Re: [Short review] - TextMate 1.5

On 2006-04-24 19:25:07 +0100, Rolleston <Nemo@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

"macfizz@xxxxxxxxx" <macfizz@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
It's not often I am really impressed by an application, and even rarer
for me to find one with so many "ahh!" moments that I go and buy it
after just a day's use, but that is TextMate for you. What a star
application.

Apart from sporting a nicely-designed interface with just the right
amount of configurability (that is, as much as you want, revealed just
when you want it) it is incredibly extensible. There are pre-built
"bundles" - sort of collections of macros and boiler-plate text - for
loads of languages and also neat things like Drag Commands. A good
example: drag an image out of the Finder into an html page and it loads
the <img /> tag with all of the width and height and alt parameters in
place and populated. If you want to load all the text files in a folder
from the command line, *recursing the folders into the bargain*, just
open the Terminal to that folder and type 'mate foldername'. You get a
nice tree structure of files in the file drawer - great for HTML, PHP,
Ruby and XCode projects or anything else with lots of folder structure.

Some really nice macro features. If you want a chunk of lorem ipsum in
your file type "lorem" and hit the TAB key - in it goes. Macros are
present for all the language structures you would expect, and they are
language specific naturally (so in a Java file the "if" syntax is put
in correctly): when a piece of macro text is pasted in the pieces of
code that you will likely want to edit are highlighted and you can just
tab to go from one to the next. So neat.

It is highly theme-able, feels robust and is clearly a Mac app from the
ground up. Even the registration process is highly Mac-friendly - the
registration box automagically picked up the key from my inbox when the
registration message arrived and pasted it into the licence box for me
(A feature I shall implement for Key Minder). It is, in short, just
about perfect - fit for purpose, beautiful and not too expensive (39
euros).

Just about perfect, but not perfect. Give us an imperfection.


Some of the keypress combinations are extremely obscure albeit for some of the more obscure commands (unwrap paragraph springs to mind). That said, the application is incredibly customisable - just check out some of the video - say the one covering block commenting.

I personally feel that the application needs a toolbar - nothing too common (in any sense), but it would be nice to have some commands accessed by mouse and it would stop it looking so, well, Spartan.

I do feel that the implantation of tabbed windows leaves something to be desired. You can only combine multiple files into a single window if they are part of a project - I would prefer to have an option to open /any/ collections of files this way. I generally struggle with a UI that forces tabs across the top of a window - open more than about 20 documents and it all becomes cluttered. I much prefer the way applications such as BBEdit and textPad (Windows) implement multiple files within a sidebar.

It's not an issue for me but I would image that lack of integration with CVS may be a problem for some, particularly for an application with such a focus on programming languages.

The regex search abilities are somewhat constrained compared to BBEdit.

Finally I worry that this is application that hypes itself a little too much. 1.5 does feature a lot of changes from earlier versions but largely disregarded the promised road map in terms of features that would be in 1.5 (a lot of the GUI stuff above).
--
Cheers,

Steve

The reply-to email address is a spam trap.
Email steve 'at' shodgson 'dot' org 'dot' uk

.

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