TextMate’s Undo
Posted November 8th, 2006 @ 11:15pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Every so often, I read yet another comment on yet another blog about how TextMate is so great. So I download it again and launch it again. I configure some of the settings (hey, it has Preferences now!). I've done this a few times now (and a search for "TextMate" on this site will confirm this).
Recently I conducted another of these experiments. I got so far as trying to modify one of the files in the theme I use on this site. I typed a line or two, uploaded the changes, and realized I'd edited the wrong file. I hit cmd-Z to undo and… yeah. TextMate users know what I found. Undo only "undoes" one character at a time.
Into the trash TextMate went again.
For those TextMate users in the audience, why do you use TextMate? For those BBEdit users, why have you stuck with BBEdit?
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 12:34am #
I don't use either application. TextEdit and SubEthaEdit are for me. I only used BBEdit in the Mac OS 9 days when there wasn't anything good to use. I have no reason to use TextMate or BBEdit.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 1:07am #
Erik, do you remember the day I released TextMate, you wrote me to say that: "my initial reaction is poor" and then asked for some sort of license exchange deal, which I found odd, given how you clearly did not like the product.
Your response was: "It should make a great deal of sense, but perhaps you'll learn that as you spend time in the Mac software arena". I was never sure how to interpret the last part of the sentence, and I am reminded of it, each time someone tells me you blogged how TextMate is the shit for letting you down.
And this is not to indicate I am offended by your posts — many users do indeed share your hate of the non-chunked undo, and it will change sometime in the future.
I'll let others comment on why they would use it or stay with BBEdit, but you may have a look at some of the screencasts (or even the manual) to learn what the editor has to offer. I'd recommend you at least watch the two Objective-C screencasts (given how you have worked with this) and the customization screencast (to get a feel for just how powerful the language grammar / scope selector system is).
No matter what, you probably won't find what's cool about TextMate just by editing two lines of text.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 1:46am #
Allan Odgaard said on November 9, 2006:
I remember writing that, yes. And let me be clear in saying that I don't appreciate a private conversation being made public. At any rate…
At the time, Freshly Squeezed Software was doing well, and we had an application - an FTP app - that worked with a number of text editors.
The "Mac software arena" (I remember typing "software" because "Mac arena" is a bad song and dance) remains small, and though I've removed myself from it to a great extent, I remember saying that to you (though I don't care for the lack of context) and I remember how I felt. Licenses among the indie Mac software developers were freely shared. FSS handed out MailDrop, PulpFiction, and FTPeel licenses like candy to other indie Mac developers. Why? Because we took care of each other, had a sense of brotherhood, and - most importantly - because it made sense to. You never knew when someone might, through experimentation, come up with a nifty way to use your app or to integrate it with their own in ways that benefitted you both. Or when they might share an idea with you. We were all working on the same problems, after all. Having users who both knew the Mac, how to develop for it, and various other associated things using your app is a "win." Only good could come of sharing and treating other indie Mac developers well.
It's in that same vein that I found the fact that you'd tell your customers to bug us about ODB support unusual and something unlike what "the Mac software arena" was used to. For me, your request of your users came between efforts between me and Brent Simmons to work together on something that mutually benefitted NNW and PulpFiction and right after we'd talked with just about every other text editor we could think of to add the ODB support to FTPeel. It didn't seem "Mac-like," if I may extend that phrase to include a standard of behavior beyond an OS itself and onto indie Mac developers.
Allan Odgaard said on November 9, 2006:
I am glad to hear that. Repeating menu keys (hold down cmd-Z) strike me as silly.
Allan Odgaard said on November 9, 2006:
That's awfully gracious of you, considering it's my blog and I asked the question.
Perhaps you could answer a different question: why did you create TextMate?
I'll watch some of the screencasts if I get the chance.
Allan Odgaard said on November 9, 2006:
I likely won't, but I seem to have found what's uncool about it by editing two lines of text.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:44am #
My name is Ben and I'm a TextMate user...
Basically, while I've been using macs since OS9, I've not done any codery stuff until somewhere during 10.3. I mostly do PHP, webby languages and the odd bit of shell scripting. Also some dabbling in Objective-C.
