feel that at the current pace it is in my best interest to learn new text editors. There is also something to be said for vim opening a 8 GB file, and searching through it to replace what used to be an unreserved name in a MySQL dump to a reserved name. Most if not all other editors will completely fail. While at first I was sad that I couldn't just have my TextMate at work (another user just pointed out I can use one license for work and home! Score!) I am also glad that I have learned at least the surface plus a couple of centimetres of what vim is all about and how powerful it really is.
- tptacek 16y agoA company that can pay a developer salary but won't pay the cost of that developer's favorite text editor has its priorities out of whack.
- j_baker 16y agoEspecially when said editor costs only $55. That's nothing compared to the cost of a lot of other commercial editors.
- stretchwithme 16y agoyeah, could pay for itself the first week
- noarchy 16y agoThere are also editors that do far more, for free. That's not to belittle TextMate users. I'm just saying that when it comes time to making decisions about spending money, it may be difficult to convince some managers to want to fork over the cash for something like this.
- sjs 16y agoThere's a lot of value in how easy TM makes snippets and all that. Yes a lot of free editors do more but it often requires more effort too. TM is well worth the money for that reason.
- j_baker 16y agoI agree with you, but considering how much you spend on developers in salary, benefits, and equipment, $55 is for all intents and purposes free.
- gnaritas 16y agoA developer who'd not spend less than a hundred bucks of his own money for his tool of choice, and still take the job, confuses me.
- X-Istence 16y ago
- Timothee 16y agoIt seemed to me that the Textmate license was actually allowing you to use your own license for home and work use. Actually, confirmed from the site: http://macromates.com/license_policy http://macromates.com/license_policy "A user is allowed to bring his personal license with him to work, should the company allow it, and use that." There you go, problem solved!
- X-Istence 16y agoAwesome, didn't know about that!
- tzs 16y agoA startup that is unable to purchase a TextMate license is underfunded to the point that it is probably not smart to work for them.
- X-Istence 16y agoI am using the only Mac in the office, we are using Qt for cross platform development and they pay a license for that. Being the only Mac user means I don't get to take advantage of all of the licenses that the Windows developers have access to through various Microsoft programs like BizSpark. We are currently going through our B-round of funding, and hopefully after that it will be easier to ask for various pieces of software, for now I have decided in an effort to save on various different costs it is not worth pushing the effort.
- xtacy 16y agoThis doesn't seem to be that much of a change. Is there a wish list that people loved to see?
- mcav 16y agoAt this point, it's clear that TextMate won't be getting any major new changes unless the developer releases TextMate 2. I was surprised to see even these small fixes after such a dry spell.
- sigzero 16y agoIt's the Duke Nukem Forever of editors. :-)
- mishmash 16y agoMy biggest gripe with TM 1.5 is how Find in Project still beachballs on a new 3.33 6-core Westmere RAID 10 setup. Even after hearing everyone else's problems with FiP, I thought it might have been the slow HD in my last iMac. It's not. ;)
- packetslave 16y agoDefinitely use the "Ack In Project" bundle instead of "Find in Project". It's like night and day.
- mishmash 16y agoCool, getting errors with it ATM but am definitely checking this out. Sounds promising.
- dasil003 16y agoOnly works with 10.6 apparently which is causing my colleague problems. Also, if you set up the folder filters than Find in Project can be bearable, which is nice because Ackmate (name changed this year) doesn't do replace.
- JeffJenkins 16y agoAs a warning, TM removed the opt+tab and opt+shift+tab keyboard shortcuts in this point release (they're now cmd+[ and cmd+]). I was able to get one of them working via keyboard preferences, but the other was inserting literal tab characters. After a few minutes of trying to hunt that down I downgraded. Nothing in the release notes was something I'd personally had a problem with.
- aaronblohowiak 16y agoThis was in the release notes.
- JeffJenkins 16y agoTab changing shortcuts were in the release notes, the indenting change was not. You can see in the release notes that were pasted elsewhere in this thread.
- Hovertruck 16y agoCmd+[ has been used for indenting for a while now, though... At least that's the only way I've ever done it.
