And, oh yeah: they all understand that tabs are a terrible way to manage multiple open files once you have more than four or five open at once, and all can handle files much bigger than TextMate can dream of. (All of them can use PeepOpen if you want.) If you’re the kind of nerd who knows what HTML Zen Coding is, all of them have add-ons for it. All of them have quick navigation between files in a project hierarchy. (Ironically, BBEdit had them years before anybody else the extensions for Vim and Emacs are both consciously modeled on TextMate’s.) All of them have folding and multiple windows and pane splits. Either out of the box or with an afternoon of dorking around, you’ll have everything you miss from TextMate. MacVim and Cocoa Emacs make a few concessions to the Mac environment, but you gotta learn Vim or Emacs to use one or the other.īut all of these editors are very extensible. In its basics, it behaves like every other Mac text window you’ve ever seen and just adds lots of great stuff onto that. But it’s the only one of the three which is a true Mac program. And it’s $99, whereas the other two are free. Its color schemes are minimal, its “codeless language modules” are underpowered, and it can’t do syntax-aware indenting. This assertion will piss off BBEdit fans, but BBEdit is the least powerful of those three. Your decision is between three editors: BBEdit, MacVim and Cocoa Emacs. I like both Coda and Espresso, but right now I can’t recommend either one unless you’re mostly doing static HTML files. Otherwise, I’m going to make a radical prescription. Is TextMate 1.5 still working for you? Can you keep living with its limitations? If you answered both those questions “yes,” our work is done here. Put down the mouse, back away from that download link, and take a deep breath.įirst off: if you are a Mac user and compatibility with TextMate is an absolute must-have, let me ask you two questions. I love you all, but it’s time to stage a text editor intervention. Now we’re trying to make Vim pretty? Really? This one, though, is a native Cocoa editor that uses vi keybindings, uses Nu instead of Vim’s scripting language, and is partially compatible with TextMate bundles. Sublime Text is coming to the Mac! It supports (some) TextMate bundle operations to make it easier to move over to it! And so does Kod, and even though it doesn’t actually do anything yet it’s open source! Let’s not forget Panic’s Coda and MacRabbit’s Espresso, which are both marketed as quasi-IDEs aimed specifically at web developers and–again–sport limited compatibility with bits and dribbles of TextMate’s bundles.Ī few days ago, word started spreading around of yet another new editor, Vico! Like Sublime Text and TextMate, Vico is a shareware program developed by just one guy and sold for about $50. I’ve been following a few of them sporadically. This has in turn given rise to new editors all aiming for that ETWBTM2BD spot. A lot of old TM users have been looking for the Editor That Will Be TextMate 2.0 By Default. If your dad pops up to make a blog post once a year saying he’s still working on it, he is just possibly not facing reality, either. (Undo character by character, anyone?) We first started hearing about TextMate 2 in early 2006, and as people will always respond if you point out that it’s now 2011, the author never gave an ETA other than “after Leopard.” All well and good, but if your dad walks out one Thanksgiving saying he’ll be back “sometime after Christmas” and it’s now five years later, when your little sister tells you “he didn’t say how long after Christmas” she’s maybe not facing reality. TM has always been a mix of sheer brilliance and stone cold stupid, and while the former outweighs the latter, when the latter pops up it really gets in your face. “Don’t write a text editor you’re reinventing fire.” – Ben StraubĪs I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve been a TextMate user for the last few years, albeit increasingly reluctantly.
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