I downloaded and tried BBEdit some time ago, but the interface and clunkyness at the time made my eyes bleed and brain hurt. For this reason I went to Zend Studio for my PHP coding. Then I heard of TextMate. I downloaded it and used it for a bit, with the reaction "Oh, TextEdit with syntax highlighting. Back to my IDE then."
Later I tried it again with some PHP code, and still wasn't too keen on the app. I forced myself to use it for a short while, and suddenly realised that this was actually a viable and lightweight alternative to my IDE, it has syntax highlighting for multiple languages, snippets, basic code completion and project management. The only thing I need Zend Studio for now is remote debugging and benchmarking. The fact that TextMate launches just as fast as TextEdit is also great.
The one-char undo thing is sometimes useful, sometimes not. I'm neutral on that one.
So yeah, TextMate because:
- Lightweight
- All the features I need for day-to-day use
- Tidy interface
- Snippets, templates, macros and all that
- Nicer than BBEdit
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:34am #
I'm a Textmate user for the mostpart. I haven't used BBEdit since System 7 or maybe OS 8, I don't remember. Anyhow, that left a bad taste in my mouth. Once I got more into dev work, I kind of flip flopped between editors, using vim a lot, as well as SubEthaEdit for non-commercial work (until I was kindly gifted a license). Then I found TextMate. The power and extensability astounded me, and then I was gifted a license for that, so I've stuck with that since.
Between the highlighting, macros, snippets and commands, the whole thing is pretty sweet. To be honest, the issue with undo hasn't phased me. I've been heavily relying on TextMate since I started my new job, and I have never considered changing.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:40am #
BBEdit "undoes" forward deletes one character at a time too, it drives me crazy. I don't remember the exact answer I received from Bare Bones when I reported this some two years ago, but it didn't impress me much.
Still, I'm not switching from BBEdit any time soon. I'd try TextMate but the screenshots don't really appeal to me, probably because of the drawer and the tabs.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 7:15am #
Why have we stuck with BBEdit? Because nothing else compares. It is an invaluable part of our work flow.
I've had numerous plays with TextMate to see what all the fuss is about. It has really impressed me. Sure, I can understand why some people like it but I just don't understand the amount of attention it gets.
Something that really turns me off TextMate is the way Allan Odgaard is constantly attacks BBEdit, Barebones, and Rich Siegel. There is no need for it. Especially the attacks on Rich. Try standing on the merits of your own program rather than belittling another.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 7:59am #
I've been using BBEdit since version 4 or so, an barring a large rock falling on Bare Bones, I'm going to use it until they decide on their own to stop making it.
It does everything I ask of it and then some, it has the featureset I like, and each release gets better. 8.5 added stuff that I didn't know I wanted, but now I'm unsure as to how I got along without it. The funny thing is, I really don't use it for programming. I use it for writing, and it's just a fantastic tool for that.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 8:34am #
I'm a long time BBEdit user. I use it for a couple of reasons.
One, it's a terrific text editor and it doesn't get in my way.
Two, it's 'diff" function is excellent. I especially like how it shows me the deltas within a changed line.
Two, I use its networking features fairly often. It's so easy to edit files on a remote host over sftp almost like it's a local file. Way nicer than using emacs in the terminal to modify those files.
That said, for daily coding I spend 99% of my time in the Xcode editor.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 9:38am #
MJD said on November 9, 2006:
What the hell are you talking about?
Other than quote Rich Siegel on a t-shirt, with a statement he made about OS X text editors, I am not aware of anything I should have said or done that relates to BareBones, their staff, or their products.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 10:52am #
[...] Sometimes you find people that have just enough in common with you that you figure, this guy is on the ball. I keep trying TextMate - and because I want to be one of the cool kids I really, really try to like it each time. It sometimes makes me hurt how much I can't like it, as if somehow I am flawed at my core and just can't “grok the hype.†[...]
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 10:55am #
With respect to all text editors, every time I take a look at TextMate, it has a few things that I wish my preferred text editors did. I take one look at the long list of bundles and feel a bit overwhelmed. I also feel like there's a lot of power in TextMate that I *could* be utilizing. It feels like a Mac guy did emacs (which, I believe, is part of its purpose).
I continue with Xcode for one simple reason: intelligent code completion. I know TextMate got it recently, but Xcode really shines here. CodeSense makes my life so much easier. Of course, Xcode also has a lot of other power-user shortcuts that I happen to be more familiar with that helps me be more productive.
