

Textmate 2 - Alpha this year - timparker
http://blog.macromates.com/2011/whats-next/

======
Auguste
Hell must be freezing over.

10 June 2011: Duke Nukem Forever released -
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Development_o...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever#Gearbox_revival.2C_2010.E2.80.932011)

12 July 2011: PuTTY 0.61 released -
[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.ht...](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/changes.html)

20 July 2011: "Signs of life from GNU Hurd" -
<https://lwn.net/Articles/452296/>

28 July 2011: GNU Emacs developers discover that Emacs has been violating the
GPL since 2009 - [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2011-07/msg01...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2011-07/msg01155.html)

26 September 2011: Textmate 2 Alpha announced

I joked about this on my blog earlier this year, but wasn't expecting it to
happen.

~~~
zacharypinter
20 September 2011: The Diablo III Beta Is Now Live

~~~
atomicdog
For "friends and family", however.

~~~
moiety
The friends and family beta was earlier in the year. This one is the real
deal.

~~~
ewald
No, the F&F beta started a few weeks ago (two or three) and is still
happening. The general beta has started, in theory, but they've given access
to so few people it's almost as if it hasn't.

~~~
moiety
Semantics, I suppose. The friends and family test did begin earlier this year
in an alpha state. They just didn't identify it as either an alpha or beta
phase at the time.

I know a lot of people who have made it into the closed beta.

------
emery
Also got hooked on vim, and couldn't thank Textmate's inactivity more for I
may have never been pushed in the right direction and discovered the wonderful
efficiency of the vim paradigm.

If I were to use Textmate now, it would need to be just a faster vim, with a
less clunky vimscript, and it'd need to embed in a terminal, as vim made it
possible for me to do everything on the command line and truly use working
directories as my sole division between contextual workspaces.

------
mambodog
It's good to hear, but it'll have to be pretty damn impressive to retake the
ground lost to Sublime Text 2 and vim.

~~~
dorian-graph
Sublime Text2 is really turning out to be fantastic. So many 'little' features
that make it nice to use.. though as nice as they are I wouldn't use it
without vi key bindings.

~~~
gchandrasa
Sublime Text2 has vintage mode, it's vi mode editing package.
<http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/vintage.html>

~~~
netmute
Sublime Texts vintage mode doesn't feel like vim at all. Even basic things
like ':x' are missing.

~~~
methodin
By the same token it would be a great way for new users to learn vim while
maintaining the comforts of ctrl-c ctrl-v and tab indents etc...

~~~
akmiller
MacVim is great for that (if, of course, you are on a mac). It has all the
great vi stuff along with the core OS style commands that everyone is familiar
with. I believe gVim on Windows does the same but I'm not positive on that.

~~~
kisielk
See :behave mswin

------
jcromartie
Too slow! I moved to Emacs back in 2007. I don't think Textmate could win me
back at this point. I've taken the red pill.

~~~
marchdown
Know any good explanation and comparison of find-in-project features in emacs?

~~~
noelwelsh
textmate.el is decent. <https://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el>

~~~
jcromartie
Funny :)

But, it illustrates that in Emacs you can always steal another editor's best
features.

~~~
bad_user
<http://code.google.com/p/yasnippet/>

------
joelmichael
TextMate still has the best find-in-project functionality. Sublime Text 2
doesn't compare if you want to rename something throughout the app.

As for vim, it's nice when you're in a console, but I don't think it's as
pleasant to use.

The delay with TextMate has been rather absurd, though. Version 1 goes largely
unmaintained (still no full-screen functionality for Lion). The last update
was in November of 2010. Before then it was November of 2009.

~~~
lobster_johnson
> TextMate still has the best find-in-project functionality

You must not have very big projects. TM's find function totally breaks down
(spinning beach ball hell) on anything except really small projects.

Fortunately, the solution is AckMate (<https://github.com/protocool/ackmate>),
which integrates seamlessly with TextMate and has a very clean interface; and
it's lightning fast.

AckMate is really the only thing I miss in Sublime.

~~~
jonknee
I think the OP meant the Command-T functionality of switching between files. I
have never heard anyone praise TextMate's project wide search, which as you
mention is beach ball city.

~~~
wycats
Both PeepOpen and CommandT for vim offer superior file switching functionality
(by fixing a problem with Textmate's version whereby it does not take the
directory into consideration, which can really help narrow down a search).

------
jscheel
I think everything has been said that can be said about the ridiculously-long
release cycle of textmate, but I still don't get what is so great about
sublime. The only thing it seems to have over textmate is split panels and the
code overview (which looks cool but has never been very practical, at least
for me). Am I missing something?

~~~
gizmo
1\. python console for easy plugins (but Python env is way too stripped down
unfortunately)

2\. it's fast

3\. very good ctags support (jump to definitions between files)

4\. go to anything (jump to files)

5\. vim-like cursor position stack

6\. vertical tabs

7\. decent multiple-syntax highlighting (javascript/css in html pages)

~~~
acdha
What does "Go to anything" offer versus TextMate / ST2's Command-T file jump
feature? As far as I can tell the two do exactly the same thing.

~~~
notJim
Go to anything allows you to go to methods/functions, do a find in file and go
to the line in a file. For example, if I know I want the getWidgets method in
Widgets_Controller, I can type Widgets Con[stop typing when the right file is
at the top]@getWidgets. To find, replace the @ with a #, and to go to a line,
replace the @/# with a :.

I don't if TextMate does this or not, to be honest.

