16 ms·

I've been using Textmate 2 for the past week or so and I still prefer 1 + missing drawer. For me, the only thing Textmate 1 is missing are split views (somethin

I've been using Textmate 2 for the past week or so and I still prefer 1 + missing drawer. For me, the only thing Textmate 1 is missing are split views (something 2 is missing as well). I wonder if there is still enough interest in the app where people will contribute all of the community's desired changes -- I hope there is. Am I one of the only Textmate users who feel that Sublime isn't the right "upgrade"? I much prefer Chocolat or Vico as they feel more like native OS X applications.

jolohaga 14y ago
I agree. Sublime is targeting cross-platform compatibility. To me that's diluting the virtues of all the systems it works on. It's not the best editor for Mac OS X, it's not the best editor for UNIX. It's not the best editor for Windows. I prefer stronger opinion with an editor. I don't care if you have an awesome editor that only works on Windows as long as I have an awesome editor that works on my preferred OS. Awesomeness is what editors should be about. I have to work with it all day long, it better be.
- antihero 14y ago
  No fucking way, you don't always control the environment you work on, and sometimes you want to switch OS without losing your tools. Sublime Text 2 gives you the freedom to do this. And Sublime is completely awesome on every platform.
  - jolohaga 14y ago
    You're right, but then I use vi. I don't work in vi if I don't have to though, and I like editors that feel natural, are a pleasure, leverage the virtues of the OS I use, and interact with the shell. Textmate 1 has been able to do all that. It's just my preference, nothing more.
- statictype 14y ago
  Have you used Sublime? What parts of it are not native enough on Windows and Mac? The keyboard shortcuts follow whatever is expected on that platform. They have support for specifying different keyboard shortcuts for different OSs so 3rd party packages can also provide out-of-the-box settings that are native to each platform. It does Lion-style save/resume your workspace so even if you shut down and restart, it opens all your sessions with unsaved work and scratch buffers still the same. I'm not sure I found anything that made me feel this was a Mac app ported to Windows or vice versa.
frou_dh 14y ago
I feel ST2 is healthily past "good enough" as a Mac application. For examples of punting on that responsibility completely, look at JetBrains stuff or MonoDevelop.
- Camillo 14y ago
  I really want to like ST2, because it seems to have the fastest text engine of the current crop of editors; but as a Mac application, it's just barely better than Emacs. 1) The GUI is incomplete: look at the preferences, for instance. To change a setting, you have to open the defaults settings file, find the setting you want, copy it into a different file (user settings), and change it there. Actually, I take it back: it's worse than Emacs in this regard. 2) What GUI is there often works strangely. For example, if you open a folder you get both a sidebar and a tab bar. You can put files in the tab bar by double-clicking them, or you can browse the directory in the sidebar. But if you select a file in the sidebar which is not open in a tab, you end up with a tab bar with no selected tabs, which is quite jarring, since tab bars in all other applications always have one active tab. If you only have one tab visible, it looks like it's active even if in fact you have selected some other file in the sidebar (the fact that active and inactive tabs look very similar in the default theme does not help). 3) The default theme gives you a window that is a strange mix of light gray and dark gray, with no apparent logic. It looks like parts of two different applications got mashed together. I have yet to find a theme that looks satisfying.
  - MikeKusold 14y ago
    I have no issues with the settings. They are well documented and can easily be transferred from computer to computer. This is an editor targeted at developers, and as such I think we are capable of editing a config file.
  - inexplicable 14y ago
    I second the other commenter here. I love the way settings are managed in ST2.
  - homosaur 14y ago
shurane 14y ago
I wonder if there is still enough interest in the app where people will contribute all of the community's desired changes -- I hope there is. I don't get what you mean by "if there is still enough interest". If you wanted a particular feature or change, couldn't you just fork Textmate and then implement it? That's the advantage of it going open-source. We are not at the mercy of some developers who don't think our requests are worthwhile. If I want something on top of my open-source editor of choice, I can just "get up to speed" [1] with the source and go ahead and implement what I want. I do think we rely a little too much on other people to do things that we want for ourselves. If you really want a feature and no one else offers to do it, then you will have to pony up and do the legwork yourself. And that's a good thing. [1] Getting acquainted with the source code doesn't have to be that hard, either. It is a bit of a problem in less-organized projects, but still better than a closed-source base. As a developer, I think this is something more people should be used to. That is, rolling their own solutions when they don't get what they want.
- batista 14y ago
