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Open Source Software

TextMate 2 Released As Open Source 193

First time accepted submitter DaBombDotCom writes "Allan Odgaard, the author of the popular text editor for Mac OS X, TextMate, has posted on his blog: 'Today I am happy to announce that you can find the source for TextMate 2 on GitHub. I've always wanted to allow end-users to tinker with their environment, my ability to do this is what got me excited about programming in the first place, and it is why I created the bundles concept, but there are limits to how much a bundle can do, and with the still growing user base, I think the best move forward is to open source the program. The choice of license is GPL 3. This is partly to avoid a closed source fork and partly because the hacker in me wants all software to be free (as in speech), so in a time where our platform vendor is taking steps to limit our freedom, this is my small attempt of countering such trend.'"
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TextMate 2 Released As Open Source

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  • As someone who paid some shiny euros for v1 many many years ago and wondered if 2.0 was vaporware I'm kinda hopeful. At least now there's a chance this project will move forward. You'd think that after getting paid some BIG bucks for this text editor —for years —Allan would have the resources and the motivation to keep this thing going. As open source, I can see this as a solid competitor to the GPL'd jEdit.

    • by Kergan ( 780543 )

      When I bought v1 I never had v2 in mind. Over the years I've always wondered what the fuss was about. Search is a bit tedious/slow, but it remains a great editor. I'd be very happy if Xcode was half as good in some respects.

    • I love your sig. Also, even this dev is noticing a trend with BSD licensed projects.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by X0563511 ( 793323 )

      First thing that needs to happen is lose that platform-specific code. It's not going to get terribly far if it will only run in OS X, when it's competitors will run pretty much anywhere. It's a text editor.

      • by calzones ( 890942 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:54PM (#40937763)

        Oh hell no!

        Mac users as a bunch tend to loathe GUI-critical software that "runs anywhere" (like anything Java, Air, and nix apps running under X11). This is also one of the things that makes TextMate specifically so great. It integrates with your Mac environment so seamlessly, it renders text fantastically, it uses UI conventions that you are accustomed to from native apps... etc, etc, etc, the list goes on.

        If you want something like TextMate on a different platform, go ahead and bake your own. But don't try to suggest that not being able to run TextMate elsewhere is some kind of flaw.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You can have both, as Sublime Text has proved — cross platform, and yet feels great on a Mac.

          • I'm skeptical Sublime is any more platform independent than say, Google Chrome, MS Office, or Adobe Photoshop.*

            Yes, there are versions of each designed for each platform, but this is not the same as tossing out platform-specific code in favor of platform independence. I.e., I have no qualms with someone porting TextEdit to other platforms, but the OP seemed to be suggesting literally making TextMate platform independent (like much other OSS out there).

            ---
            * If Sublime truly 100% platform independent, wow...

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @04:02PM (#40937875)

        No, no, no. The run anywhere stuff all has the same Achilles heel - it has to use some kind of platform independent GUI toolkit. And those are slow, clunky, and can't use any of the nice OS features.

        • And those are slow, clunky, and can't use any of the nice OS features.

          That last bit might be true, but "slow, clunky" is a crock of shit.

          • by Kergan ( 780543 )

            Clunky and slow certainly apply for GIMP on OS X. It's fine software on Windows and Linux, or was last I tried it on either anyway. But (assuming it hasn't changed in the past three years) how they came up with the idea that they should stick to Ctrl+[key] instead of Cmd+[key] on a Mac is still beyond me...

          • Maybe they're not necessarily "slow", but they are clunky, in that they don't follow all of the native paradigms, even if they *look* very very similar.

            (I use kmttg fairly often. It's a Java program to download Tivo shows, and while it's usable, it is very quirky due to its crossplatformness.)

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            So eloquent.

            SOME of the cross platform GUIs, on SOME of the platforms they support, have reasonable performance. Many of them don't. All of them are slower than native.

      • by jbolden ( 176878 )

        If you look at the source, this is a program designed to compiled by XCode against the Cocoa libraries for use on a Mac (or possibly extended to an iOS device). This is platform specific, though I imagine it could get ported to http://www.gnustep.org/ [gnustep.org]

    • by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:53PM (#40937755) Journal

      Why would anyone pay for a text editor when there are extremely powerful free alternatives? And regarding jEdit... you really need an entire java environment just to edit text?

