4 ms·

The 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

by gaoshan 16y ago

The 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 ago
There'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 ago
  Fraise is a continuation of the now abandoned Smultron.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    Thanks for the tip, really nice! And lightweight... I can't stand these editors that need 45s to launch.
  - jlmendezbonini 16y ago
    Thanks 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
  UltraEdit is making a Mac version as well. It is in the beta stages. So far I am liking it (as a beta tester). I also use MacVim (my go to) and BBEdit.
- colomon 16y ago
  Seriously, with 2.0 planned as a complete overhaul, I don't even know how quick I'd be to switch to it if it came out tomorrow. TextMate 1.5 + the Ack bundle already does very nearly everything I want -- my only desire would be slightly better Perl 6 support.
tres 16y ago
I think it's more that the audience for a TextMate type editor is extremely small. On one side, you've got all the IDEs, like NetBeans, IntelliJ & Eclipse (not to mention XCode) that go far beyond TextMate, really making the cost of TextMate seem ridiculous. On the other side you have free products that offer almost everything TextMate does for very simple editing. Textmate was a good idea back when support for interpreted languages in an IDE was pretty much non-existent. Now that true IDEs have support for interpreted languages, there's no room for a TextMate type editor. Its time has come and gone.
- jshen 16y ago
  IDEs have a high cost (learning curve, complexity, etc) that is not worth the benefit for dynamic languages. I'm not sure what the gaping hole is the op is talking about. Textmate is an awesome editor and it doesn't matter that there hasn't been an update in a while. The only thing I really miss with text mate is good git integration.
  - tres 16y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about TextMate; it does just what a bunch of people want it to. That's awesome! I used it for quite a while. Heck, I still use it for simple editing. Personally, once I tried an IDE with integrated context sensitive help, inline syntax checking, real indenting, etc. TextMate didn't seem to solve the problems that I needed it to solve. It just became a fancy notepad app with some extra macros. I'm not trying to put anyone's choice down. If TextMate works for you, then great! I'm very happy that you've found the right editor for you; however, the point of my post was that there are many other choices out there that confine the usefulness of TextMate to a very specific audience. And personally, I feel like the cost/learning curve arguments are not really valid. Eclipse and NetBeans cost nothing. And ultimately, I found that getting what I needed out of NetBeans was much more intuitive than getting what I needed out of TextMate.
    - jshen 16y ago
      i use netbeans a lot for java, and I've tried a few times to use it for ruby but it doesn't do much more than textmate for ruby. For that little bit extra it uses between 1-2 gigs of ram (instead of 50 megs), requires more setup and maintenance, you can't just drop a ruby folder on it and go, etc. All of the auto completion, real time docs, etc are flaky as hell with a language like ruby. It really has no idea what methods exist on an object, or what class an object is. And heaven forbid I want to open something crazy like a bash script in netbeans. Also, and I've never understood why this is, plugins seem to be much more fragile on the big IDEs than the editors like emacs, vim, and textmate. You'd think they'd break less with all the static typing of java, but in my experience I've had far more problems with them. I do love the git integration though. That's the one thing I really wish textmate or emacs had.
mkramlich 16y ago
The limiting factor is not people seeing a market opportunity or not but in the availability and interest of requisite software talent. To a lot of developers, text editing is a solved problem. To really talented devs? Also, mostly solved. Enough. Perfect? Maybe not. But what's available now goes so far that there's not a lot of draw to taking a whack at making the next Better Mousetrap. Also, the market is probably not large enough. Paid market. There are lots of free editors, and commercial editors, already available, and there's a skill learning curve required to switch editors, that I think all of this adds up to explaining the unexploited "gap" you described.
- sudont 16y ago
  Textmate's also got a small following in the web world, despite it being slowly cannibalized by Espresso and Coda (not to mention BBEdit regaining what little share it lost). Personally, I'm pretty happy with the 'mate' symlink for editing plists and other short files when I'm not in an editor elsewhere. Even though Textmate's bundle system means it's easily updated and quickly integrated with a client's standard snippets, it is missing out on some of the nice DOM, navigation and file management stuff of web IDEs.
bad_user 16y ago
I have every feature I wish from Textmate in Emacs, and more, like debugger integration and on-the-fly code checking / compiling with stuff like Pylint. Even on OS X, I'm still using AquaMacs.
tvon 16y ago
There is no void, TextMate 1 didn't go anywhere.