  >I don't get what you mean by "if there is still enough interest". If you wanted a particular feature or change, couldn't you just fork Textmate and then implement it? No, I could not. 1) I have other things to do than building my own tools. I work creating _stuff_, not creating tools. 2) You assume I have spare time to delve into the code of a project, understand the whole structure and add a feature --which might need tons of changes all around the engine. 3) You assume I can do it. I might not even code in Obj-C/C/Cocoa. I might just be some HTML/Javascript/Python whatever developer.
  - sblom 14y ago
    If your effort spent on tools speeds up your time-to-stuff, then the assumptions embodied in 1) are invalid. Besides, with open source you have more than just the original developer on whom you can use cash to entice him to make your favorite changes.
    - batista 14y ago
89a 14y ago
Can't stand ST2 either, if Chocolat is still going in a few months and TM2 flops I'll get it.
- btipling 14y ago
  Chocolat was released a couple of months ago.
- jolohaga 14y ago
  I'm trying ST2 and Chocolat. I'm tending to like Chocolat better. It follows the UI conventions of OS X, whereas ST2 doesn't. For example, ST2 doesn't let me select the folder inside a project. It only lets me reveal or hide its contents, and rather briskly, at that. ST2 has no passion for the subtleties of user interface and the joy it can bring. I don't think a lot of people get it. I also don't need ST2's thumbnail view of the document constantly showing me where I am in it taking up real-estate in the project window. That's clever, but a distraction, at best.
ChiperSoft 14y ago
I too still prefer TM1.5. TM2's UI is, quite simply, horrendous. That sidebar looks like something from the OS9 days. This combined with the changes to the menus and the change from ATSUI to CoreText rendering engine results in an app that quite simply isn't TextMate. If I'm going to be moving away from TextMate as I know it, it's going to be to something better, not TextMate's uglier brother. I tried ST2 for a month and ultimately decided it wasn't making me any faster or more productive than I was in TM1. When I do finally get to a place where I'm ready to leave TM1, it'll probably be for Chocolat. I've already bought my license.
- jolohaga 14y ago
  I'll need to give Chocolat a look. Also, seeking not so much a replacement for Textmate as a product with a promising future. (I don't think this would be news if Textmate were going in a productive direction.)
ryanisinallofus 14y ago
ST2 is native enough for me and cross-platform should be on the list of every programmer's requirements for a text editor. I use Vim on OS X right now and I like it but used ST2 just yesterday (odd timing). I agree with others that it is basically the TM2 we were waiting for.
- eblume 14y ago
  If you haven't heard of it, ST2 has something called "Vintage Mode" which adopts a fairly large subset of the Vi/m commands. It will completely change the command set of ST2 and gets close enough to Vi for most of my needs. Notably absent is the search/replace syntax of vim, but ST2's works well enough I suppose.
  - jjjjjosh 14y ago
    The VintageEx extension for Sublime includes vim-style search and replace, among many other things.
    - eblume 14y ago
      Excellent - Thanks!
  - robmil 14y ago
    Vintage mode is admittedly getting more complete every day, but as a regular Vim user the absences that exist are often a jolting distraction — attempting to use some command that doesn't exist jerks you out of your flow and it feels so inefficient to then have to remember the Sublime way of doing things. I find it more annoying than the lack of, say, Cmd + T in MacVim, so I've found myself spending more and more time using that — even after a concerted effort to use SublimeText for a while.
    - eblume 14y ago
      Just in case you missed it, another replier mentioned an additional package, VintageEx. I just gave it a try and all of a sudden all the things I was still missing from vim are in ST2! I recommend giving that a shot, but I do completely understand your reluctance. You're right, the absences are jarring!
EzGraphs 14y ago
+1 for using 1 and missing drawer. Never upgraded to 2 because of the bad press, and because 1.5 is good enough. It chokes on large files - and long lines, so I use vi instead for these. I really like a few features: * View your whole project from the root directory: mate . * Open a bunch of files in arbitrary locations at once: find . -name 'something.' | xargs mate * Write a script and run it using command-R * Banging out html using tab complete * Compared to any IDE it is ridiculously fast. * I wrote a bundle (for Oracle Databases) that I used for awhile. Kind of cool stuff.... might be available in other editors but I found 'em for the first time in TM 1.5.
- emehrkay 14y ago
  Drag a bunch of random/loosely associated files to the icon == new project. I forgot to mention ackmate and the extension that disable project refreshing when connected to a network share
btipling 14y ago
Vico is dead: http://blog.vicoapp.com/2012/07/Vico-is-dead-Long-live-Vico http://blog.vicoapp.com/2012/07/Vico-is-dead-Long-live-Vico
Derbasti 14y ago
Don't you miss chunked undo? Incremental regex search and replace? Those were my main reasons to look for alternatives, back in the day. I have not looked back, ever.
colomon 14y ago
I'm a Textmate user who couldn't agree more about not liking with Sublime. I've got it as my main text editor for one of my Windows boxes, and I'm never happy or comfortable using it.