I also tend to use TextWrangler for any other type of text editing. I probably start every bit of text that I write there and I do most of my scripting there. I love TextMate's support for scripting languages (and the snippets feature) so I'm inclined to make the jump. I'm held back, however, by a vast range of applescripts that I use to make TextWrangler do so much more than it was intended to do. TextWrangler is mad scriptable and my scripts are a vital part of my workflow. If my scripts could be converted to TextMate, I could probably wean myself off TextWrangler. I should say, though, that at least a few of those scripts were written to approximate features in TextMate.
Sorry for the long comment but that's my opinion on TextMate and why I stick with Xcode and TextWrangler.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 11:21am #
I realize that this debate is about as serious as "vi vs. emacs" and other classic debates, but please, let's keep things civil. Trash either app all you want, but don't trash people. And do try to answer the question, which remains "For those TextMate users in the audience, why do you use TextMate? For those BBEdit users, why have you stuck with BBEdit?"
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 11:59am #
Erik: In response to your question about why use TextMate, I think the best answer was given by a recent blog post entitled Bright, Patient Design. I think if you give TextMate a fair shot for a week or two, you'll be really happy with it for web stuff, for C programming, and for just writing blog entries, etc.
For more about TextMate's features, written very simply, I think you could do worse than the wikipedia article. Someday, I plan on writing an extensive comparative review of TextMate versus a bunch of other editors, such as vim, emacs, bbedit, subethaedit, xcode, and possibly eclipse or others. But today is not that someday.
MJD said on November 9, 2006:
Do you have any examples of this, other than the TM shirt, which was made by a fan, and has a rather unprofessional quotation from Rich Siegel attacking the "overnight editors" on the back of it (and is used on the shirt tongue-in-cheek)? Other than that, I think it's only happy TM fans that have attacked BBEdit, but never Allan himself (except maybe by implications with statements that he didn't really like any of the Mac text editors he tried, but I hardly think that counts as a specific attack on Rich Siegel or Bare Bones).
John C. Welch: While TextMate isn't quite a large rock falling on Rich Siegel, I think you'd be very happily surprised if you tried it for writing. Especially if you are writing in a structured format like Markdown or LaTeX, TextMate has much finer-grained contextual control than any other app I've ever heard of. While I'll agree with you though that BBEdit 8.5 was quite a significant update, and does a lot to polish and modernize BBEdit, and while I'll further agree that BBEdit is a great editor, I think personally that TextMate is a better tool for writing. And should get better once I've made my writing bundle.
Michael: Interesting that you use BBEdit for the sftp and the integrated diff tool. TextMate isn't really set up to do either of those things the way you want, and I don't personally have any need for those two things, so it doesn't bother me :D. But if you use Xcode (presumably for Objective-C or similar), I think you'll find TextMate more than a match for it.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 12:32pm #
[Ed: removed rant about how big a jerk I am.]
Why I use TextMate over BBEdit:
- Significantly better syntax highlighting
- Tons of great built-in bundles
- Macros and bundles are extremely powerful and easy to create and modify
- BBEdit looks like OS 9 to me, it's time to move into the future of the UI
- BBEdit is significantly more expensive when it doesn't offer me much more functionality-wise (this is obviously dependent on what you do with your text editor on a regular basis)
- TextMate is under constant development and releasing
- Allan seems more down-to-earth and approachable
- I want to support indie developers
- TextMate is a joyful experience to use and I use it all day, every day
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 1:12pm #
Incidentally, I'm asking the question - and I keep trying TextMate - because I keep wondering what I'm missing.
I want to like TextMate. I really do. But it seems like every time I try to give TextMate a shot, I stumble over something really early on. This last time, it was the single-character undo.
I hear 2.0 for Leopard will be great and that it uses the updated (and very much improved) NSTextView. I'm looking forward to trying that. For now, it's BBEdit.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 1:59pm #
I have both BBEdit and TextMate, but I prefer TextMate for the time beeing. Mostly because it's vast better handling of projects with numerous files that I want access to directly (in the drawer) and it's much better syntax highlighting and expandability (bundles). It is however a bit encumbered by its expandability as well, since that makes it a bit hard to get aquianted to, and the documentation for TM is nowhere near as good as BBEdit's.
