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Textmate2 Goes Open Source

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Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#291

Post by Tloewald »

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…

The way its macros worked was brilliant and much imitated (so much so that it's no longer a differentiator).

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#292

Post by lectrick »

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…

TextMate came up with the brilliant idea of "textmate bundles"- the fact that both Sublime Text as well as E-TextEditor on Windows will import/use these bundles is a pretty good sign of how good that idea was.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#293

Post by lectrick »

endersshadow wrote: post #75
thejerz wrote: post #53

I don't want to pick on Allan Odgaard, but I think the way he's handled the TM2 project is pretty bad. Allen is a great guy and I love TM. However, here are some facts. TM2 has taken SIX YEARS. It was "90% done" 2009. This is a living, breathing case study in why quick customer-driven releases are better than "big upfront plans" and "giant system rewrites." Anyone who has developed a major application knows what I'm…

It's a famous Joel Spolsky essay: Things You Should Never Do, Part 1 [1]. Never do a full system rewrite. Pain and sadness follow. [1]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

When I joined thredup.com as the very first employee and the 2nd programmer, we decided to do a complete rewrite. It ended up being a great decision.

I think that the real lesson to be learned is that you should beware of rules that start with "always" and "never".

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#294

Post by shurane »

batista wrote: post #288
shurane wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user. I'm extending this idea of rolling your own code to anything/everything open-source, not just text editors. If you're playing a game, or using a webapp and there's some feature or pain point you want to add... well now writing it yourself is an option! Don't get me wrong, I…

> Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. Oh, no problem, I didn't get that impression. > I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user. Well, what I'm tried to say it that much of this is "potential" power and not actual. It takes a community or at least several interested programmers to actualise it. Else, it's just the same as if the user didn't have the o…

Personally, I think that everyone should have some form of programming chops. If only so people can program in the features that they want/need into the software they use.

That's why I think programmers as users (that can contribute back!) are so beneficial. Heck, they can even help the lead programmer debug by finding stack traces, culprit lines in code, working on things the author can't make time for, etc. etc.

You're right in that it's "potential" power, but I think it's just a matter of time of getting more people into the open-source and contributing mindset. I don't think enough of my coworkers or previous peers from uni respect the power of open-source. They just see open-source software as something... 'fixed'. It's either good, or not. They don't realize that they can easily change it with some determination.

On a sidenote, have you read about the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" [1], by Eric S. Raymond? I thought it was quite an eye-opener on the merits of open-source vs the closed-source alternative.

[1] http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt...

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#296

Post by haldean »

robmil wrote: post #205
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.

Vintage mode is admittedly getting more complete every day, but as a regular Vim user the absences that exist are often a jolting distraction — attempting to use some command that doesn't exist jerks you out of your flow and it feels so inefficient to then have to remember the Sublime way of doing things. I find it more annoying than the lack of, say, Cmd + T in MacVim, so I've found myself spending more and more tim…

This is the biggest problem with learning vim. I was an Emacs user for ages, and I could use other text editors fine. The "Emacs mode" in them usually just meant readline hotkeys: C-p and C-n for previous/next line, C-a and C-e for beginning and end of line, and C-k for delete line. These are the only real movement commands I used in Emacs, and they work in almost anything. Even nano has most of these.

But now my hands are wrecked. My fingers have minds of their own. My muscles have learned a subset of vim that does not seem to be a subset of any vim plugin maintainer's usage. I'll be in Vimperator or Eclipse vi-mode or Vintage and I'll hit cf" and nothing will happen, and I'll realize I'm completely lost. I lose my chain of thought and it takes me a non-negligible amount of time to realize that I'm going to have to hold down shift and use the arrow keys like some sort of Notepad user. I become irrationally angry and wish horrible torture upon the poor soul who wrote the (altogether pretty good) vim plugin I'm using, because who are they to not include EVERY SINGLE VERB AND NOUN that my fingers have painstakingly learned over the past few years. I slam my keyboard against the table, throw the mouse through the monitor, then roundhouse-kick the tower off the desk before I set fire to my desk every time a vim plugin is incomplete.

Vim has reduced me to a pathetic teary wreck every time I have to use a text editor that isn't vim.

I wrote this in vim.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#297

Post by jolohaga »

antihero wrote: post #259
jolohaga wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Sublime is targeting cross-platform compatibility. To me that's diluting the virtues of all the systems it works on. It's not the best editor for Mac OS X, it's not the best editor for UNIX. It's not the best editor for Windows. I prefer stronger opinion with an editor. I don't care if you have an awesome editor that only works on Windows as long as I have an awesome editor that works on my preferred OS. Awe…

No fucking way, you don't always control the environment you work on, and sometimes you want to switch OS without losing your tools. Sublime Text 2 gives you the freedom to do this. And Sublime is completely awesome on every platform.

You're right, but then I use vi.

I don't work in vi if I don't have to though, and I like editors that feel natural, are a pleasure, leverage the virtues of the OS I use, and interact with the shell. Textmate 1 has been able to do all that. It's just my preference, nothing more.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#298

Post by jolohaga »

89a wrote: post #97
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…

Can't stand ST2 either, if Chocolat is still going in a few months and TM2 flops I'll get it.

I'm trying ST2 and Chocolat. I'm tending to like Chocolat better. It follows the UI conventions of OS X, whereas ST2 doesn't.

For example, ST2 doesn't let me select the folder inside a project. It only lets me reveal or hide its contents, and rather briskly, at that.

ST2 has no passion for the subtleties of user interface and the joy it can bring. I don't think a lot of people get it.

I also don't need ST2's thumbnail view of the document constantly showing me where I am in it taking up real-estate in the project window. That's clever, but a distraction, at best.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#299

Post by zekel »

veidr wrote: post #248
zekel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Are you kidding about the undo thing? I can understand that some people might like TextMate despite its flaws, but I cannot imagine that anybody would really prefer one-character-at-a-time undo. I've been developing for the Mac for since 2000, and TextMate is the only app I can recall seeing with that "feature".

Nope, not kidding. I prefer single character undo for programming.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#300

Post by zekel »

tterrace wrote: post #222
zekel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 choic…

> My point is that I need to be philosophically aligned with my editor's developer. This is taking things a bit too far, I think. If you're a one platform kind of person the most important thing should be "How well does it work on (my platform)?".

I thought about this a little more Considering the amount of attention that specific software licenses get with regards to choosing software, I think it's not so uncommon to want to be philosophically in line with your app of hooves developer.
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