jolohaga 14y ago

I agree. Sublime is targeting cross-platform compatibility. To me that's diluting the virtues of all the systems it works on. It's not the best editor for Mac OS X, it's not the best editor for UNIX. It's not the best editor for Windows. I prefer stronger opinion with an editor. I don't care if you have an awesome editor that only works on Windows as long as I have an awesome editor that works on my preferred OS. Awesomeness is what editors should be about. I have to work with it all day long, it better be.

antihero 14y ago
No fucking way, you don't always control the environment you work on, and sometimes you want to switch OS without losing your tools. Sublime Text 2 gives you the freedom to do this. And Sublime is completely awesome on every platform.
- jolohaga 14y ago
  You're right, but then I use vi. I don't work in vi if I don't have to though, and I like editors that feel natural, are a pleasure, leverage the virtues of the OS I use, and interact with the shell. Textmate 1 has been able to do all that. It's just my preference, nothing more.
statictype 14y ago
Have you used Sublime? What parts of it are not native enough on Windows and Mac? The keyboard shortcuts follow whatever is expected on that platform. They have support for specifying different keyboard shortcuts for different OSs so 3rd party packages can also provide out-of-the-box settings that are native to each platform. It does Lion-style save/resume your workspace so even if you shut down and restart, it opens all your sessions with unsaved work and scratch buffers still the same. I'm not sure I found anything that made me feel this was a Mac app ported to Windows or vice versa.

frou_dh 14y ago

I feel ST2 is healthily past "good enough" as a Mac application. For examples of punting on that responsibility completely, look at JetBrains stuff or MonoDevelop.

Camillo 14y ago
I really want to like ST2, because it seems to have the fastest text engine of the current crop of editors; but as a Mac application, it's just barely better than Emacs. 1) The GUI is incomplete: look at the preferences, for instance. To change a setting, you have to open the defaults settings file, find the setting you want, copy it into a different file (user settings), and change it there. Actually, I take it back: it's worse than Emacs in this regard. 2) What GUI is there often works strangely. For example, if you open a folder you get both a sidebar and a tab bar. You can put files in the tab bar by double-clicking them, or you can browse the directory in the sidebar. But if you select a file in the sidebar which is not open in a tab, you end up with a tab bar with no selected tabs, which is quite jarring, since tab bars in all other applications always have one active tab. If you only have one tab visible, it looks like it's active even if in fact you have selected some other file in the sidebar (the fact that active and inactive tabs look very similar in the default theme does not help). 3) The default theme gives you a window that is a strange mix of light gray and dark gray, with no apparent logic. It looks like parts of two different applications got mashed together. I have yet to find a theme that looks satisfying.
- MikeKusold 14y ago
  I have no issues with the settings. They are well documented and can easily be transferred from computer to computer. This is an editor targeted at developers, and as such I think we are capable of editing a config file.
- inexplicable 14y ago
  I second the other commenter here. I love the way settings are managed in ST2.
- homosaur 14y ago

shurane 14y ago

I wonder if there is still enough interest in the app where people will contribute all of the community's desired changes -- I hope there is. I don't get what you mean by "if there is still enough interest". If you wanted a particular feature or change, couldn't you just fork Textmate and then implement it? That's the advantage of it going open-source. We are not at the mercy of some developers who don't think our requests are worthwhile. If I want something on top of my open-source editor of choice, I can just "get up to speed" [1] with the source and go ahead and implement what I want. I do think we rely a little too much on other people to do things that we want for ourselves. If you really want a feature and no one else offers to do it, then you will have to pony up and do the legwork yourself. And that's a good thing. [1] Getting acquainted with the source code doesn't have to be that hard, either. It is a bit of a problem in less-organized projects, but still better than a closed-source base. As a developer, I think this is something more people should be used to. That is, rolling their own solutions when they don't get what they want.

batista 14y ago
>I don't get what you mean by "if there is still enough interest". If you wanted a particular feature or change, couldn't you just fork Textmate and then implement it? No, I could not. 1) I have other things to do than building my own tools. I work creating _stuff_, not creating tools. 2) You assume I have spare time to delve into the code of a project, understand the whole structure and add a feature --which might need tons of changes all around the engine. 3) You assume I can do it. I might not even code in Obj-C/C/Cocoa. I might just be some HTML/Javascript/Python whatever developer.
- sblom 14y ago
  If your effort spent on tools speeds up your time-to-stuff, then the assumptions embodied in 1) are invalid. Besides, with open source you have more than just the original developer on whom you can use cash to entice him to make your favorite changes.
  - batista 14y ago