I am comfortable owning both though, so that I can switch freely between them - it happens from time to time even now, but with a clear preference for TM.
And please stop the person attacking stuff - it's so low. It's only text we are manipulating in these editors anyway!
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:10pm #
BBEdit never really did anything for me. It just dind't feel intuitive, and I could never justify pluking down over a hundered dollars for it.
When I started with TextMate it never felt right either. But I watched its development, and gave it another shot. It helped that I watched one of the screencasts demoing it. It's really grown on me. I'm very fond of triggers (type a keyword, then hit tab to generate a bunch of code), but what won me over was its completely natural scripting capabilities. It takes almost no effort at all to script new triggers and shortcuts. I've created all sorts of custom scripts and have barely scratched the capabilities of the scripting interface.
I've grown very fond on TextMate, and use it as my primary text editor (with Vi as my backup).
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:17pm #
[...] Erik J. Barzeski asks For those TextMate users in the audience, why do you use TextMate? For those BBEdit users, why have you stuck with BBEdit? [...]
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:21pm #
I have written a much longer, slightly tangential, response here:
http://www.friday.com/bbum/2006/11/09/bbedit-vs-textmate-the-editor-wars-revisited/
With a bit of history here:
http://www.friday.com/bbum/2006/03/17/text-editing/
BBEdit has perpetuated an internal mental model of text editing that is incompatible with TextMate. As a result, you are going to find TM to be a very uncomfortable work environment for quite a while and some of the bugs are gonna drive you bonkers because you won't have awesome increases in productivity to offset the annoyance.
Kinda like how I feel when I try to use BBEdit. It drives me bonkers. Alien environment.
So, if you really want to get a feel for TM, you'll have to give it at least of week of intense usage to rewire your mental model enough to not have it give you a headache when doing so.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:23pm #
Jacob...I have a tool that works really well for me. It works really well in the way I like it to work.
You haven't given me any reason that TextMate is better enough to switch, just that you like it a lot and it's different. Sorry, but i don't change for "different". I change for "better", and it has to be better in a huge way to get me to go through the trouble of seriously looking at it.
I'm glad you like TextMate, but "It's really, really cool" isn't a reason for me to switch. I'm glad you like Textmate, but I don't need to be evangelized to.
Oh, before you start, the price is not a problem for me. I get my money's worth.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:27pm #
Personally I've never liked BBEdit. Ever. I tried back in the OS9 days, and even then thought "why?".
TextMate feels right. It has just the right level of project support. It has SVN integration. It's bundles surprise me every day when I think "I wish it did...", and it does. It's HTML bundle gives me all the shortcuts that I want.
I had TextMate lying around for a few months before registering it (it kept resetting it's 30 day trial - I didn't hack it or do anything, I just kept forgetting to delete it, and then I'd open a file that was associated with it and go "oh, it's working again?"), and didn't fall in love with it until I actually used for a real project. After a week I realised that I didn't want to do any more work without it, so registered it. Never regretted it.
Now I go against the grain at work (where Eclipse is the #1 tool of choice) and use it there to.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:34pm #
Editor wars? Seriously? Oh awesome. I've been missing this ever since the glory days of vi vs. emacs.
It just makes me so happy to see that the nerd crowd still can't calm down and let folks use what they like. Text editor drama. I love it.
Carry on, lads, carry on.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:49pm #
I suppose I should elaborate...
The syntax highlighting, the bundles, the active development, the collapsable blocks are all really nice things (though BBedit does have the blocks, I prefer the way they appear/collapse in TM).
The way that the HTML stuff just kind of happens inline without throwing up dialogue boxes left right and centre. The bundles (BBEdit feels like only really has an HTML bundle). The auto formatting. The way you can drop a file into an editor window (e.g. html) and have it create the appropriate tag (e.g. img, link, a, script) with a relative path, and not throwing up a dialog first.
Ok, so I just found Clippings in BBedit. While that does give you the ability to dump bits of text in, they don't seem as smart as the bundles in TextMate. Not quite as keyboard accessible (though you can hit something to bring up the insert dialog/thing, that's not as simple as, say, php?tab to get a php block, or cmd+shift+w to wrap something in matching HTML tags, then letting you edit the tag name of the opening tag, and mirroring that to the closing tag, there's others like it for wrap each line, wrap with link that auto pastes the current clipboard contents as the href).
