Home is where you edit your text
Prompted by numerous expressions of love and appreciation, I have decided to give the 30 day trial of TextMate a try, to see if it can turn my text editing world on its head and make me wonder how I ever got by without it.
So far, it reminds me of my experience with Emacs: “Well, this certainly seems powerful, but how do I save a file? No, really. I guess I will just boot back into Windows.”
Any true believers who want to show my why TextMate is worth the bother (as compared to TextEdit and WriteRoom, which I now use) are very much encouraged to do so. In particular, a straightforward page full of “look at the amazing things you can do with TextMate, and here’s how” stories would be ideal.
[Update: 21 January 2007] My TextMate trial expired today. While I liked the program quite a bit - it’s a big step up from TextEdit - I am not willing to pay forty Euros for it, given that I don’t use the coding features.
[Update: 24 October 2007] I finally caved and bought TextMate. I realized that it would have been worth the price just to have it between when I first pondered getting it and now. Being able to circumvent the (often slow and clumsy) WordPress web interface is worth it, in and of itself.
[Update: 1 November 2007] Integration between Fetch and TextMate is absurdly useful. It lets you edit HTML, PHP, htaccess, and all sorts of other files without needing to manually download and re-upload them through FTP.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:16 am
Here’s a good start for appreciating TextMate. Also, see this on Quicksilver.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
I’m a true believer in TextMate but surely not geeky enough to convert you. I’ve been using it for a long time, it’s my favourite text editor, I’m pretty slow, so I’m still discovering great things it can do (I specially love Find and Save in Project, and I’ve only just worked out how to use a simple macro which really saves time with repetitive tasks). You can blog direct from it using a Blogging bundle (I don’t, often, because WordPress is so good.) But I do write most of my posts on TextMate first, and I do all my HTML stuff with it.
Have a look at the screencasts here, especially on blogging and HTML tags. I thought they were pretty exciting.
Still not converted? Oh well, I hope someone else comes up with some better reasons.
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Tony,
Thanks for the link and the information. Toying with a few of my PHP scripts, such as the one that adds the smart footer to my RSS feed, I am beginning to see the value of TextMate.
I don’t quite see 39 Euros worth of value yet, but I am open to being convinced.
December 22nd, 2006 at 11:58 pm
[...] Now that I am using a text editor that colour codes things based on which programming language you are using, I feel free to unleash a bit of geekishness upon you all. [...]
December 23rd, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Being able to play with WordPress posts through xmlrpc.php is very cool.
See this screencast (30 megs, Quicktime).
January 6th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Don’t spend fifty Euros on a text editor with hardly any features you really need.
In a few months, you are going to get hit with the need to buy Leopard, anyhow.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:15 am
In a few months, you are going to get hit with the need to buy Leopard, anyhow.
Still waiting for Leopard, and not terribly impressed by the new features listed.
October 24th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Doh!
I bought TextMate only to learn that it no longer works properly with WordPress.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:30 am
[...] finally bought TextEdit because I was really annoyed with how slow the web interface for WordPress has been. Unfortunately, [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Useful guide for a TextMate beginner
TextMate cheat sheet
Also: Tutorials