      Personally, I can't imagine needing more than Vim offers. What compelling features do other editors offer?

      • Why would anyone pay for a text editor when there are extremely powerful free alternatives? And regarding jEdit... you really need an entire java environment just to edit text?

        Personally, I can't imagine needing more than Vim offers. What compelling features do other editors offer?

        Well, if you use EMACS, you can run an entire operating system in your text editor, play Pong, compile and run your LISP code, run Vim, etc.

        Honestly though, I've used TextMate, BBEdit, Smultron, jEdit, XCode, EMACS, ed on the terminal, etc. and usually end up coming back to OS X Vim. The only ones I've liked better were one that was designed for LaTeX (can't remember its name atm) and a python-based editor I used for a number of years (it had excellent context-aware tab completion and superior syntax highlighting, neither of which I've been able to get quite right in Vim after all these years).

        • I love vim for:
          - fast file creation and fairly complex repetitive changes within a single file.
          - its guaranteed availability on any linux/unix/macosx box around.

          I find vim a little tiresome for find and replace, or working on 8 files at once or whatever, once the project becomes a tree of 30, 50, ... files in multiple directories.

      • by Jezral ( 449476 )

        jEdit's only flaw is that it is Java. Asides from that, it is a solid Unicode capable cross-platform editor that can work with files over SSH. Synchronizing your sessions, configuration, and plugins is as simple as copying over your .jedit folder, even between Windows and Linux.

        I so far haven't found a single other editor with all those features. Do tell me if one exists...

      • They offer nothing except a GUI !
        You could achieve the all the "special" jEdit functionality, ex: search and replace with the result of a script, in Vim with VimScript but I prefer BeanShell [beanshell.org] to VimScript [sourceforge.net] so I use jEdit...
      • I agree. I have been using Geany as my development editor and Kate (embedded in the Krusader file manager, pretty much like midnight commander's built-in editor), and I don't think any paid alternative can top those two. Gedit is kinda nice, too, and there are the console editors like vim, emacs, nano and joe, even mcedit, that are very handy to have.
        Not to mention I make a point of creating software with zero costs other than my power bills. I make FOSS with FOSS. Even if it can be 20% more painful than pa

      • Personally, I can't imagine needing more than Vim offers. What compelling features do other editors offer?

        Modeless editing [wikipedia.org].

    • by 6ULDV8 ( 226100 )

      For $10 more (what's that, about eight Euros?), you could buy SublimeText or UltraEdit and get some of those new features you've been waiting for. At least run the 30 day trial to see for yourself. I use Sublime and it's been a good choice for me. Sublime also handles large files much better than TextMate. I've used it on Postgres dumps in the 4GB range just to see. Scrolling was slow on my MacBook Pro with only 8GB RAM, but I could do it.

      As for getting big bucks for years, it's likely that Allan is ti

    • >>>Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.

      Funny.. my PC never needs fixing. 10 years of Windows XP and still going strong. There was only one time I had a problem, so I ran AVG from a CD and the problem went-away. How many Macs can claim 10 years of use w/ just one minor issue?

    • LOL your sig is the truth.

  • by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:37PM (#40937501)

    From most of the reviews I've been hearing for its in-development versions, it sounds like it has some significant bugs that remain to be fixed, as well as some significant features still missing from it. It's nowhere near solid enough yet, and most of the folks who've been a part of the community and following its development seem to agree that open source is where it's going to go to die a slow death.

    I'd love to be proven wrong, however.

    • ....and my experience, sadly, mirrors what you're hearing. Not so much buggy (although I've bumped into a few), but feature-incomplete, compared to the 1.0 series. Very little visible progress on the beta.

      Whatever his other reasons for open-sourcing the code, I agree with the endgame... this is a polite way of saying he's bitten off way more than he can chew and is throwing himself on the mercy of the development community to help move things forward.

      Too bad, I've enjoyed using it, but we're clearly not g

      • Marco Arment has been talking about one called Chocolat that's in active development and seems to be decent, though as of his last podcast, he hadn't yet been completely sold on it, and wasn't certain if he would buy it or not. It sounded like he preferred it to Sublime, however.