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:50pm #
I'm using TextMate for some time now. I like integrated Subversion, the Bundles and the "look and feel" of the app.
I haven't had a look at BBEdit for a long time too, I have to say.
I wanted to share a book that is being written on TextMate that helped me a lot to understand and get the real power out of TextMate: "TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac" from The Pragmatic Programmers.
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/textmate/index.html
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:50pm #
I've been using TextMate since around the beginning of the year. I had previously tried BBEdit, TextWrangler, and SubEthaEdit. While BBEdit appeared to contain the feature set I wanted, I considered the price to be ridiculous for my purposes. TextWrangler and SubEthaEdit either lacked features (open from FTP among them) or just didn't feel right.
Then two things happened: I purchased Transmit and found it had a very nice "Edit in ____" feature, and I also found that TextMate works with Transmit, had excellent syntax highlighting, very cool bundles, the price was low, and perhaps most importantly: it just felt right. Even the icon, of all things.
I haven't regretted going with TM one bit. Its LaTeX bundle made it excellent for editing LaTeX, and the various command output options (text, HTML, etc.) really make for a lot of interesting possibilities. These days I mostly use it for editing blog entries due to the excellent Blogging bundle. I think the user-contributed bundles (and informative screencasts) are its strongest points.
And I didn't even realize TM did one-char-at-a-time Undo. Do you make a lot of mistakes? (Hah! I kid.)
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 2:50pm #
I started using Macs because of OS X. I'd used, and liked, OS 9 but everything about it (compared to, a then very modern, Windows 98) felt old and low-res.
BBEdit, despite whatever value it may hold, hasn't adapted to OS X very well, if at all. It feels out of place. Heck, X11 apps from Linux feel more at home in my workflow than BBEdit does. Every time some new release comes by, I'll download it and become just as appalled every time. This isn't about striped menubars. It's about rethinking your approach.
As for TextMate, I've done the same thing there. TextMate feels like overkill. I'm a web-developer. TextMate feels more like an "Xcode Lite" than what I need. It tries to get out of my way by minimizing widgets to their bare minimum. And for some reason, it offers me menu choices to start coding in any completely different language I want at the drop of a hat. TextMate feels like an army of well-meaning assistants trying to push their way through the cat-flap of my kitchen door. Each with his own kitchen sink in hand.
That's why I chose SkEdit (yes, it has less functionality than BBEdit, but what it lacks in feature-list pissing contests, it makes up for by not looking like a complete alien next to every other app I use) and CSSEdit (There are no words for 2.0.... Should've sent a poet...!) over both of them.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:01pm #
Probably the biggest reason I use TextMate is because of the Screen Casts. Both TextMate and BBEdit have powerful scripting features, but I know how to use TextMate's because of the helpful screencasts. Yes, BBEdit has a really good manual that explains it's features, but I guess I learn better with movies.
As far as the individual character undo (and other "little issues"), I empathize Erik. I use Windows and Linux professionally and I have gone back and forth between editors (before finally settling on emacs) and if there is one thing I've learned it's this:
When you're coding all day, there are no "little issues". There are either issues you can adapt to or there are issues you cannot. This varies from person to person and is why some people can love a text editor and other people hate it.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:03pm #
I use TextMate because it nearly always works the way I want, and normally if it doesn't then I can fix it easily myself. My favorite feature is that you can have it behave differently in different contexts. A good example (found in the Objective C bundle) is the difference in behavior of the m shortcut, which inserts different text in the @implementation context than it does inside @interface. (Do watch the Obj-C screencasts.)
I do have one open bug report for TextMate relating to text selection, which doesn't match NSTextView's behavior. (Oddly enough, the problem TextMate has is identical to a problem that NSTextView had in the early seeds of Tiger.. my TextMate bug report is basically identical to the one I filed in Radar. I guess Allan must think the same way as Apple's Cocoa team.)
I hadn't noticed the Undo thing, and I admit that it's annoying, but I'm sure Allan will fix it. I suggest you ignore that one annoying bug, and spend enough time with it to discover the features which outweigh the few annoying bugs. (Unless you use Undo an awful lot more than I do, in which case you might have to wait.)
