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Textmate2 Goes Open Source

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Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#191

Post by X-Istence »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #166

I'm confused as to how he could ever sell Textmate2 if he's linking against ragel, a GPL library. Well of course he could sell it but he'd have to release the source.

ragel isn't a library. ragel takes input and turns it into a state machine. The output from ragel isn't under any specific license other than your own, see the section on license on the homepage (copied below) http://www.complang.org/ragel/

  > Note: parts of Ragel output are copied from Ragel source covered by the GNU
  > GPL. As a special exception to the GPL, you may use the parts of Ragel output
  > copied from Ragel source without restriction. The remainder of Ragel output
  > is derived from the input and inherits the copyright status of the input
  > file. Use of Ragel makes no requirements about the license of generated code.
ragel is actually extremely cool and I've used it extensively in non-open source code for various things. I haven't even scratched the surface yet with how powerful it can be and I definitely want to spend more time with it.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#192

Post by zekel »

5teev wrote: post #121
batista wrote: post #89

If we are completely honest, Textmate was always a sub-par editor. No Vim or Emacs style brilliantness, no BBEdit style tons of features and mature engine, no IntelliJ like, er, intelligence, no ST2 comprehensiveness, etc etc. Plus, the Textmate 1.x text engine was probably a mess too -- I remember the very first versions being laggy (and that's coming from someone who doesn't find even Eclipse laggy). That he couldn…

This is pretty harsh, but you're right: it was always sub-par, with some compelling features. As a long-time BBEdit (and thus Mac) user, my impression was Textmate appealed to "switchers" who may not have been aware of better options. I tried Textmate many times, but single-character undo was always unforgivable.

> I tried Textmate many times, but single-character undo was always unforgivable.

I've heard this complaint before. On the other hand, I can't forgive multi-character undo. I think it's just user preference.

Furthermore, I still use TM1 all day every day. When people call it sub-par or compare its features to other editors it often reminds me of the checklists comparing the first iPhone to other (crappy) phones at the time. You can check all the boxes you want, but if the product doesn't get the details right it doesn't matter. TM isn't for everyone, but it's certainly for me, and I shopped around. (I don't mean to imply all other editors are crap.)

edit: I'm a life long Mac user, 15 year emacs user. I think it has a lot of appeal to non-switchers. That said, it definitely rode the Rails wave.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#194

Post by zekel »

ryanisinallofus wrote: post #107
emehrkay wrote: post #38

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 p…

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.

> ST2 is native enough for me and cross-platform should be on the list of every programmer's requirements for a text editor.

I used to feel this way. I worked really hard to make all my configs and editors act the same across OS X and a few unix platforms. Then one day I woke up and decided I just wanted to work with the best editor on the best platform. (Both personal, subjective opinions, of course.) And that choice has worked out great for me.

When I was first looking at Sublime Text and I saw it as a disadvantage when I noticed they had Windows version. I don't mean to come across as smug, I just mean that I fundamentally feel that OS X is a lot better than Windows. (A personal opinion.) My point is that I need to be philosophically aligned with my editor's developer. And if they have chosen to support Windows, they could have spent that time pushing the OS X app forward, which doesn't align with my position. I want the best editor possible, not the best editor on every platform.

The other way I look at it is to applaud their ambition and results with creating a great cross platform editor. I think cross platform software is incredibly important, but I would paradoxically prefer my editor was not. In other words, I'm glad that ST exists, but I don't it's for me.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#195

Post by eblume »

jjjjjosh wrote: post #184
eblume wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The VintageEx extension for Sublime includes vim-style search and replace, among many other things.

Excellent - Thanks!

