This is handier when moving large chunks of text around in a file than a split screen which gives you only two tiny views of the file, as long as performance isn't significantly compromised. One thing missing from BBEdit is the capability of opening live the same document in two different windows. There are other methods that other editors use to accomplish basically the same thing. I have BBEdit's Marker set up to search for lines that begin with %: and then display the remainder of the text of the line - a short description of the theorem or definition or whatever that follows - in the pull down menu. If you're using it for scientific writing, and have hundreds of equations or theorems, you're lost without it. With LaTeX one of the most crucial capabilities of an editor is the ability to navigate through book size text files. And if you're not very adept creating Applescripts, BBEdit is Applescript recordable. I've never found much use for proprietary closed box macros. I feel blessed to be able to help it gain tractionĬhallenge by Richard on September 28, 20:42Īlthough it doesn't have "macros" in the vein of EditPlus or Ultraedit, BBEdit is very (but not totally) controllable via Applescripts, and in some ways this is superior to macros because a single Applescript can manipulate multiple applications and files and even invoke Unix shell scripts. All my work and hype are small tributes to the awesome archievement that is TextMate. I have no financial involvement, however. I've been pretty heavily involved with the development process by helping to determine, prioritize, and test features. You can sign up for a one time posting at the MacroMates site.ĭisclaimer: I know the programmer. It'll be priced like most regular shareware packages on the Mac (so none of that $179 crazyness). TextMate is coming out with the first public beta in September. Showing an advanced macro that calls an external program.But on top of that, I've also made a few smaller movies to show of individual features: That should give a pretty good idea of how it works. I did the 10 minute presentation of Rails (22mb) using a slightly older version of TextMate. By a programmer that really, really cares about editors. I doubt there's anything Emacs can do that VIM can't, but Unix people usually swear by only one of them (and often times have contempt for the other). Many editors can exhibit a laundry list of desireable features, but it doesn't really matter unless it feels right. I'll instead focus on the feel of TextMate. I could babble on about all the amazing features, such as code foldings, easy macros, live-updating project management, stellar syntax highlighting (mixing Ruby with HTML in rhtml files), tabs, column mode, smart typing, or command runnings (don't leave the editor to run unit tests). TextMate has single-handedly rendered TextEdit and Xcode obsolete, contained Subethaedit to strictly collaborative tasks, and stopped me from feeling sorry about not liking BBEdit. TextMate is the answer to all my editing prayers. But without project management, or other advanced editor features, it didn't even come close to meeting the needs I had and have as a Ruby programmer. With the appearance of Subethaedit, I found an absolutely fantastic application for talking shared notes, writing collaborative school papers, and doing the odd remote pair programming. Unless you're working in Objective-C or Java, Project Builder/Xcode is just TextEdit with mediocre syntax highlighting and project management, though. So Project Builder (now known as Xcode) turned out to be the solution. Working on a bunch of files using just the Finder and TextEdit gets old fast. It wasn't long before I absolutely needed some kind of project management support in TextEdit. But thankfully TextEdit is actually a somewhat decent, if very basic, editor (much unlike the atrocity that is Notepad). For Windows users, it must sound horrible to use the built-in editor. So for quite some time my editor needs were fulfilled by TextEdit with the TextExtras extension. It felt so much out of place alongside my Cocoa applications that it along with its immensely bloated features list just left me cold. There's was a distinct feeling of "is that it?!". So I tried to see if I might too could come to love the editor. The editor everyone was using in the good old days of the crashing Mac (or OS 9 as I'm also told it was called). Well, that's not entirely true of course. But on the Mac there was pretty much nothing of the kind. On Windows, I had been a big fan of UltraEdit and knew of TextPad a decent alternative. When I first arrived on the Mac with Jaguar two years ago, I was somewhat stumped by the lack of a decent editor. August 06, 18:27 TextMate: The missing editor for OS X
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