
I want to pay for TextMate 2 - danielsiders
http://www.marco.org/2011/09/27/textmate-2-free-upgrade
======
gecko
I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.

I totally get paying when you don't have to in order to support fellow
developers. I've got a nice collection of apps on my phone and desktop, all
purchased, that I've acquired over the years to support my friends'
development efforts. So if Marco wants to help out Macromates, that's fine.
More power to him.

But I don't understand this mantra of, "We'll forgive you; just charge
everyone." Let's ignore entirely whether that's a contract violation and just
focus on whether it's fair.

Zoom back several years to the era Marco's talking about. TextMate 1.0 ships.
It's a nice editor--really nice, actually--but it has a lot of rough edges to
it. But, Allen promises, buy now anyway; upgrades through version 2.0 are
completely free. So a lot of people, including me, slapped down money to buy
version 1.0 on this promise. (And in my case, also to support an upstart dev
who was daring to take down the 800-pound gorilla of Mac text editors, Bare
Bones' BBEdit.)

But that promise never materialized. TextMate got a lot of improvements
initially, but there's now a relatively large collection of third-party
plugins you need just to achieve parity with the now-native versions of Vim
and Emacs that can be had for free.

And in exchange for not shipping anything for literally _years_ , you want to
_reward_ him by _paying him more_?

What am I missing here?

~~~
alttag

      > I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.
    

Like, say, tipping at a nice restaurant.

You may not like the food, but it seems others did, and they want to
demonstrate that to the chef.

~~~
gecko
As I said: I can understand _Marco_ wanting to pay. I didn't like my meal,
Marco did, and he should feel free to give a great tip.

I'm focused on the people who are saying that Macromates should charge users
for the upgrade they said would be free. This would be equivalent to someone
saying that, because _they_ enjoyed _their_ meal at the restaurant, the
restaurant should charge a mandatory 25% tip to all current patrons of the
restaurant. That's a very different situation.

~~~
alttag
I think you're right that _everyone_ shouldn't be charged because Marco and
others think the product is worth it. Some bought it on the promise of a free
upgrade.

An upgrade to version 2 wasn't part of the "value" I attributed to TM when I
bought it years ago, so were it not free, I'd seriously consider buying anyway
(even though I do little coding nowadays, and am impressed with SublimeText2).

So, count me as mixed on the whole thing. I wouldn't balk at a nominal upgrade
fee, and don't begrudge those who want to pay more, but sympathize with those
who bought on the promise of an upgrade years ago.

~~~
spooneybarger
I never would have bought TM1 w/o the promise of TM2.

Even with that, I kind of regret buying it. For how I used it, it was a decent
text editor that allowed me to experience the spinning beach ball of death at
least 10 times a day.

~~~
wnight
I thought the free upgrades forever deal for Minecraft was great. I only
rarely get to game and if I had to upgrade every six months to play with
everyone else it'd be prohibitive.

It's a big obligation that the maker of Textmate and Notch of Minecraft took
on but founders do sillier things (look at the deals VCs cut) for funding.

------
ary
Contrast the TextMate situation to that of Sublime Text. Jon Skinner has done
an amazing job of shipping something compelling early, updating it often,
developing out in the open and giving his customers a good reason to buy the
product even though _it's still in beta_.

Allan Odgaard has made promises as to the quality and ship date of his
product, and that's about it (to be fair, there have been 1.x updates). At
this point the promise of a free upgrade combined with the boatloads of cash
TM1 made are almost certainly what put future product development on perpetual
hold. Far from just avoiding that promise, he should have avoided talking
about future versions _at all_.

For me the choice is pretty clear. I finally deleted TM from ~/Applications a
few weeks ago and haven't really looked back. Sublime Text 2 isn't perfect,
but it is already very close to being everything I need for my day to day
development and general editing tasks. Even though it isn't stable, I use it
nearly every day, and it just keeps getting better.

~~~
frou_dh
TextMate 2 seems to be limping over the finish line while Sublime Text 2 is
already getting in to its stride for the next race.

I think Sublime deserves to take the crown, but a little more polish specific
to the Mac version (behaviours, icon) wouldn't hurt.

~~~
desireco42
I think Mac version gets a ton of attention :)

------
Nyr
"Given the value that we get out of TextMate, it’s already grossly
underpriced. Please let us give you more money"

The value for you isn't probably the same for all the customers.

Some people make millions from the work of the Apache Foundation for example
but others use their web server to run little websites. Some would probably
pay tons of money for it, others won't.

I am not saying that a upgrade fee for TextMate 2 will not be fair, but that
is solely at the author's discretion.