- aaronblohowiak 16y agoThis surprised and delighted me: [NEW] Included Make bundle among the default bundles.
- steve19 16y agoThe previous update was on 2009-11-23. Almost a year ago. The full changelog for this release ... [2010-11-12: REVISION 1616] [CHANGED] Disable interactive input support as this is unfortunately causing too many problems on Snow Leopard. Ticket 75950BCB. [NEW] Set DisableClipboardPrecomposing to 1 to disable the precomposing introduced in r1589. [NEW] Included Make bundle among the default bundles. [FIXED] Solved problem with broken application after software update. Ticket D8B9A720. [FIXED] Correct the CSS link in the printable version of the manual. [CHANGED] Change next/previous file tab key equivalents to shift command [ and ]. This has become the de facto standard. [FIXED] Improve key event deciphering when running on 10.5 or newer. This should fix problems with the Qwerty / Dvorak hybrid. [FIXED] On Snow Leopard TextMate should no longer lose last used folder for Save As. Ticket FEE58154. [FIXED] Truncate really long menu item titles. Ticket 8BBEF40A. [FIXED] Add missing CFBundleIdentifier which was lost in last update. Ticket F970873A. [CHANGED] Update use of selectRow:byExtendingSelection: to avoid deprecation warning in console. [FIXED] Don’t use undocumented API for save panels. Ticket 45963BCA.
- netnichols 16y agoConsidering the timing and changelog of this release, I'd guess that Allan was in the old code base to prepare it for the Mac App Store and in the process decided to fix a few more issues and make a release out of it. Just a guess.
- enduser 16y agoalso in the news: vim does not need an update
- jrockway 16y agoIt seems to have new bugfix releases every two years or so.
- graywh 16y agoBugfixes are released often (as patches). Minor releases have new features added (in addition to the patches on the previous version).
- dasil003 16y agoAlthough it does get them regularly, and they are pretty awesome actually.
- bluesnowmonkey 16y agoI had a problem with my license that came to light when Textmate auto-updated. "Your license key has been revoked." Apparently Paypal decided to do a charge-back a few days after I bought it (earlier this year). Anyway, I bought a new key, but Textmate wouldn't let me enter it anywhere. A Macromates employee was on IRC and kindly gave me the solution. defaults delete com.macromates.textmate OakRegistrationLicenseKey
- jlmendezbonini 16y agoA Macromates employee? I was under the impression that Allan Odgaard _was_ Macromates.
- tsigo 16y agoThe funny thing is, I actually switched to using a Mac as a full-time development platform specifically for TextMate, and a few months after doing so, I discovered the joys of Vim and haven't looked back. There was a time where I would have cared about TextMate 2, but it's long gone.
- jonpaul 16y agoI'm really interested in the TextMate hype as I haven't used it myself. But, it's concerning that updates rarely come. Wasn't a 2.0 version suppose to come years ago? It leads me to believe the developer(s) lost interest.
- noarchy 16y agoI've used it, but I still don't get the hype. It does seem to be a handy, lightweight editor with decent features. But you can get that for free in other editors. That said, you can't underestimate the power of the attachment that people get to their editors/IDEs of choice. I personally know a few TextMate devotees.
- jshen 16y agoI'm that weirdo that uses a different editor every couple of years. I used tm for a few years and the reason it's popular is that it does most of what a programmer wants out of the box without any hassle. Drag the folder of your rails app onto it and your good to go. I can do a lot more with emacs but it took a serious investment of time to get up to speed with it and to configure it in a sensible way.
- flyosity 16y agoMy favorite features (that I've only seen implemented half as well in every other editor) is the pop-up Go To File dialog where I can start typing a file's name and it'll find the file in the open project, and the Go To Symbol dialog where I can start typing a function's name and it'll go right there in the current file. The best part about the Go To File dialog is I can type something like "mess re pht" and it will find "message_report.phtml". The filtering is instant. Whenever I go to a fellow engineer's desk to work with them on something and they're using Zend Studio or vim it's so painful to watch them go through a gigantic project tree to find a file when I can open any file in under a second. The full project search is fantastic, too. Once it's indexed, a full project search of a 500KLOC project takes only a few seconds.