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:14pm #
I don't understand how anyone takes Textmate seriously when it lacks integrated http://FTP.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:15pm #
Before I answer Erik's question, here's a little context: I've been a web developer for nearly ten years. My work day is spent doing PHP, Javascript, XML, CSS, and Bash scripting. On the weekends I dabble in Objective-C. I used BBEdit for three years prior to switching to TextMate a year ago. Despite the insanely high price-tag (IMHO) I was always quick to recommend BBEdit to anyone willing to listen. Even with the ugly UI and clunky feel, it was the only editor for Mac that did everything I needed. It won by default.
When TextMate arrived I gave it a try and didn't like it. In fact, I gave it three tries across a number of months. Each time I thought "this is it?" It seemed like nothing more than TextEdit with project management and syntax highlighting.
Attempt number four hooked me.
I saw a screencast showing column selection using the mouse and then with the keyboard. That was my eureka moment - when I realized there was more to it under the hood. (I now know that other apps have column selection, but I had never seen it before.)
Why have I made the switch permanent? TextMate is infinitely extensible (and so much more easily than BBEdit).
By default, TextMate ships with built-in support for Panic's Transmit FTP client. I can FTP a file or folder to the correct website with one keystroke. It even launches Transmit for me if it's not already open. (Yes, BBEdit has built-in FTP support, but TextMate in conjunction with Transmit is a much more elegant solution.)
TextMate works with SVN. I can commit, revert, diff my current document without taking my hands off the keyboard.
These are just two of the many bundles that TextMate ships with, so there's no reason for me to go on describing each one when you can explore for yourself. Instead, I'd like to give two examples of how I've extended TextMate myself.
First, each website we build at work is kept in SVN and can then be deployed live via a web interface on our own website. I was tired of opening a web browser and logging in each time I needed to make an update. With TextMate, I was able to write a bundle very quickly which scrapes our admin area and pops up a CocoaDialog menu of every site available for deployment. I just arrow down to the correct item, hit return and bam! Problem solved.
I run Snipplr.com which lets people share code snippets online. (Think del.icio.us for programmers.) I put together a TextMate bundle which lets me query Snipplr's API to insert snippets directly into the document I'm editing. I can also highlight code and have it saved into Snipplr. Without opening a browser, I'm connected to hundreds of other programmers sharing code.
Allan's recently revamped plugin system makes the whole process even more powerful. Now, instead of relying on CocoaDialog, I can build a NIB file and script TextMate around that. No objective-c needed!
There are so many more small reasons for switching (scratch macros are a tremendous time saver!), but they're all personal to my own taste. TextMate is simply a joy to use and sold at a fair price.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:56pm #
Like Erik, the first time I tried TextMate, I was unimpressed. It wasn't very Mac-like and lacked BBEdit's raw power. I was a huge BBEdit fan, starting from version 4.
The "holy god this is great" moment came when I tried Snippets, and assigned a simple PHP/MySQL query clause to auto-complete when I typed "mysql_" and then tab.
Now, yes, BBEdit has a "Glossary" function and it also has auto-complete. The UI for it is terrible nonsense. Most of the interfaces within BBEdit are terrible nonsense. Strangely, the main gripe once I'd figured it out was that BBEdit didn't let me use the Tab key. I tried using the function keys, and weird Apple-foo combinations, but nothing felt as natural as tab.
So that reeled me in and probably saved me hours upon hours of work over the next year.
Why do I stay with TextMate, and recommend it?
First, it is just, as if not more powerful than BBEdit. Yes, a great deal of that power is hidden within context-sensitive plug-ins, but to me, that's a great deal more sensical than over-cluttered menus with dozens of greyed out options.
Second, it's lightweight. BBEdit feels "huge" compared to TextMate. Startup times are roughly the same, but TextMate just feels smaller, faster (even though at times, it's honestly not).
Third, Macros and Snippets. TextMate's implementation of these two time saving devices is simply better than BBEdits.
Fourth, money. Bare Bones charges $200.00 dollars for their editor. And yes, there is a market for that price (obviously) and yes, they offer tons of crossgrades to make it affordable. But I have a hard time telling new users to shell out 200.00 dollars for an editor.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 3:58pm #
I'm a web app developer who started out on BBEdit and loved it. Still do, acutally. However...