~~~
jastanton
"The value for you isn't probably the same for all the customers" Definitely
right on. If this person is so set on paying for this product the creators of
TM should just have a donate option. Then he can pay all he wants.

------
munificent
TextMate 2 is the _perfect_ , yet heartbreaking example of Brook's Second-
system effect. It's painful seeing an otherwise successful developer get so
completely sucked into it.

~~~
backwardm
Except we haven't even seen TM2 yet. It could be a more svelte, nematodeine,
feature-less slice of software. Just because it's taken half an eon for even
the beta announcement to come to fruition doesn't mean it's a bloat-ware type
scenario. At least I hope it isn't.

~~~
spooneybarger
Sadly it isn't even a beta announcement.

------
xenophanes
Maybe he should use the "pay what you want" pricing concept for upgrades.
Anyone who wants his free upgrade can't complain. But he'll end up getting
paid some, too.

~~~
sirclueless
This seems like a good idea to me. Just have part of the upgrade process be a
text box that says something like: "Please enter how much you would like to
pay for the upgrade. As promised, this upgrade is free if you want it to be,
but if you think Textmate is worth it, please consider paying an appropriate
amount."

That way people who can't afford it or otherwise feel entitled to the free
upgrade can get it free, and all the moderately wealthy developers who use
Textmate every day and can afford it can be guilted into supporting
development.

------
vidar
The assumption here is that TM2 is better than TM1. Lets see if that holds.

~~~
acslater00
+1.

~~~
sant0sk1
Please add your +1 by hitting the up arrow next to the comment.

~~~
spooneybarger
Now that we don't see comment scores, that isn't effective for publicly
voicing agreement.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Votes do influence the ranking. And is "publicly voicing agreement" really
more important than a usable comment page?

~~~
spooneybarger
Put the two together and its a decent argument for bring back displaying up
votes on comments.

Influence isn't the same as that is for an entire conversation thread. What if
an initial comment gets very few up votes but a response to it gets tons? they
aren't ranked independently of one another.

------
sdfjkl
Simple solution: Optional payment. Keep the promise of a free upgrade, but add
the option to pay anyways if someone really likes it (if the current TextMate
is any indication, many will).

I wish all software was sold like this: You get the full version for free, no
restrictions, no nagging (perhaps a reminder once a month). If you really like
it, you get the option to (easily, avoiding PayPal) pay for it. Heck, you
might even let people choose the price.

Of course this would work only for software that makes people think: "Hey,
someone really spent a lot of effort into making just the right tool for the
job". Microsoft Office might not benefit from this method of "voting with your
money" - but then that would probably be a good thing too.

------
sshumaker
A simple solution to this problem - for existing users, allow them to choose
their own price for the upgrade. Some people feel like they deserve a free
version (maybe they just bought Textmate recently), while others have been
using it for years and feel like Allen deserves to be paid for version 2.

------
nhangen
I just bought it because I expected the free upgrade, and was patiently
waiting. I don't plan on paying for it again.

~~~
eli
Not be a jerk, but if you didn't plan on using Textmate in the mean time, why
didn't you wait for 2.0 to come out before buying it?

~~~
nhangen
Don't get me wrong...I'm using it, and I like it. I just don't feel I should
have to buy the same product twice.

~~~
tptacek
It's not the same product. It just has the same name.

I'm not saying your deal with Odgaard shouldn't bind.

I'm just saying, if Odgaard from the beginning had said "Textmate 2 will cost
$60 and there will be no paid upgrades", that too would be a perfectly fair
pricing strategy.

What Marco is hung up on is how underpriced Textmate is relative to the value
it provides (unfortunately, it's a text editor for programmers; the price
points it competes with create dynamics similar to those of trying to sell ice
to Inuits).

I preemptively agree with you that Marco's observation about Textmate's
pricing shouldn't bind on you.