- X-Istence 16y ago
- gaoshan 16y agoThe market must be pretty small for Mac native text editors (and they must be difficult to implement on a grand scale). Otherwise some company would have walked into the gaping void that has been the delay to release TextMate 2.0 and released something by now. The door has been wide open for some time but no one is able or willing to step through it. Oh well, helps explain the Vim goldrush of the past few months.
- haribilalic 16y agoThere's TextWrangler (free, http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/), Smultron (free, http://smultron.sourceforge.net/ http://smultron.sourceforge.net/) and BBEdit ($125, http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.html http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.html). They're all popular. I'm a Textmate user though. I don't mind that there have been delays in releasing 2.0, because it doesn't make 1.5 any less useful — it does everything I want it to do and it's still supported.
- ryanpetrich 16y agoFraise is a continuation of the now abandoned Smultron.
- wazoox 16y agoThanks for the tip, really nice! And lightweight... I can't stand these editors that need 45s to launch.
- jlmendezbonini 16y agoThanks for the tip but browsing through the site I found a post stating that the maintainer is thinking on starting from scratch: "...I am currently thinking of starting a completely new text editor that will not be a fork anymore, but a proper and independent software..." http://www.fraiseapp.com/index.php?page=news&id=12 http://www.fraiseapp.com/index.php?page=news&id=12 [EDIT] better link
- sigzero 16y ago
- Sizlak 16y agoTextMate is the BBEdit of OS X.
- luckyland 16y agoTry to open your project whose files sit on a remote directory with Textmate and tell me if this joke is still funny.
- Sizlak 16y agoMy point was that both seemed awesome at first, but then just stopped improving. And yeah, I still think the joke is funny.
- luckyland 16y agoBut BBEdit is an extremely complete tool. Bares Bones isn't known for aggressive feature releases for any of their products, either. In what ways do you feel BBEdit didn't mature?
- stretchwithme 16y agoThanks. I applied it earlier. One thing that drives me insane: I cannot see path of files in a folder. If there are duplicate file names, I have to modify the file and then open directories where I think it could be and to see if it has that "not yet saved" state. Is there a quick way to do this I am unaware of? Or is it a feature coming in the future? Hope you enjoy a nice restful weekend after your hard work getting this one out.
- hexley 16y agoCommand-click the title bar of any document to reveal the path hierarchy.
- stretchwithme 16y agoYou have to click right on the file name, but yeah that does it. Thanks!
- Timothee 16y agoThis works pretty much in every document-based app and Finder, by the way.
- stretchwithme 16y agoYes, it does. In Preview, for example. The fog is clearing. Thanks.
- steveklabnik 16y agoIt's been a part of the Finder since System 7... I'm an old man trapped in a young man's body.
- 5teev 16y agoIn spite of all the cool features, this update suffers from the same issue that drove me away the last time I tried Textmate: single-character undo. I can understand why this would appeal to some users, but most other text editors undo in bigger chunks, something I've come to expect and prefer. My original feeling about Textmate overall remains about the same. It probably appeals to recent OSX converts--it's a giant step forward from any Windows-based text editor I can think of--but lacks a certain "Mac-ness" long-time OSX users expect. Thus Textmate risks falling into a no-man's land: users less set in their ways in the Mac world may settle for the relatively clunky IDE text editors; stubborn old-timers will prefer the more familiar feeling BBEdit. As for the paucity of updates, let's cut Allan some slack. After some 20 years, BBEdit is only at version 9.6 and vim is only at version 7.3. Quality takes time.
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoInteresting: for me this is a feature that I happen to appreciate a lot, not an issue.
- gabrielroth 16y agoYes, non-chunked undo is the dealbreaker for me as well. I remember reading Allan saying he was surprised that people cared about this, but that it would be implemented as an option in Textmate 2.