89a 14y ago

Can't stand ST2 either, if Chocolat is still going in a few months and TM2 flops I'll get it.

btipling 14y ago
Chocolat was released a couple of months ago.
jolohaga 14y ago
I'm trying ST2 and Chocolat. I'm tending to like Chocolat better. It follows the UI conventions of OS X, whereas ST2 doesn't. For example, ST2 doesn't let me select the folder inside a project. It only lets me reveal or hide its contents, and rather briskly, at that. ST2 has no passion for the subtleties of user interface and the joy it can bring. I don't think a lot of people get it. I also don't need ST2's thumbnail view of the document constantly showing me where I am in it taking up real-estate in the project window. That's clever, but a distraction, at best.

ChiperSoft 14y ago

I too still prefer TM1.5. TM2's UI is, quite simply, horrendous. That sidebar looks like something from the OS9 days. This combined with the changes to the menus and the change from ATSUI to CoreText rendering engine results in an app that quite simply isn't TextMate. If I'm going to be moving away from TextMate as I know it, it's going to be to something better, not TextMate's uglier brother. I tried ST2 for a month and ultimately decided it wasn't making me any faster or more productive than I was in TM1. When I do finally get to a place where I'm ready to leave TM1, it'll probably be for Chocolat. I've already bought my license.

jolohaga 14y ago
I'll need to give Chocolat a look. Also, seeking not so much a replacement for Textmate as a product with a promising future. (I don't think this would be news if Textmate were going in a productive direction.)

ryanisinallofus 14y ago

ST2 is native enough for me and cross-platform should be on the list of every programmer's requirements for a text editor. I use Vim on OS X right now and I like it but used ST2 just yesterday (odd timing). I agree with others that it is basically the TM2 we were waiting for.

eblume 14y ago
If you haven't heard of it, ST2 has something called "Vintage Mode" which adopts a fairly large subset of the Vi/m commands. It will completely change the command set of ST2 and gets close enough to Vi for most of my needs. Notably absent is the search/replace syntax of vim, but ST2's works well enough I suppose.
- jjjjjosh 14y ago
  The VintageEx extension for Sublime includes vim-style search and replace, among many other things.
  - eblume 14y ago
    Excellent - Thanks!
- robmil 14y ago
  Vintage mode is admittedly getting more complete every day, but as a regular Vim user the absences that exist are often a jolting distraction — attempting to use some command that doesn't exist jerks you out of your flow and it feels so inefficient to then have to remember the Sublime way of doing things. I find it more annoying than the lack of, say, Cmd + T in MacVim, so I've found myself spending more and more time using that — even after a concerted effort to use SublimeText for a while.
  - eblume 14y ago
    Just in case you missed it, another replier mentioned an additional package, VintageEx. I just gave it a try and all of a sudden all the things I was still missing from vim are in ST2! I recommend giving that a shot, but I do completely understand your reluctance. You're right, the absences are jarring!

EzGraphs 14y ago

+1 for using 1 and missing drawer. Never upgraded to 2 because of the bad press, and because 1.5 is good enough. It chokes on large files - and long lines, so I use vi instead for these. I really like a few features: * View your whole project from the root directory: mate . * Open a bunch of files in arbitrary locations at once: find . -name 'something.' | xargs mate * Write a script and run it using command-R * Banging out html using tab complete * Compared to any IDE it is ridiculously fast. * I wrote a bundle (for Oracle Databases) that I used for awhile. Kind of cool stuff.... might be available in other editors but I found 'em for the first time in TM 1.5.

emehrkay 14y ago
Drag a bunch of random/loosely associated files to the icon == new project. I forgot to mention ackmate and the extension that disable project refreshing when connected to a network share

btipling 14y ago

Vico is dead: http://blog.vicoapp.com/2012/07/Vico-is-dead-Long-live-Vico http://blog.vicoapp.com/2012/07/Vico-is-dead-Long-live-Vico

Derbasti 14y ago

Don't you miss chunked undo? Incremental regex search and replace? Those were my main reasons to look for alternatives, back in the day. I have not looked back, ever.

colomon 14y ago

I'm a Textmate user who couldn't agree more about not liking with Sublime. I've got it as my main text editor for one of my Windows boxes, and I'm never happy or comfortable using it.