------
savrajsingh
While we wait for TM2, you can supercharge/augment TextMate 1's full-project
search capabilities with ackmate. It's an indispensible tool for me:

<https://github.com/protocool/ackmate>

~~~
vertr
I installed this yesterday, and it's fantastic.

------
xyzzyb
I absolutely agree. TextMate is still my favorite editor. I switched to it
from vim in 2007 and have occasionally looked back and around at other
editors, but always return to TM.

Everyone on my team also uses TextMate all day, every day. We'd be happy to
pay for TextMate 2.

~~~
EricBerglund
As someone who's actually making an analogous opposite switch (learning vim
rather than using Sublime), I'd love to hear your reasons for preferring
Textmate over vim (I haven't used Textmate myself).

~~~
xyzzyb
For me, it's the ease of use, the HTML bundle's shortcuts for quickly slicing
through markup, the automatic recognition of languages embedded within
languages (JavaScript bundle and syntax highlighting automatically activated
when the cursor is in JS code inside HTML). The easy macro recording doesn't
hurt either.

AckMate solved the only real issue I had with TextMate, so I'm a pretty happy
coder with it now.

~~~
zem
yeah, textmate's nested language support is one of the top two features i
really wish vim could steal from other editors (the other is lisp scripting
from emacs)

------
devtesla
Giving TM2 as a free upgrade probably does make a lot of sense to the
developers. Textmate is hugely popular, and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets
more than enough to finance what he wants to do off of its sales. And by
making it free he makes sure that no one has a reason to use TM1 anymore,
keeping his userbase unified and easier to handle.

It's also worth mentioning that licences from one discount bundle (MacHeist)
will require an upgrade fee, a smart distinction to make.

Buttt, this is a case where he is severely undervaluing his software, which
isn't helping in a market where software is already too cheap. The developers
are doing less harm to themselves then they are the Mac software community.

------
backwardm
I have tried using a lot of other text editors over the past year or so—trying
to find a viable replacement for TextMate. Each time someone in HN mentions
Sublime or MacVim or new hotness text editor X, I give it a shot, use it for a
couple of days to see if it sticks. I even tried going back to BBEdit—the
editor I used for years and years before TextMate. To me, nothing compares.
I'm not sure exactly what it is about it, but it just feels right to me. I
even use only maybe 2% of what it's capable of. Still, there's something
'correct' about it.

In fact, I often think to myself, "Self, if TextMate 2 never came to be and
you 'had' to use your current dusty version for the rest of your life, you'd
be a.o.k. fine and dandy. Maybe by the time you stopped using a computer (and
therefore TextMate 1.x), you'd have learned to type a little faster and maybe
learned to use another 2% of the available features. Maybe, if TextMate 2 came
out, you'd still prefer what you're using now." I totally agree with myself,
then move along—happily coding away for yet another day in TextMate current.

So, when TextMate 2 comes out, I'll download it and give it a shot—just like
all the others. If it sticks, and helps me enjoy my work a little bit more,
then, just like everything else that does, I'll purchase it so I can keep
using it.

The makers of TextMate will decide to do whatever they think is best for them
regarding the price & past promises of free software, but I'm with the
Marco.org fella in seeing (and paying money in exchange for) value in well
crafted tools.

------
leejoramo
I am pretty much a die hard BBEdit user for the past 15 years, but I purchased
a copy TextMate years ago. I think it would create a lot of bad will if 2.0
was a forced paid upgraded.

I think TM2 should be free for TM1 buyers via macromates.com, but cost full
price via the Apple App Store.

------
nobleach
I've been trying to find some rationality in all this. I think it's crystal
clear. The REASON Marco has been using version 1.x since 2006 is because there
IS no version 2.0.

It's NOT any of our faults that the upgrade wasn't there 6 months later. That
was the developer's fault _. If it had come out 6 months to a year later, the
revenue generated by 1.x would have most likely covered his "salary". But that
money was obviously spent somewhere else... at his discretion. Now we have
people saying, "it's ok, we'll pay again." Sure, I used the software since
2005, but only because for most of that time, there was NOTHING better. In no
way is that my fault.

_ I mean absolutely no disrespect to Textmate, its developer or anyone else.
As a developer, I understand that rightfully, family, obligations, and more
lucrative projects can get in the way of one's pet projects.

------
YuriNiyazov
I switched back to Emacs from TextMate. Never looked back.

------
rays
Speak for yourself. The only reason TM2 is a free upgrade, or even coming out
at all is that Sublime Text 2 is eating up the cash cow that was TM1 and soon
TM user base will go away unless he does something about it.