  • Sublime Text 2 (Score:5, Informative)

    by liamevo ( 1358257 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:41PM (#40937565)

    Sublime is kinda taking textmates place.

    http://www.sublimetext.com/ [sublimetext.com] + http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control [wbond.net]

    • That's not hard consider Textmate releases came to a standstill ages ago.
    • I thought sublime text was shareware, is it not the case?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by greg_robson ( 638474 )

        Download and evaluate the full version for free... it does produce a dialog box on every 20th save asking if you would like to buy, which is fairly unobtrusive.

        $59 for a single user license. Bulk discounts apply
        http://www.sublimetext.com/buy [sublimetext.com]

        Since it was recommended by colleagues at a new place, I enjoyed it after 5 minutes, loved it after an hour, and depend on every day. I have come to depend on it's features like editing with mutiple cursors, simple interface and keyboard controls as alternatives to

    • Re:Sublime Text 2 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ohnocitizen ( 1951674 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @05:04PM (#40938635)
      Sublime 2 is amazing. Speaking as someone who wrote his own editor, and has tried out a multitude (vim-gtk, emacs, geany, textwrangler, notepad++), so far it is my absolute favorite. I hope he updates universal goto to make it more powerful, but so far, sublime has features, performance, cross platform compat, and an amazing user experience. Worth the investment!
    • by Tom ( 822 )

      Wow. Thanks for that link, I haven't looked for a new text editor for a long time, tried a few IDEs recently and came to the same conclusion I've always come (i.e. they're sluggish, they suck as editors and the fabled "IDE magic" doesn't work half of the time on my projects).

      ST2 is the first real contender to TextMate I've seen. I just might switch. At least I'll be giving it a try.

  • by ModernGeek ( 601932 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:43PM (#40937599)
    Blog is slow

    https://github.com/textmate/textmate [github.com]
  • unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:43PM (#40937607) Homepage Journal

    Had you told me during my Linux years that I would one day spend money on a text editor, I'd have laughed you out of the room. Years later, I'm a happy TextMate user and it kicks every IDE I've tried in the nuts. Yeah, sometimes I'd wish for some of the IDE features, but every ... single ... one ... that I've tried has an editor that sucks compared to TextMate. The best ones just suck, the worse ones don't even compare. And in the end, I spend more time editing code than looking at fancy class navigation bars.

    So I'm really curious about where a Free Software version of TextMate will go. Not sure if I'd rather go to bed (11 pm right now) or get all the dependencies and give it a try. Maybe if someone would post a binary, that would be really cool. Yeah, I've become lazy.

    • by gomiam ( 587421 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:56PM (#40937781)

      ...and it kicks every IDE I've tried in the nuts.

      Perhaps you should have tried those IDEs in a computer.

      • by joh ( 27088 )

        If you use more than one programming language using one IDE often isn't really an option. And then you're maybe editing other text files anyway. A good editor *is* a useful thing to have.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I use TextMate as my primary Python development environment. My first thought upon hearing that it was going open source was "minimalist Python IDE."

    • Try a decent text editor some day, such as geany.

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        I've just had one look at the screenshots.

        Let me put it this way: If this was your daughter, I'm sure she has a nice character, and maybe she is really smart, too. But, to put it nicely, I just don't date women so ugly I wouldn't want to be caught dead with them.

        My entire life I have hated text editors that give me icons and a mouse-driven interface. I've just (thanks to some other comment) discovered Sublime Text 2 - and they do that part very, very right: When I'm in a text editor, I'm obviously editing t

        • This is a GTK+ application. It only looks as good as your GTK+ theme and font setup. The one in the screenshots of the official website indeed looks a bit ugly.

        • From the looks of it, it looks almost exactly like I'd expect TextMate to look in a GTK+ build.

  • I'd really love to see a generic Unix/X11 version. (LiGNUx, of course, .is where I'll be using it, but why make it unnecessarily narrow...)
    • by mspohr ( 589790 )

      I've found gedit to be the best text editor. Native to Linux and there is a Mac port.