~~~
acdha
Ah, thanks, that's a combination of the TextMate go to file / go to symbol.
I've been using Command-T/(Command-R/Control-G) in ST2 since the magic syntax
for symbol or line navigation wasn't obvious.

------
posabsolute
Switched to Sublime 2, a lot more releases + it's on osx, linux windows,
meaning I never have to worry again.

Not sure if textmate2 is too late, but it certainly feel like it is, I do not
see myself going back there.

------
oomkiller
I'll believe it when I see it. Hopefully it doesn't turn out like Duke Nukem
Forever did. Also, I really sincerely hope that they'll open source the 1.x
version, although if they do ever release 2.0 it might make that more
unlikely.

~~~
sovande
> I really sincerely hope that they'll open source the 1.x version

Why? So you can use 6 years fixing it, for free? Or did you have someone else
in mind doing that for you?

------
minikomi
So what's everyone's "bloodline"? I Can't be the only one who went Coda ->
textmate -> macvim -> vim

~~~
yankcrime
What did going from MacVim to vim buy you, exactly?

~~~
emery
Terminal integration. Which is invaluable as it's a big waste of time cross
referencing your projects acroess different parallel contexes.

What's MacVim give you? I never got the point. Everything I've seen also
existed in the terminal with a few simple vimrc config. Mouse/trackpad,
clipboard integration, OSX commands.

~~~
billybob
MacVim (and GVim on Linux) have better color scheme support. Solarize is
great.

MacVim also works with PeepOpen, which was just a jaw-dropping upgrade from
tab-completing all my file paths from the project root. It practically reads
my mind.

I'm thinking I will give FuzzyFinder a try soonish, though, since it would
also work on Linux.

~~~
wwrap
About MacVim vs vim and 'color scheme support' and 'solarize': Actually the
issue is with Terminal.app which has some weird setup where changing the
background is either impossible or always looks horrible.

Also it's particularly difficult to get Solarized setup in a terminal using
256 colors rather than manually resetting the 16 colors of your terminal to
custom values.

If you have a sane terminal, vim works fine with 256 color support. A lot of
people on OSX use iTerm 2 which I hear has fine 256 color support. I just use
gnome-terminal on Linux that's had support forever and dropped solarized since
the maintainer is not interested in making any setup work besides gVim/MacVim
it seems.

------
8ig8
I've been using Textmate since 2006 and I'm still very happy with it. I'm
still learning new tricks. Bundles allow it to keep pace fine for me.

------
mhd
Wonder how that works out. It's not just that people are waiting quite a while
for an upgrade, it's also about regaining trust that once you get your beta
(or even 2.0 final) out, the next pause won't be as long…

------
jsherer
I don't see this as different than from the last time the developer said
"Hopefully an alpha version will be ready before too long..." back in 2009. I
hope he proves this wrong, though.

------
martingordon
Given that 2.0 is labelled as a free upgrade to 1.x users and that the market
for TextMate is already saturated (TM users have probably already bought a
license and given how poorly TM has been supported, I doubt there are many
people switching _to_ TM), I wonder how long it'll be until a paid 2.1/3.0
ships with critical bug fixes and the features 2.0 left out in order to get it
out the door.

~~~
abredow
I think that TM probably made a big mistake by offering a free upgrade to 2.0.
Especially given the apparent ambition of the rewrite.

Assuming it has some nice new stuff, I, for one, would gladly fork over more
money for a 2.0 release.

~~~
adambyrtek
Maybe it's their way of saying "sorry for the delay"? Rewarding dedicated
users with a free upgrade seems like a good idea to me.

------
toksaitov
Too late. Hooked on Vim.

~~~
diab0lic
I'm a total vim junkie now. Its available on every OS and sees a lot more
development efforts. The only downside is the learning curve but I've already
put enough time in that its no longer an issue.

------
evilhackerdude
Did we just run out of things where everyone though they’d never be released?

------
juliano_q
The discussion at this thread only convinced me to give a try to Sublime Text
2 (currently using Textmate). Never stopped to take a look at it. The vim mode
looks nice.