------
johnohara
This is somewhat OT but I've used EditPlus under Windows for almost eight
years and have paid $35 twice -- v2 and v3. Same with FileZilla.

When it's worth it, it's worth it. a lot of people feel the same way about
TextMate.

~~~
dragonquest
Hmmm, that's odd because I bought EditPlus 2.3x for 30$, the price was
increased in 3.x. Also v3 was free for all paid customers of 2.x. When did you
buy 2.x?

------
briandear
I'm sure the author of the posting could simply donate to the dev via paypal.
It's similar to those "rich" people who are demanding to pay higher taxes.
That's a nonsense argument because they can donate to the US Treasury just as
a dev could donate to the TextMate guy. I am tired of people suggesting to
other people how to spend everyone else's money. If you want to pay more -- do
it yourself.

For the rest of us, I'll pay what I'm required and donate if I feel so
inclined. I'd personally rather donate to the Tiny Wings guy simply because
paying $60 for a text editor is fairly steep, if you aren't getting the
version 2 update for free. And Tiny Wings has better music. Logic Studio is
only $299, compared to a text editor's $60 and Xcode is free. The amount of
coding that went into Logic is light years beyond TextMate, but Apple knows
that if they charged $1000 for it (a fair price based on feature set, they'd
lose more revenue than charging $299.) I'm not a business school guy, but I do
know a thing or two about demand elasticity. Try charging $4.99 for an app in
the App Store and charge $1.99 -- you'll make more money at $1.99, unless it's
some highly niche product; TextMate is far from highly niche. It's ubiquitous.

I have paid for TextMate and have no problems doing so, but I'll be damned if
some jackass suggests that we should pay more. That's a business decision to
be made by the TextMate dev, not some user who likely has very little
experience in selling software to the public. No offense to anyone, but based
on the posting, it appears that the author has little understanding of demand
curves, not to mention contractual agreements.

------
frankPants
He should start a donation fund to pay for the development of TextMate2. I'd
happily throw a few hundred $$$ into that. I own TextMate 1, so I get the
update for free.

Problem for him is, he'd open himself up to litigation if he tried to charge
for TextMate 2. However I'm also of the opinion that the lack of release is
due to the lack of cash. If he could see money rolling in via "donations"
maybe he'd be more capable of paying his bills and continuing to develop his
great editor.

------
chromejs10
I can see both sides of the coin. I understand that a lot of people may have
bought TextMate because they were told the update to 2.0 would be free
(otherwise they may have waited). However, with as big as TextMate is and how
a guy with little or no team was able to create it, he can't possibly afford
to offer it to free for the thousands of people who bought the original one.

I think it would be perfectly fair to offer a discounted price to those who
bought TextMate 1.0 (as opposed to free). That's a pretty fair thing to do
IMHO. Many others said it, but if you are shelling out all the big bucks to
buy a Mac, spending a few more bucks on an outstanding piece of software. It
is a good way to show your support to the developer and make him continue
sending out updates.

Just imagine the scenario where he does offer it for free, makes virtually no
profit, and then ends up quitting support for TextMate 2 (as in making bug
fixes, features, etc) because he can't afford to just live off of doing that.
We all lose in that scenario.

I'm a student with lots of debt, but I will buy TextMate 2 full price because
it's a good investment. Even if he does offer it for free, it would be a great
gesture to buy it anyway or at least open up a donation thing for him.

Can't wait for its release!

------
geoffpado
I'll solve both issues: TextMate Gold. It's a special version for TextMate 1
licensees that decide to pay the extra upgraded prices (or unlicensed users
who pay an extra 39 EUR). No extra features, it just adds a gold titlebar
(preferences controllable, of course), and puts your name in gold lettering in
the about box. People like Marco can feel better about themselves, and no one
who bought TextMate 1.x feels screwed over.

------
alttag
Several commenters here, and on other threads and across the web have
complained about no progress since forever ago. And while the core product may
not have changed, bundles and plugins have continued to be created/updated, so
it's not like things have been completely stagnant all this time.

Sure, there's angst at a lack of communication, but that doesn't mean the TM
community has stagnated the entire time.

------
bradgessler
I think Alan could make money writing a book about the development of TextMate
2.0. I'm curious what happened and what lessons were learned.

------
jinushaun
The problem is that, from an accounting perspective, money that should've been
funding TM2 is considered TM1 revenue. So it looks like he is giving away TM2
for free, even though many, including myself, only bought TM1 for TM2. I think
Sublime Text is smart for charging for the ST2 beta in order to avoid this
problem.

Macromates should've charged new customers for the TM2 beta while he had a
chance years ago. I bought TM1 recently. There was no good reason I should've
been paying for TM1 in late 2010. I should've been buying and helping to fund
TM2 directly, even if it was an alpha release. I don't know what held up TM2
development, but Sublime Text 2 has shown that people are willing to pay for a
broken unfinished product if it has potential. Now he has a whole bunch
customers, myself included, to unnecessarily grandfather in.

------
johnnyn
I had no idea Textmate 2 would be a free upgrade for Textmate 1 users. I would
gladly pay for Textmate 2 as well.

------
smackfu
"You promised the free update in a different era, probably expecting different
circumstances. Things have changed."

True, but not how he means it. Now people expect lifetime free upgrades from
smaller software packages. There's no Instapaper 2.0, for instance, and
probably never will be.

------
desireco42
Seriously people just use Sublime Text if you can't figure out Vim (I use
both). Author is super responsive, cranks out really awesome features every
week, totally someone who is worth throwing money at.

And both of them are cross-platform ie. Linux, Mac, Win, you rule them all.

------
damiongrimfield
What are all the features that everyone wants? Why all the hype?

I gave up on TM2 a long time ago, but that doesn't mean I switched to another
editor; I still use TM1 everyday. However, when I purchased TM1, I was
promised TM2 for free, and therefore I'll have it for free.