  • by mikeken ( 907710 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:48PM (#40937681)
    Seriously, if anyone one is interested in helping or collaborating or anything like that just email me: mike {[ et ]} computershine,com
    • Are you going to use OpenStep libraries as the base?

      If you do, it'll be a trivial port to Windows as well.

    • by jbolden ( 176878 )

      I think you should talk to the GNUStep people. They could use a full featured editor, the port will be much much easier to GNUStep than generic Linux....

  • by polymeris ( 902231 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @03:52PM (#40937743)

    So can someone explain what makes this text editor so popular? Is it features, feel, performance, configurability? A careful balance of all of these?

    How does it compare to some of Linux' standard GUI text editors? Say gEdit, kate, geany?

    • It's not it's insanely discrete undo behavior, that's for sure. :P

      • Undo is much improved in TM2. It still prefers to undo the single most recent character change (which I've come to appreciate) but on subsequent steps through history it basically goes word-by-word.

    • by 47Ronin ( 39566 ) <glenn@47ronin. c o m> on Thursday August 09, 2012 @04:11PM (#40938009) Homepage

      Some of the magic can be found in the screencasts of the software: http://macromates.com/screencasts [macromates.com]

      Notice though that these were shot in 2008 and earlier...

      Integration with the OS has been a big feature of TextMate and Coda (which is why the users are such zealots)... oh yeah and editable snippet bundles per programming language. http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/editorials/are-textmate-and-coda-yesterdays-editors/ [tutsplus.com]

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I use TextMate because it's small, fast, has lots of features that I never use that stay completely out of my way, renders text nicely, and ISN'T (necessarily) a one-window system. Did I mention it's fast?

    • It's not really anything special now, imo. It used to be one of the best but everyone caught up while textmate sat still.
    • by joh ( 27088 )

      So can someone explain what makes this text editor so popular? Is it features, feel, performance, configurability? A careful balance of all of these?

      How does it compare to some of Linux' standard GUI text editors? Say gEdit, kate, geany?

      Well, it's a bit of a modern looking, even somewhat stylish, but limited reinvention of Emacs. It has lots of useful features, about a million shortcuts and you can easily write simple extensions in any language you like (you can feed the selected text, current line etc. to snippets of sh, php, perl, tcl, python, ruby or whatever you want and then do something with what your script returns). And bind that to shortcuts. It also comes already with lots of useful things and modes for a bunch of languages. And

    • by Tom ( 822 )

      I've been using TextMate for several years. It has lots going for it, the primary point being that it is a text editor and it knows it. It doesn't try to do 500 unrelated things, but focusses on doing the one thing it was designed for really well. It follows the Mac philosophy in many ways. It gets out of your way and lets you do the actual text editing.

      Yeah, it's rock-solid, too. Can't remember if it ever crashed on me.

      It also has tons of plugins. For example, I use Subversion extensively, so I have an SVN

    • The killer feature for me was the integration with pdfsync. Write LaTex, hit compile, end up with an interactive PDF (click on some stuff and it'll take you back to the source in TextMate). It's fucking genius. Of course Preview.app did, and still does, have lots of problems with fonts in pdflatex generated PDFs.

  • by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @04:05PM (#40937943)

    You should have dual licensed it, or licensed it under GPL3, but with an assignment of rights back to you for contributions. As things sit, you will not be allowed to sell this in the App store for either desktop of iDevice use.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're right, "you" won't. But he can license his code any way he likes, including as required for the iDevice stores.

      And he doesn't have to accept anybody's contribution back to the main code base, without demanding assignment of rights as you suggest.

      • You're right, "you" won't. But he can license his code any way he likes, including as required for the iDevice stores.

        And he doesn't have to accept anybody's contribution back to the main code base, without demanding assignment of rights as you suggest.

        The particular venue he picked for the release requires that he not restrict contributions in this fashion. A dual license would have allowed him to meet the free GitHub hosting terms while at the same time requiring an assignment of rights for committers.

        • Unless you can tell that he isn't a premium subscriber, there's no restriction on what you can do with your code on GitHub. Yes, it's free for open-source projects, but you can also open-source projects with a paid account, in which case you can do whatever you want with it.
    • by dingen ( 958134 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @04:44PM (#40938435)

      The fact GPL3 doesn't allow other people to build this project and offer it for sale in the App Store is exactly the reason why the author chose GPL3.