------
dadro
Anyone using Vicoapp? If MacVim and Textmate had a lovechild it would be Vico.
TM2 is going to have to be pretty amazing for me to switch.

~~~
calloc
I've played with Vicoapp but it just didn't work for me, for some reason there
was just too much of a disconnect with commands I was used to in vim not
working as expected. I haven't tried it lately, might have to give it another
go.

------
creativityhurts
It's a bit too little too late but I'm curious what they'll bring to the game
now with so many people converting to Sublime Text 2.

------
Tycho
I recently stumbled across the RopeMate bundle for TM. For Python it gives you
intellisense/code-sense style autocompletion, and also a nifty 'refactor'
command (ie. pull the selected code out into a new function which accepts any
referenced variables as arguments), replacing the existing code with a call to
the new function.

Highly recommended.

------
james33
I've always just used Coda since I got a Mac 5 years ago. I haven't had any
problems, so I haven't been compelled to switch. However, I keep hearing
people talking about Textmate and Sublime. Why should I switch (I've been
holding out for Coda 2, but I'm starting to lose hope)?

------
ajtaylor
This is indeed good news, but I made the switch to vim a couple of months ago.

~~~
gvido
Same here, I switched to vim when I realized that TextMate 2 was basically the
"Duke Nukem Forever" of text editors.

I don't think I'll switch back, but I will play around with it and see what
was so awesome that took that long to develop.

------
rnadna
TM-1 was wonderful, so TM-2 should be fantastic. New users will _love_ it, I'm
sure. As for the original TM-1 users, they may just have moved on, after the
long wait for their favourite features.

~~~
holman
I think a healthy amount of skepticism is good. Just because TextMate was
initially good doesn't mean that TextMate 2 will meet everyone's expectations.
And like it or not, TextMate 2 will have to live up to everyone's
expectations... you can't pre-announce a new version three years in advance
and expect everyone to ignore their own expectations.

Shipping is important.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
Three years? Make that five.

And every additional year makes your point even more relevant — I can
understand, even if it is just subconsciously, that one cannot fit all the
things I expect in a 6 or 12 month release cycle. I cannot accept the same for
a 60 month cycle, even though I do know that that’s not how software
development works (cf. mythical man month, etc.)

------
miles_matthias
Anyone using Kod? (<https://github.com/rsms/kod>)

I love the interface, although it's still in beta and lacks a few handy
features.

~~~
bjtitus
My issue with Kod is that it hasn't been updated in months. Rasmus is simply
too busy to keep the project alive.

I've moved to Sublime Text 2 for the most part but you should also look at
Chocolat. It's coming along nicely for basic editing.

~~~
patrickg
Several people here mention Sublime Text 2. I can't see code folding (which I
really like in TM).

~~~
bjtitus
As of a few days ago, code folding was added to Sublime Text (albeit, not too
intuitively, yet).

[http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-2-buil...](http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-2-build-2126)

------
tectonic
In the last year I've moved from TextMate to RubyMine and there is very little
that I miss about TextMate, while RubyMine (at least for Ruby) offers so much
more.

------
whalesalad
Hard to believe that I bought my TM license on October 19th 2006. It's been 5
years! I'm looking forward to another 5 years with TM2.

------
moiety
I'll believe it when I see it. In the meantime, as others have mentioned,
Sublime Text 2 has won me over.

------
faizanaziz
After years and years of waiting they decide to tell us something... At least
there is hope

------
sambeau
I predict an Oct 22nd alpha release date, what with The Rapture booked in for
the 21st.

~~~
sthulbourn
I'll go for a Dec 25th release :P

------
mickeyben
ah I remember when I was excited <http://blog.macromates.com/2009/working-on-
it/> :-)

Hope the alpha will all make us forget the release time. The bar is very high
though.

------
hotice
Will it finally be available for Linux? If not, I'll stick with Sublime Text 2

------
crag
I don't believe it.

------
steve918
This is a truly great troll.

------
billpatrianakos
I'll never understand why everyone loves TextMate so much. I mean, its a nice
text editor but there are much better ones out there. Maybe I'm inexperienced
or maybe I work far differently than TextMate users but Espresso is where it's
at for me. Actually now there's Chocolat (<http://chocolatapp.com>). The alpha
is shedding bugs quickly and it's shaping up to potentially be my favorite
text editor of all time.

------
jakemcgraw
mind = blown

------
shawndumas
<http://www.sublimetext.com/2>

------
altrego99
Notepad++.

~~~
lazugod
...runs exclusively on Windows, whereas the existing TextMate runs exclusively
on OS X.

Different platforms and different audiences, mate.

------
nestlequ1k
Everyone I work with is a former textmate user. Seriously, at least a couple
dozen people. I know maybe 1 or 2 who are dumb/crazy/lazy enough to keep using
it. Not a good retention rate.

It was good software, and had great longterm potential. But Allan's
personality destroyed it (he's an artist, not a coder). I'm sure there's a
great story behind how the project fell into the toilet, I'm looking forward
to the book.

~~~
absconditus
Why are people dumb/crazy/lazy for continuing to use it? Some of use just want
a clean text editor with syntax highlighting and a few other features. Some of
us also do not follow Internet drama and know nothing about Allan's
personality.

~~~
nestlequ1k
Agreed, but then you decide to... _gasp_ open jquery.min.js and your text
editor decides to crash. Better luck next time.

