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Textmate2 Goes Open Source

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Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#241

Post by shurane »

batista wrote: post #149
sblom wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your effort spent on tools speeds up your time-to-stuff, then the assumptions embodied in 1) are invalid. Besides, with open source you have more than just the original developer on whom you can use cash to entice him to make your favorite changes.

> If your effort spent on tools speeds up your time-to-stuff, then the assumptions embodied in 1) are invalid. Effort spent on tools != effort spend on adding some feature I'd like on a programmer's editor. I could just switch to something better. Plus, you probably overestimate how more productive a tool like a programmer's editor makes you. The truth is an editor can make editing less repetitive, but it's not like…

I'm going to be a bit pedantic: switching to another editor is also effort spent. Learning how to use Eclipse, IntelliJ, Visual Studio, Vim, Emacs, ed, etc. etc. Some stuff is simple (text input from a keyboard), but they each have their own weird incompatible little worlds.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#242

Post by [deleted] »

anthonyb wrote: post #234
motiejus wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VIM learning curve.. It takes 2 hours (at least it did for me 8 years ago) to go through vimtutor, which means you can do all the basic stuff like with any editor. That's it. From that point you can stay or go how ever far you want. From using the editor "the notepad level", go nuts by building a database of key shortcuts and commands in your head. Is 2 hours a considerably "steep learning curve" for the thing you ar…

Compared to zero hours for a more traditional editor like TextMate or Sublime Text 2 that has command-S as save? Sure is. Also, at the point that you first pick up an editor like Vim, you have no idea whether it's going to work for you, so the 8 hours/day is a furphy.

[deleted]

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#243

Post by eblume »

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…

Just in case you missed it, another replier mentioned an additional package, VintageEx. I just gave it a try and all of a sudden all the things I was still missing from vim are in ST2!

I recommend giving that a shot, but I do completely understand your reluctance. You're right, the absences are jarring!

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#244

Post by jasomill »

jdonaldson wrote: post #215
jdonaldson wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> You've never used Emacs, have you? I'm talking about light weight editors that support light weight scripting in a number of different languages. I consider emacs to be more IDE-like. That's admittedly a weak distinction though.

emacsclient is about as lightweight as it gets, and Cocoa Emacs itself (24.1.50.1, built from the Git repository on Savannah this afternoon) starts up in less than 5 seconds on my Mac. As for "scripting in a number of different languages", that's more of an anti-feature for me. Specifically, running Emacs in a Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, ... VM in VMware Fusion, I can symlink the init files and site-lisp directories in my guest OS home directory to the analogous items in my OS X home directory, and, given reasonably comparable fonts and Emacs versions, my Emacs configuration and most extensions work identically in the VMs.

If, on the other hand, these extensions were written in a number of scripting languages rather than Emacs Lisp, I'd need to maintain a like number of scripting language runtimes in each guest OS. Given the amount of code I write in Emacs pales in comparison to the amount of contributed third-party code I use, the fact that I have to write it in Emacs Lisp is a vanishingly small price to pay. Besides that, for lightweight scripting at least, I actually like Emacs Lisp.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#245

Post by jasomill »

zekel wrote: post #197
homosaur wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difficulty here is to ensure said interface doesn't make trivial changes to the flat files. Emacs has this down. As a counterexample, Visual Studio 2010 stores its settings in an XML file that, after pretty-printing, is quite human-readable. But, formatting aside, VS tends to reorder elements in this file even when you don't change anything, making sensible source control unnecessarily difficult. The somewhat manual workaround is to store important settings in a well-formatted settings file and use this as what VS calls "team" settings, because the IDE doesn't write or rewrite team settings files; this is also a nice solution because you probably don't want to sync things like window sizes and positions between a desktop with a 27" monitor and an 11" MacBook Air, and team settings only override local settings when they're defined.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#246

Post by caw »

jonny_eh wrote: post #182
danellis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't appear to be a code-dump to GitHub It does appear to be, because there's no history -- everything is "Initial commit".

Maybe he wasn't using a version control system or a different one from git and didn't want to import?

I'm betting it was from Mercurial and he didn't bother to roll over the history.

From the readme:

>sudo port install ninja ragel boost multimarkdown mercurial

Yes it says later that it's only for a the SCM library tests, but it is ported to Github. Why not test the SCM library with git if you were using that? Seems more likely that he used Hg and was testing with it as well.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#247

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)?".

You're right, that is absolutely the most important thing. But as we've seen with TM, the way the project is run is really important too. It's a totally self-centered sentiment to say I wish my editor development to be exclusive to my platform, but it would certainly result in a better app for me to use.

Luckily my preferences have nothing to do with the outcome, much like the weather.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#248

Post by veidr »

zekel wrote: post #192
5teev wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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".

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#249

Post by colomon »

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…

I'm a Textmate user who couldn't agree more about not liking with Sublime. I've got it as my main text editor for one of my Windows boxes, and I'm never happy or comfortable using it.

Re: Textmate2 Goes Open Source

#250

Post by niels_olson »

humblepie wrote: post #238
niels_olson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think one person would make a case study Actually, that is the definition of a case study.

Of course we're talking about case study in terms of a group of developers with their own dynamics, not the mind of a single person.

I get what you're saying, but thejerz's words are pretty specific to Allen and his project.
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