      • Either clever or evil. Maybe both. :)

      • If I make contributions to the code under the GPLv3, then the code as a whole is GPLv3, and he cannot license it however "he" wants unless he gets an assignment of rights, or excises my contributions.

        This lack of foresight is the same reason Linus doesn't have assigns for Linux, and therefore why it's impossible for Linux itself to move from GPLv2 to GPLv3, or for a third party to offer Linux under the terms of GPLv3.

        When contributing to GCC, you have to execute assigns as well, as the FSF is well aware of

        • This lack of foresight is the same reason Linus doesn't have assigns for Linux, and therefore why it's impossible for Linux itself to move from GPLv2 to GPLv3, or for a third party to offer Linux under the terms of GPLv3.

          And here I thought that was an intentional choice so that neither he nor anyone else would have the option of taking Linux proprietary, thus ensuring a level playing field for all. He even excised the "or any later version clause" from the GPL2 so that RMS couldn't change the rules at a later date (how many millions would it take for RMS to sell out and release GPL4: Microsoft owns everything edition? Who takes over control of the GPL when he dies?)

    • Huh? Because some license agreement is going to stop me?

      Step 1: Compile it up and submit it.
      Step 2: Sell it. Profit.
      Step 3: When the owner eventually complains to Apple and Apple stops selling it, make cosmetic changes and resubmit to Apple with a new developer account.
      Step 4: See Step 2.

      Works best if you live in some foreign country which does not have strong IP Laws.

    • He can if he so chooses. And when he accepts contributions from others, he can ask that they sign a joint copyright assignment (ala OpenOffice.org pre-Oracle/Apache) so that he can include those in the app store version. Or he may choose to go GPL only and not pay the Apple tax, meaning no iOS version at all, and an Apple version that users will have to tick the box allowing non-Apple signed apps to run.
  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday August 09, 2012 @04:47PM (#40938477)

    I really don't get most of the crap and indifference here.
    Textmate is an editor that's actually making money being sold on Mac OS X - that the man decides to release it as FOSS is a very noble move. He probably made his share he'd hoped for ten times over, but he could have just kept it the way it was. He didn't, and now we've got a serious editor with solid chances of taking the throne for editors. ... Once it's cross-plattform that is.

    I've got my own story on Textmate:
    Back in 2003 my mobile computer of choice was a 13" G4 iBook, mainly to be able to do Flash development. I had my Flash IDE running, Eclipse for PHP, and some other stuff and the iBook performance was maxed out. I couldn't run my favorite Editor jEdit without serious issues - its built on Java. It was then that I decided to go with an Editor written in a C language. I seriously considered Textmate, but then I thought, if all this editor has going for it that you can programm it in its own script PL, then I might as well use Emacs and be completely independant. I installed Emacs the same night and started to learn some of its commands. ... I use Aquamacs and Emacs to this very day when all else fails and I need a fast editor that can handle large files.

    Textmate going FOSS might just have me try the switch. ... This is awesome.
    Show some respect, guys!

    My 2 cents.

    • by Kergan ( 780543 ) on Thursday August 09, 2012 @06:01PM (#40939241)

      I really don't get most of the crap and indifference here.

      The project has been a work in progress for years and this might very well be Allan's way of saying "I'm burnt out guys, here's the code, please make it live because I no longer can."

    • by sl3xd ( 111641 )

      now we've got a serious editor with solid chances of taking the throne for editors. ... Once it's cross-plattform that is.

      Many problems here:
      * Textmate is Objective-C/Cocoa. The Objective-C part isn't a problem, but Cocoa is. GNUStep, while cool, doesn’t have everything Cocoa does. GNUStep isn't going to see a huge boost in developers for the sake of one text editor.
      * Much of what makes Textmate great is its tight integration with OS X.

      Unless a legion of developers decide to jump on the GNUStep bandwa

  • I am very, very, very fricking exciting. the best just got better *does happy happy dance* (and that's not sarcasm!)

Nothing succeeds like excess. -- Oscar Wilde

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