~~~
weaksauce
There are quite a few things that textmate does not have but should have to be
a full featured text editor. off the top of my head the main ones are: split
screen, better printing control, better plugin system, ability for a real
lexer/parser/tokenizer to be plugged into the plugin system(I guess you could
get around this by writing your scripts in ruby and shelling out but that
seems slow.) Regex for syntax highlighting your files breaks very easily. I
might be way off base and all these are easily fixed with some plugin but I
haven't found the solution to them yet.

------
mrinterweb
If TextMate 2 is great software new customers will buy the software. If
TextMate does not come out with a new version, other editors like Sublime Text
2 will deprecate TextMate. If MacroMates wants to sell more licenses of
TextMate they will need to be competitive with the other more modern editing
software. MacroMates should hold to the existing contract that subsequent
versions are free to upgrade to for TextMate 1. If they want to change that
with TextMate 2 licences, that is fine. If you want to entice MacroMates to
develop TextMate 2 with money write them a check and tell them what the money
is for or buy a new license when the new version comes out.

------
droithomme
Wanting to pay more is certainly a valid and generous thing to want to do.

However, it is a bit grating that Marco presumes to speak for all customers of
this product by using the word "we". I don't presume to speak for Marco, he
should speak for himself only.

------
webrakadabra
While I totally appreciate the generosity of Macro, I totally condemn Macro's
speaking for the entire buyer community as in "We will not hold you to it" &
"Please let us give you more money".

For Allan, money sure is good but reputation is still better.

------
randylahey
Vim is still free.

~~~
veyron
and is still awesome! I tried textmate for a few weeks and went back to macvim

~~~
randylahey
I look forward to the day I can teach my kids to use Vim :)

------
jrockway
What I like about the Free software is that if the main author dies or stops
working on the project, I can pick up where he left off instead of write blog
posts saying we should all give him more money.

------
kylec
Back when I pirated TextMate 1 (probably in 2006 or so) I told myself that I'd
pay for it when 2.0 came out. I still plan to, though I'll admit that it's
been longer than I thought it would be.

------
snow_mac
Blah, blah, blah. I seem to remember all versions free up to but not including
version 2. Anyways, aside from it being a little bit better then Notepad++
mostly in UI. It's OK. I personally roll with: Textmate for local dev @ home &
vim, Dreamweaver & Notepad++ @ work and Eclipse & gEdit @ school. Personally
if I could find an IDE that isn't as heavy as Eclipse that can roll HTML,
java, php, css, coldfusion, ruby, bash, javascript and C I'd happily convert
from 6 different editors to 1. ... #justSayin

------
epo
Just for interest's sake can anyone point to this 'promise' of a free upgrade
to version 2? I bought TM1 and it played no part on my buying decision because
I was not not aware of any such guarantee.