Things I got addicted to very quickly in TextMate:
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this functionality was available in BBEdit, but I found it in TextMate first and haven't really looked back.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:01pm #
I prefer to stay above this fray by using skEdit. I wrote a blog post about why it's The (Mostly) Perfect Text Editor:
http://www.clearwired.com/loop/archives/23-skEdit,-The-Mostly-Perfect-Text-Editor.html
-Andrew
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:35pm #
[Warning, I always take a while to get to the point and when I get there I start to circle. Skip to the final paragraphs for the direct answer to Erik's question. :)]
I used BBEdit for a short while when I was younger (circa 1994) when I changed over to CodeWarrior for all my editing needs, as I only wrote C(++) stuff. I like IDEs and integration so I didn't use BBEdit as an external editor. Also, at the time I found it far too expensive for something as basic as an editor. I didn't do HTML (which was the new kid on the block back then) and I didn't see the need for its advanced text processing functions.
A few years later along came OS X and, well, everything went to shit. I switched pretty early as I enjoyed the more stable nature of X. However, 10.1 and even 10.2 were simply slow as molasses compared to OS 9 on my G4/500x2 "Sawtooth". CW's editor was so slow as to become completely unusable for normal work. I tried BBEdit again, and although a bit faster, was still slow. Other text editors either didn't cut it or were also unusable on my Mac. Disappointed and without funds to buy a new Mac, I quit all Mac coding for a while.
Recently, I tried TextMate and I found it was extremely flexible and powerful. Bundles and bazillions of settings and super fine-grained control over syntax coloring, etc. The thing is, like someone else said, it's sort of like the emacs for Mac. _Everything_ is programmable and/or configurable. And for me it goes too far. I don't want to program my preferences.
Also, in it's standard form, it simply does not accept that there is such a thing as ASP or ASPX. Quite a few of my clients use IIS and (classic) ASP. I started to create my own ASP Bundle but I simply couldn't get myself to learning TextMate's language definition format and at the time there was no acceptable ASP plugin available on the internet.
I then tried TextWrangler (I'm a cheap bastard). It was simple, it did a decent job with ASP files and I could create a simple "Codeless Language Module" (plist-xml) to learn it C-sharp's keywords. It only has 5 fixed syntax colors or so, but it's FINE. I spent 10 minutes starting up and I could edit, I had syntax coloring and I was happy.
Now, I have to say this, before BBEdit 8.5, I (and clearly, many others) found that BareBones was still stuck in the 20th century. The term "Codeless Language Module" is almost quaint and I shook my head every time I saw the preference to keep my windows within the bounds of a 13'' monitor. I mean, come on!
Still, 8.0 was the first sign of BB getting a makeover and Yojimbo showed that they were serious about this whole OS X thing and I bought BBEdit (and Yojimbo). I got the free upgrade to 8.5 and it does all I want and more, and it keeps it simple and Mac-like.
And about the whole "supporting indie developers" comment, what do you think BareBones is? Last time I checked, Rich Siegel was not swimming around in a pool of hundred dollar bills (though he probably could do so undetected in his remote developers lair... Hmm.)
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:48pm #
I'm a TextMate user, but the once-character-at-a-time undo thing is annoying. Allan has a weird philosophical stance on this, and won't even give us a PREFERENCE to use standard undos.
And yes, users have been clamoring for it for ages now.*sigh*.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:50pm #
I own and use both, and there are significant pros and cons to each, but I currently use TextMate exclusively. As a web developer with only intermediate "scripting/programming" skills (and those limited to JavaScript and PHP), I was always scared to dabble in BBEdit's extensive scriptability. It seemed too difficult to understand for someone with no programming background.
TextMate, however, has opened the world of extensibility up to me. I've quickly been able to create my own indispensable snippets. It comes pre-packaged with a huge collection of built-in snippets and bundles that are astonishingly useful and easy to understand, and have sped up my development significantly.
TextMate's text handling does feels sluggish compared to BBEdit -- and launching BBEdit gives me a tinge of fond nostalgia -- but TextMate has become my default code editor thanks to its intangibly more approachable extensibility.
Now, a nigh-useless list of completely subjective advantages one has over the other.
TextMate Advantages:
- Tab triggers. Oh my sweet heavens, tab triggers
- Ease of extensibility
- Excellent collection of pre-packaged snippets and shortcuts
- Intelligent and indispensable "auto-completion"-type features (auto-enclosures, etc.)
