Comments on: TextMate is my new default text editor

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Like you, I abandoned BBEdit, but I did it before having found a good replacement and so i went on Text Editor Safari. I ended up at TextMate. The key to TextMate’s goodness, for me, is the bundle system. It lets it gather great powerful features for sub-communities of users without bloating the base interface. Pretty brilliant. Snippets are crucial too, but they wouldn’t be so nice without the bundle/scope system.

By: David Esrati

David Esrati — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

D’Arcy-
We’ve been using sub-etha edit for a while-
I’d like to hear what you think in comparison.
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

and yet BBEdit has a billion built in features. I don’t think anyone who’s actually used it would call it bare bones anymore…

By: King Chung Huang

King Chung Huang — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

An Apple Design Award and a recommendation from D’Arcy! I know I dismissed it last week, but I’m going to give it another try. Modding the W3C Validator to link back to the source document is very cool! Practically the only reason I turn on line numbers in BBEdit while writing XHTML is to trace back references from the validator. I wonder what other little goodies like this TextMate has?

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

It’s got 67 bajillion hidden little gems. I’ve only been using it for a week or so, and every time I launch it I discover something new and cool. But in the good way, not in the “now, where in the hell is that feature hidden” kind of way. I just kinda look where I’d expect something to be, and BAM. There it is. And about 20 other related and handy things, just hanging out and waiting for me to need them.

I’d initially requested a BBEdit 8.5 update license, but killed that request in favour of TextMate.

But… I get the feeling that TextMate may be a love/hate kind of thing. I mean, I’ve been using BBEdit for so long, I never thought I’d actually switch to something else. I’m sure others are even more attached to their editors, and would be less enamored with its lack of BBEditishness. A while back, I managed to switch to JEdit for a few months, but eventually came back to BBEdit. I don’t see that reversion happening with TextMate.

By: davidicus

davidicus — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

BBEdit doesn’t have a bajillion gems because BB stands for Bare Bones!

By: PatrickQG

PatrickQG — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Another vote for TextMate, it’s an awesome editor. The keyboard shortcuts make life that much nicer (and the various tab completion things).

I purchased a copy before I started my current job, but had I not and they didn’t pay I’d have purchased it myself still.

By: Ryan Collins

Ryan Collins — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Your Textmate link is incorrect, it has too many c’s in it. It should be: http://www.macromates.com/

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

DOH! Damn my copy-and-paste skills! Thanks for catching that. It’s fixed now. For some reason, I also want to type micromates.com instead. Too bad textmate.com was grabbed by a squatter…

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I was a hardcore SubEthaEdit user - even back when it was called Hydra - but it’s not quite to the level of TextMate as a pure editor. If I ever need to share a document for live editing, I fire up SEE, but that’s extremely rarely now (although it used to be an every-day, all-day thing).

I even ran SubEthaEdit on Windows one time…