If this promise was made then IMHO his best option is to adopt the
Firefox/Chrome numbering scheme: stabilise and release whatever he has now as
TM2.

He should also change the licensing to free updates for 12 months from date of
purchase and continue working on TM3.

~~~
lylejohnson
See for example the "license policy" page [1], where it says, "We do hope to
release a free 2.0 upgrade (which will require Leopard) but we provide no
guarantees about this, we do not promise what features it may or may not
include, we do not have any expected date of release etc."

[1] <http://macromates.com/license_policy>

------
swah
While you were talking, a new update for ST2 has arrived :)

------
neilalbrock
I agree. I would gladly pay full price for TextMate 2, even although I paid
for it the first time around. Of all the software I've bought over the years,
TextMate is the one product that I use every day.

I'd started looking at Sublime Text 2 as a possible replacement, as it's got
some really nice features. The TM2 announcement fills me with hope that I may
not have to do that... so I'll hang in there a bit longer.

------
Legend
I don't really own a Mac nor do I use TextMate but over the years, I have
heard about its greatness. I am just dying to ask this but why not put an
optional paid upgrade? That way, if someone feels like paying for it, you'd
know :)

Sublime Text 2 (which is my TextMate :) on Windows) uses something like this -
keep using it and pay when you feel like model and I absolutely love it!

------
vtail
I find it depressing that some people in the comments here wouldn't want to
pay for a _key tool of their trade_ - assuming they work with texts
professionally as programmers, bloggers, designers etc. Even 10% increase in
productivity will pay for Textmate license in 10 days, assuming you get at
least a minimum wage.

~~~
craftsman
I don't think it's depressing. I can use emacs (others would give different
examples) for free and I can use it in my daily work quite efficiently. So
given that reality, I have a hard time paying for an editor, even if it is a
key tool of my trade.

~~~
vtail
What I was trying to say is that every tool should be evaluated using
'productivity gain vs cost' framework. It may well be that for some people
productivity gains of TextMate vs emacs/vim/other editor are small and
therefore paying _any_ price for TextMate is unreasonable, since the
alternatives are free.

But in a case where TextMate _does_ yield to substantial productivity gain,
"$60 is too much" is a wrong mental model.

~~~
Shebanator
Couldn't agree more. The fact that so few developers are willing to pay for
good tools is why we end up with tools like Eclipse.

~~~
adambyrtek
Do you really claim that existing commercial IDEs are so much better than
Eclipse?

~~~
spooneybarger
I use eclipse every day and would never defend it against almost any
disparagement.

~~~
adambyrtek
I don't particularly love Eclipse, but I just don't agree that the commercial
alternatives are so much better. Which IDE would you recommend yourself?

~~~
spooneybarger
For java development? I don't have a recommendation really. I've tried
Intelli-j and I think it is def. better but at least for my workflow at the
paying job, eclipse's notion of project works out much better.

------
statictype
I find it interesting how he feels that software purchased through discount
bundles are not proper.

------
lyso
He could just do what everyone else is doing: move to the Mac App Store and
charge everyone again.

------
whyme
When I bought, I remember reading the free upgrades part, but I had thought it
was only up "TO" version 2.0 not including 2.0. Somehow I just assume that
major upgrades are fair game for upgrade fees.

So...if 2.0 is truly a major upgrade I'm more than willing to pay the $60.

Count me in!

------
plainOldText
If as a current TextMate user I'll have to pay for TextMate 2 I'll just switch
to MacVim.

~~~
phillmv
If you don't mind me asking, why on earth would you do that?

1\. Your existing copy of TextMate will continue to work just fine 2\. Have
you used MacVim recently? Assuming TM2 has a totally painless upgrade path
from TM1, you will be spending _weeks_ getting used to vim. Surely, it is
cheaper to invest in TM2.

~~~
burgerbrain
_"you will be spending weeks getting used to vim."_

How in the world would that even be possible? Give it a weekend _at most_.

~~~
phillmv
Two days just to get used to it. On and off experimentation for the right set
of plugins, eventually getting a good vimrc. A very long time before you get
proficient.

A hyperbole, no doubt, but vim is way harder to use than TM.