- angrycoder 16y agoIt seems to me that the author of TextMate is in a rather interesting position. he has created an editor with a cult like following that he has neither the time, manpower, or interest in updating. I am sure that version 2 will be completed at some point, but at what cost to his sanity? Imagine for a moment if he just gave up and released the source for free. Hundreds of itchy fingers across the net dig into the source, enhancing it, expanding it, fixing it, porting it to everything from Linux to the Nintendo DS. The cult of Textmate grows with each new release, finally bringing another contender to the editor wars long raged by vi and emacs. Since Mr. TextMate dude no longer has a source of income, he decides to write a book about his experiences developing the app and his eventual burnout. It is an instant hit with geeks everywhere. He rakes in tons of money doing speaking engagements. After a few years, the itch to code returns. Mr. TextMate's new app, TextyMatey - an editor that converts everything you type into pirate speak, becomes the first ever text editor to hit 1 million downloads in the first day. DVD sales of Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy skyrocket, prompting a visit from Johnny Depp. Mr TextMate and Johnny become fast friends and spend the rest of their days as men of leisure on the French Riviera.
- petercooper 16y agoI want some of what you're drinking ;-) Seriously though, I think the picture you paint would work out very well for him, but judging from bits and pieces I've read over the years, I suspect the Textmate code base is not particularly well structured and that he might even be a little embarrassed for others to see the code (I'm just guessing based on scraps, but I think most of us have been there). It's clear he's made a few million euros from Textmate and I've read that he has a few pet projects he enjoys working on (for some reason I think I saw DHH say this). Perhaps he doesn't want that fame or the big bucks. I could certainly survive full time with a few million in capital and a residue of sales each month.. (even if he sells a mere 100 copies a month now, that nets far more than the median European salary).
- danerik 16y agoI'm a scientific software developer based in Copenhagen working for a Danish startup. If Allan reads this - I wouldn't mind helping out in my spare time on TM2. Seriously.
- meric 16y agoMight be a good place to mention another Mac OS X editor. http://macrabbit.com/espresso/ http://macrabbit.com/espresso/ Disclaimer: I also wrote a clojure highlight/indent extension for it. https://github.com/meric/clojure https://github.com/meric/clojure
- jokull 16y agoThe espresso cup illustration is delicious! Looking forward to giving this a try. Mostly Python web development, so don't know how helpful some of these features are.
- meric 16y agoThere's an extension for that. :) You can write new extensions with python or objective-c, too. Although if you just want to define syntax highlighting you only need to use XML. Here are a list of extensions made by third parties: http://fileability.net/coffee/index.php http://fileability.net/coffee/index.php P.S I use expresso for python web development, too.
- X-Istence 16y agoI have a copy of their CSS Edit and it is a life saver. It is one of the few tools I ALWAYS have open when editing a web page. I have no idea how I used to go through life without it.
- pella 16y agoTextmate clone ( Windows & Linux ) http://www.e-texteditor.com/ http://www.e-texteditor.com/
- colomon 16y agoI've tried it twice now, and hated it both times. I was very excited about the prospect of a still-actively developed "Textmate" that would run on my other development machines. (I've got four active development machines, and only one of them is a Mac.) In practice, though, it just felt wrong to me. It doesn't look as nice; I couldn't easily figure out keyboard / menu shortcuts for a number of my bread-and-butter Textmate activities; and I was unable to figure out how to manually install bundles. Perhaps I just haven't given it enough time, but it always feels like it would be easier to just share my source directories so I can edit them from the Mac using Textmate...
- adriand 16y agoTextMate lost me to Vim. I'm never going back, even though it's only been two weeks.
- grandalf 16y agoFWIW, I have been extremely happy with the following combo: http://emacsformacosx.com/ http://emacsformacosx.com/ and https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit Along with a few other minor tweaks to remove some minor irritations. I bought Textmate last year when I got a Mac after years of linux, but it just can't compete with the ease of switching between buffers that emacs offers.
- bonaldi 16y agoDoes Textmate do anything that BBEdit doesn't? There are threads like this all over the place talking about a "vacuum" in the Mac editor market. Meanwhile the daddy of them all has just had another big update.
- foobarbazetc 16y agoWoohoo! Save as starting at '/' is finally fixed!