by gaoshan 16y ago

haribilalic 16y ago

There'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 ago
Fraise is a continuation of the now abandoned Smultron.
- wazoox 16y ago
  Thanks for the tip, really nice! And lightweight... I can't stand these editors that need 45s to launch.
- jlmendezbonini 16y ago
  Thanks 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
UltraEdit is making a Mac version as well. It is in the beta stages. So far I am liking it (as a beta tester). I also use MacVim (my go to) and BBEdit.
colomon 16y ago
Seriously, with 2.0 planned as a complete overhaul, I don't even know how quick I'd be to switch to it if it came out tomorrow. TextMate 1.5 + the Ack bundle already does very nearly everything I want -- my only desire would be slightly better Perl 6 support.

tres 16y ago

I think it's more that the audience for a TextMate type editor is extremely small. On one side, you've got all the IDEs, like NetBeans, IntelliJ & Eclipse (not to mention XCode) that go far beyond TextMate, really making the cost of TextMate seem ridiculous. On the other side you have free products that offer almost everything TextMate does for very simple editing. Textmate was a good idea back when support for interpreted languages in an IDE was pretty much non-existent. Now that true IDEs have support for interpreted languages, there's no room for a TextMate type editor. Its time has come and gone.

jshen 16y ago
IDEs have a high cost (learning curve, complexity, etc) that is not worth the benefit for dynamic languages. I'm not sure what the gaping hole is the op is talking about. Textmate is an awesome editor and it doesn't matter that there hasn't been an update in a while. The only thing I really miss with text mate is good git integration.
- tres 16y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about TextMate; it does just what a bunch of people want it to. That's awesome! I used it for quite a while. Heck, I still use it for simple editing. Personally, once I tried an IDE with integrated context sensitive help, inline syntax checking, real indenting, etc. TextMate didn't seem to solve the problems that I needed it to solve. It just became a fancy notepad app with some extra macros. I'm not trying to put anyone's choice down. If TextMate works for you, then great! I'm very happy that you've found the right editor for you; however, the point of my post was that there are many other choices out there that confine the usefulness of TextMate to a very specific audience. And personally, I feel like the cost/learning curve arguments are not really valid. Eclipse and NetBeans cost nothing. And ultimately, I found that getting what I needed out of NetBeans was much more intuitive than getting what I needed out of TextMate.
  - jshen 16y ago
    i use netbeans a lot for java, and I've tried a few times to use it for ruby but it doesn't do much more than textmate for ruby. For that little bit extra it uses between 1-2 gigs of ram (instead of 50 megs), requires more setup and maintenance, you can't just drop a ruby folder on it and go, etc. All of the auto completion, real time docs, etc are flaky as hell with a language like ruby. It really has no idea what methods exist on an object, or what class an object is. And heaven forbid I want to open something crazy like a bash script in netbeans. Also, and I've never understood why this is, plugins seem to be much more fragile on the big IDEs than the editors like emacs, vim, and textmate. You'd think they'd break less with all the static typing of java, but in my experience I've had far more problems with them. I do love the git integration though. That's the one thing I really wish textmate or emacs had.

mkramlich 16y ago

The limiting factor is not people seeing a market opportunity or not but in the availability and interest of requisite software talent. To a lot of developers, text editing is a solved problem. To really talented devs? Also, mostly solved. Enough. Perfect? Maybe not. But what's available now goes so far that there's not a lot of draw to taking a whack at making the next Better Mousetrap. Also, the market is probably not large enough. Paid market. There are lots of free editors, and commercial editors, already available, and there's a skill learning curve required to switch editors, that I think all of this adds up to explaining the unexploited "gap" you described.

sudont 16y ago
Textmate's also got a small following in the web world, despite it being slowly cannibalized by Espresso and Coda (not to mention BBEdit regaining what little share it lost). Personally, I'm pretty happy with the 'mate' symlink for editing plists and other short files when I'm not in an editor elsewhere. Even though Textmate's bundle system means it's easily updated and quickly integrated with a client's standard snippets, it is missing out on some of the nice DOM, navigation and file management stuff of web IDEs.

bad_user 16y ago

I have every feature I wish from Textmate in Emacs, and more, like debugger integration and on-the-fly code checking / compiling with stuff like Pylint. Even on OS X, I'm still using AquaMacs.

tvon 16y ago

There is no void, TextMate 1 didn't go anywhere.