- More intuitive inline find/replace abilities
- Easier keyboard-based navigation between documents (tabbed project window + intelligent "Go to File" command)
- Always-current syntax validator (submits code to online validator)
BBEdit Advantages:
- Interface speed (moving between documents/windows, switching to BBEdit from other applications,* etc.)
- Excellent large file handling (TextMate chokes hard on really large text files)
- More intuitive granular control over character encodings, line endings, etc.
- More intuitive find/replace dialog tool
- Always-active syntax validator (checks internally, so can be used offline)
* Yes, I know this is because TextMate reads the project off the hard drive every time you come back, to make sure it has the most current version... and while I appreciate this feature, the speed hit is still significant and worthy of mentioning.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:56pm #
I'm probably in the minority here in that I'm primarily an ActionScript coder, but I just found that valur for money wise, choosing TextMate over BBEdit was a no-brainer.
I switched to TextMate about a year ago from BBEdit and there are a few things that I miss - noteably the undo and BBEdit's excellent find and replace.
It took me the full 30 day trial period to get used to it - I knew I had been sold when I decided to switch the default application for all text, html and actionscript files over to TextMate...
I still use a code-coloring scheme that looks like BBEdit though...
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 4:57pm #
I'll chime in here if only because I'm a registered owner of both BBEdit and TextMate.
John Welch strikes me as fundamentally correct in the observation that once something works -- you know, *really* works -- for you, you need a pretty compelling reason to change. A lot of the "I like TM because it does X and BBEdit doesn't" posts that came out when TM first hit the scene were, well, wrong -- BBEdit does an awful lot that most people never scratch the surface of. I used it from 6.5 through 8.0 and I'm sure I never scratched the surface of it, either.
However, in some ways I think that's BBEdit's biggest flaw: most people never do more than scratch the surface of it because doing more than that turns out to be a non-trivial operation. TextMate's snippets are easier to set up and use than BBEdit's glossary entries, and they're more powerful; TextMate's syntax highlighting system isn't much more complex than BBEdit's CLMs, and again, it's more powerful (TM can switch highlighting, folding, snippets, the whole shebang from, say, HTML to Ruby in the same document based on context, which -- unless it's changed in 8.5 -- can't be done in BBE); and very importantly, the snippets, syntax, shell scripts attached to triggers and keys and drag-and-drop commands, et. al. can be stuffed into "bundles" very easily.
Why is that ease of extensibility so important in my estimation? Just look at the available bundles for TextMate compared to the available extensions (including plugins and CLMs) for BBEdit: TextMate has gotten more user-added functionality in its, what, two years of existence than BBEdit has in its fifteen. There are over a hundred bundles available for TM. We're not just talking about terrific support for new languages far above just syntax highlighting, but whole new kinds of functionality. Outlining. GTD scheduling. Blog editing. (Why not -- all these things are, after all, text-based tasks, right?) I've been a text editor junkie across several platforms for twenty years now, and I honestly don't think anything but Emacs comes close to TextMate for user extensibility -- and with TextMate, I don't have to learn Lisp.
I don't think any of these things would be impossible to implement in BBEdit, but many of them might be a lot harder. They may not be things you'd personally use, granted -- but on my current work project, I've found some of the "oddities" like the TODO bundle very helpful, along with weirdo commands like "Edit all lines in selection" and the ability to type-to-replace a rectangular selection. Some of these things you don't really appreciate until you have call to use them; it was months before I really started appreciating the "use current word for open and close tags" keystroke in the HTML bundle. (When I did, I promptly remapped it from Ctrl-Shift-Comma to Ctrl-Comma; it's way too useful to be encumbered with needing two modifier keys, Allan!)
I don't think TM is perfect and there are still some things BBEdit does that I miss. TM's wacko undo implementation is a drawback, and its inability to split a window into panes can be grating on longer files. But its developer seems to be very responsive to user input, it's under constant development, and it's getting better faster. When I first got it, a year or so ago, it was only for tootling around with Rails, then with "smaller" HTML documents I didn't think I needed BBEdit's full power for.
But by the time I got my MacBook, I just never got around to putting BBEdit on it.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 5:23pm #
Started with BBEdit (OS 9 days), switched to TM (OS X), now use GVim on SuSE.
Right off-topic, I know, but Vim is the berries.
Posted 09 Nov 2006 at 5:23pm #