~~~
burgerbrain
I think you mean _"harder to learn"_.

~~~
phillmv
Nope! Harder to _use_. It's basically impossible to discover new functionality
in vim without reading technical documentation for it, whereas in Textmate I
assume (having never used it) that feature is accessible using a mouse.

TM is more _usable_ than vim.

~~~
burgerbrain
1) "discover new functionality" is a "learn", not a "use".

2) Vim can have menus too if you want them, and a mouse to go with them...

3) I learn new things about vim all the time without reading the
documentation. A _massive_ community makes that quite easy.

~~~
phillmv
>1) "discover new functionality" is a "learn", not a "use".

I'm talking about application usability. When I say something is hard to "use"
I roughly mean "how easy it is to pick up" and "how easy it is to use
everyday".

It's a sign of poor application design when you have to learn it instead of
merely using it.

After six years of regular vim use I still find myself constantly forgetting
key shortcuts and which feature accomplishes what.

A text editor is not conceptually difficult application. It's unlike a
cockpit. Case in point, Textmate.

Whatever, it's not worth splitting hairs. _I_ think that not being able to use
an app until you thoroughly look at its documentation is a fairly clear cute
example of an _unusable_ app.

>2) Vim can have menus too if you want them, and a mouse to go with them...

I know. I use MacVim almost every day of my life. The menus don't even cover
everything you can do with a buffer or a split.

>3) I learn new things about vim all the time without reading the
documentation. A massive community makes that quite easy.

Reading blogs I think falls under 'documentation'. I don't want to Read Things
just to use 10% of a text editor's features.

~~~
burgerbrain
1) _"It's a sign of poor application design when you have to learn it instead
of merely using it."_

No, what this actually is a sign of is disingenuous arguing. I have _conceded_
that vim is harder to learn. What I do not concede is that it is _otherwise_
hard to use. You understand what I am saying, but being purposely difficult.

2) If vim's menus were to cover everything vim can do, _then_ we would have
ourselves a usability issue. That menu system would be absurdly deep (which is
really just an argument in favor of vim if you think about it critically).

3) Blogs are not " _technical_ documentation", which is what you said. Not to
mention that any developer in the world should be able to use compat mode
without reading anything. The rest of vim's feature set is large enough that
it will require _some_ type of research to uncover, _no matter the
presentation_. Textmate can avoid this by having a dramatically smaller
feature set.

~~~
phillmv
1) It's just been my experience, when designing and discussing user
interfaces, to include "how discoverable" an application is as a factor to how
"usable" they are.

A LOT OF FEATURES that experts can use does not necessarily make something
usable.

If this falls outside of the purview of what you consider to be satisfactory,
that's fine by me.

2) Not really. You'd have a few context menus, and maybe an inspector window
might be necessary. Obviously you're not going to represent all of the
keyshortcuts but there is no good reason why I can't right click on a split
and reorganize it relative to my other buffers. Or select text and hide it
using whatever feature "zf" is called. Etc, etc.

Maybe I have an extremely dim of the full, non plugin augmented, vim
featureset but… I think it would be possible.

3) Now you're the one splitting hairs. A blog post covering a specific vim key
combo… is documentation of a technical sort. C'mon now. Few people are reading
that to relax after work.

>The rest of vim's feature set is large enough that it will require some type
of research to uncover

I disagree with this. I mean, if you want to compete at vimgolf, of course you
need to know the internals inside and out. But there ought to be no reason why
I need to memorize five commands off the bat just to split a window. Or set a
macro. Or blah blah blah blah.

~~~
burgerbrain
_"Few people are reading that to relax after work."_

The popularity of vim screencasts might suggest otherwise.

------
danielsiders
Understandable perspective from a successful independent app developer.

------
seyDoggy
I will be paying for the upgrade. It's a full digit release that's been a
kagillion years in the making. I've gotten my $'s worth out of all the 1.X's
to date.

------
RandallBrown
Being ashamed of buy discounted software is kind of stupid.

~~~
vtail
People may have different motives then you do. It is not stupidity - just one
developer appreciating the work of another.

------
wastedbrains
Sounds good, long as we are making developer requests.

Hey Marco, I want to pay for a really good kindle sync of instapaper, stop
being so iOS focused.

------
ImprovedSilence
There seems to be a lot of bickering along the lines of "business is business,
and he should keep his promise of business"... Which doesn't quite make sense
to me. If I were him, I'd charge all yall $80, but up it to $90 if you sent me
an email about free upgrades. Buy it, or don't buy it. You love the product.
you ponied up for a mac. I suspect somehow I'd sell enough to not be able to
give a rats ass what you think. That's business my friends.