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#196

Post by jdonaldson »

batista wrote: post #162
jdonaldson wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"brilliantness"? Are you kidding? Have you worked with vimscript? Oh well, at the risk of feeding a troll... Textmate introduced a huge number of features that now show up in other editors. Snippets, command-t, a tightly integrated community-driven extension system. Textmate was a lightweight editor for lightweight dynamically typed languages. It was the perfect contrast to Eclipse and Java, and was instrumental in c…

> "brilliantness"? Are you kidding? Have you worked with vimscript? Oh well, at the risk of feeding a troll... No, I haven't worked with vimscript. What does it have to do with anything? Vim/vi is a brilliant piece of editor software, with a solid concept (an editing language, the dual modes etc). And it is in continuous use for 30+ years now. Does anybody disagree with that? Now,vimscript being crap, or even it bein…

vimscript/viml, which is the basis of extending vim, regularly shows up as one of the worst languages to work with. http://geeksta.net/geeklog/exploring-expressions-emotions-gi...

vim is great, but most of its great features are at the end of a very difficult (but necessary) learning curve. The learning curve for developing plugins is even steeper (and unnecessarily so).

In contrast, most people can pick up and use textmate instantly. They can alter the extensions easily, since everything is done in a sane script environment (python/ruby). They can also share/alter/manage their extensions more easily without causing conflicts. Pathogen/vundle are recent vim plugins that finally make this easier for vimmers.

In a sense, textmate changed the nature of what an editor was about. I think extensions are a large part of an editor's value now. ST2, vim, and others are now following textmate's approach, and I admit, they're doing a better job of it than textmate. However, you still have to give credit to the originator.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#197

Post by zekel »

homosaur wrote: post #164
Camillo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fact that settings are in a text file that I can easily sync is a GOOD thing. I don't have to rely on some godawful third party service to sync settings, I can just export them to Dropbox or throw them on a Git repo. This is one of the many things people love about Vim too, that you can set up your editor in a minute instead of trawling through GUI menus.

While flat files are a good thing, that doesn't preclude having a good interface in your app that lets you edit them. Furthermore, that is not an unfair expectation for an app that wants to be considered a good Mac citizen.

The last bit is in response to the parent post by frou_dh:

  I feel ST2 is healthily past "good enough" as a Mac application.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#198

Post by wonderzombie »

irrelative wrote: post #176
robmil wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and a reflection of the ecosystem as it was when TM2 first started development; it's a lot easier to countenance a full rewrite when you're by far the dominant player in your particular market.

But it doesn't make them any more successful. See Netscape for another data point.

Well, I think the GP is just saying that it's all the more tempting in that circumstance. If it looks like nobody's breathing down your neck, you might be more willing to risk a rewrite. And we love writing code so much that I think we've all heard the siren song of starting afresh.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#199

Post by kemayo »

batista wrote: post #158
benihana wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Textmate deserved all that success --it should have happened to a better editor. This doesn't make much sense. You say it appeared at the right time and was pretty and native on OS X. What better editors deserved the success it had that were available when TextMate was popular? Which editors were available on OS X that weren't giant IDEs or VIM and Emacs style editors that have a ridiculously steep le…

> This doesn't make much sense. You say it appeared at the right time and was pretty and native on OS X. What better editors deserved the success it had that were available when TextMate was popular? The fact that there wasn't another editor that fulfilled all those "needs" at the time (mainly: simple, native looking) does not mean that it deserved it's success. What I'm saying is, it got its success not because it w…

> Actually history seems to agree with me. Did you miss the part when the promised 2 was worked on for 6 years, got nowhere, delivered a disappointing alpha and got dump half-heartedly (as in with GPLv3, with the intention to continue commercial development) on GitHub?

I dunno. I think the part where he could afford to spend 6 years working on some pie in the sky product which never released, subsisting entirely on income from TextMate 1 which was minimally enhanced during that time, suggests that history agrees with the "TextMate was very successful" view.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#200

Post by robmil »

irrelative wrote: post #176
robmil wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and a reflection of the ecosystem as it was when TM2 first started development; it's a lot easier to countenance a full rewrite when you're by far the dominant player in your particular market.

But it doesn't make them any more successful. See Netscape for another data point.

Oh, not at all — but it does make the potential hubris of a rewrite (slightly) more understandable. When you have no time for a rewrite because competition is fierce, the question never really comes up; it's not necessarily the conscious avoidance of "second system effect" that it might seem.
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