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.'"
unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I'm doing a linux port (Score:4, Interesting)
I am too lazy to try and install it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:It's about damn time (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:I am too lazy to try and install it. (Score:4, Interesting)
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]
Re:It's about damn time (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:Unfortunate license choice (Score:3, Interesting)
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.