~~~
thenduks
That is an... interesting approach.

I, for one, who would gladly pay for TM2 separately had I not _already
purchased a license for it_ , would not appreciate that kind of attitude and
make sure never to do business with Macromates again.

------
ricardobeat
Just present an optional payment screen, maybe a _pay as much as you want_
scheme, to those who are upgrading.

2\. Get rich

------
tuananh
Tell Alan to put a donation badge on the site. Problem SOLVED !!!

------
mcritz
TextMate 2.0 will be free. Maybe TextMate 2.0.1 will cost $79. Maybe if enough
people support TextMate 2.0 by paying for it, the rest of the freeloaders will
get 2.0.1 for free, as well.

------
neilrahilly
What would people like to see in TM2? I'll start:

\- window splits \- better inline search (i.e., from hitting /), so that the
find/replace window isn't covering up the editor window

------
evanlong
<snarky>Those jerks at Microsoft who have the nerve to charge for things at
every major release...</snarky>

~~~
jarek
Well, XP to XP SP 2 was practically a major release, and that was free as they
promised.

------
JamesChurchman
its should be a paid upgrade... its taken too much time to be a freebee ..

------
urbanjunkie
It's strange how so many people are waiting for a number.

As far as I can tell, there have been almost no feature promises, so the TM
developer would be perfectly within his rights to add the 1 or 2 promised
features, bump the version to 2, and fulfil his contractual obligations.

~~~
mryall
Maybe Allan should skip version 2 completely and just release the new one as
TextMate 3.

------
FlowerPower
Oh la la, look at this guy, he has money!

------
Uchikoma
Me too.

~~~
Uchikoma
How can the support for Textmate, expressing my will to pay - be worth a
downvote.

I understand the urge to keep this place noise free, but people committing in
public to pay for a new version - and I've also bought Textmate a long time
ago - is probably of more information value for many people here - with their
own projects - then many other upvoted comments.

------
ThinkEzy
WE WANT TEXTMATE FOR WINDOWS ABSOLUTELY

------
burgerbrain
Paying for a _text editor_. Boggles the mind.

~~~
calebmpeterson
I've never used it; is it really /just/ a text editor?

Edit: to clarify, my use of "just" wasn't meant to be dismissive or diminutive
in any way...

~~~
mhd
Given the relationship that coders often have with their editors, this is like
saying to some parents "It's just a boy"… If you spend a lot of time in one
program _voluntarily_ , it's hard not to develop some feelings for it, beyond
pure utilitarian reason.

TextMate is certainly one of those programs. It embraced the programmability
of a Unix-based environment, coupled with a very simple design and actually
introduced some new concepts (or at least made existing ones more prominent
and/or easier to use). It also came at the right time, filling a niche for
developers that wasn't satisfied by the pure-Unix breed (vim, emacs), nor by
the entrenched MacOS editors (well, BBEdit mainly). Being introduced in a
quite hip Ruby on Rails screencast didn't hurt, either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not even a hardcore TM fanboy, as I switch a lot
between editors, while secretly regretting that I can't just stick to emacs…

But I certainly understand the appeal, and if a bit of money (that most
developers who buy Macs certainly can afford) helps keeping the momentum of a
resurrected application, I'm all for it. Whether I'm buying it, is another
matter. Right now, it doesn't fill an interesting niche for me, and I'd much
rather spend the time customizing my .emacs file. Never mind that where I'm
really missing good editing functionality isn't HTML or Ruby, it's Objective-C
(or Java, when that was still job-relevant), where an IDE really helps. Well,
let's see what AppCode[1] can bring to that particular table…

[1]: <http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/>

~~~
__david__
> I switch a lot between editors, while secretly regretting that I can't just
> stick to emacs…

Why can't you just stick to emacs?

------
elnetas
Marco, learn a new editor, don't be lazy and a rockstar.

~~~
geoffb
Why? He's clearly so happy with TextMate that he's willing to fork over more
money for version 2 voluntarily. That doesn't sound like someone who's in need
of a new editor.

