
TextMate finally gets an update - joshfraser
http://blog.macromates.com/2010/textmate-1-5-10/
======
angrycoder
It 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
I 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).

------
steve19
The 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
Considering 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.

------
gaoshan
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
There's TextWrangler (free,
<http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/>), Smultron (free,
<http://smultron.sourceforge.net/>) and BBEdit ($125,
<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
Fraise is a continuation of the now abandoned Smultron.

~~~
jlmendezbonini
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

------
bluesnowmonkey
I 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
A Macromates employee? I was under the impression that Allan Odgaard _was_
Macromates.

------
tsigo
The 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.

------
5teev
In 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
Interesting: for me this is a feature that I happen to appreciate a lot, not
an issue.

------
stretchwithme
Thanks. 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
Command-click the title bar of any document to reveal the path hierarchy.

~~~
Timothee
This works pretty much in every document-based app and Finder, by the way.

~~~
steveklabnik
It's been a part of the Finder since System 7...

I'm an old man trapped in a young man's body.

------
jonpaul
I'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
I'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.

~~~
flyosity
My 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
<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3025>

Very much like command + t in TextMate, and works like a charm.

------
xtacy
This doesn't seem to be that much of a change. Is there a wish list that
people loved to see?

~~~
mishmash
My 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
Definitely use the "Ack In Project" bundle instead of "Find in Project". It's
like night and day.

~~~
michael_scheibe
The Ack in Project bundle has been deprecated by the creator in favor of the
AckMate plugin. It has some major improvements over the bundle. Highly
recommended.

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

~~~
colomon
Can you say more about this? I've been very happy with Ack in Project, and I'm
loath to change such a big part of my working environment without some
understanding if what I should expect to gain...

------
JeffJenkins
As 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
This was in the release notes.

~~~
JeffJenkins
Tab 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
Cmd+[ has been used for indenting for a while now, though... At least that's
the only way I've ever done it.

------
meric
Might be a good place to mention another Mac OS X editor.
<http://macrabbit.com/espresso/>

Disclaimer: I also wrote a clojure highlight/indent extension for it.
<https://github.com/meric/clojure>

~~~
jokull
The 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
There'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>

P.S I use expresso for python web development, too.

------
danerik
I'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.

------
grandalf
FWIW, I have been extremely happy with the following combo:

<http://emacsformacosx.com/>

and

<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.

------
pella
Textmate clone ( Windows & Linux )

<http://www.e-texteditor.com/>

~~~
colomon
I'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...

------
X-Istence
TextMate 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.

~~~
tptacek
A 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
Especially when said editor costs only $55. That's nothing compared to the
cost of a lot of other commercial editors.

~~~
noarchy
There 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
There'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.

------
bonaldi
Does 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.

------
adriand
TextMate lost me to Vim. I'm never going back, even though it's only been two
weeks.

------
aaronblohowiak
This surprised and delighted me:

[NEW] Included Make bundle among the default bundles.

------
foobarbazetc
Woohoo! Save as starting at '/' is finally fixed!

------
Stinkyfoo
Almost a year since the last!

~~~
mishmash
It must suck so much to go back and work on old code after years of working on
new code (TM v2).

~~~
luckyland
Good one.

------
enduser
also in the news: vim does not need an update

~~~
jrockway
It seems to have new bugfix releases every two years or so.

~~~
graywh
Bugfixes are released often (as patches). Minor releases have new features
added (in addition to the patches on the previous version).

------
Sizlak
TextMate is the BBEdit of OS X.

~~~
luckyland
Try to open your project whose files sit on a remote directory with Textmate
and tell me if this joke is still funny.

~~~
Sizlak
My point was that both seemed awesome at first, but then just stopped
improving. And yeah, I still think the joke is funny.

~~~
luckyland
But 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?

