TextMate, My Brother in Arms

It seems like the eternal debate has been put on the table again: with Allan Odgaard seemingly mute, there’s little hope we will ever see TextMate 2 someday.

Allan admittedly and publicly acknowledged he was working on TM2 back in mid-2007, and news have been sparser and sparser since then: first, two years after its announcement, in an aptly titled “Working on It” entry, he clumsily tried to reassure us; then, in a second entry entitled “Why 2.0 is not Developed in the Open”, he explained the difficulties he was facing and why he’d better alone.

Strangely enough — regarding the gigantic, almost impossible task he put himself into —, Allan chose to release the update for free. While it was warmly welcomed at the time, it was later reproached to Allan than this was a way for him to wash his hands and disrespect his customers.

The current situation

If your dad walks out one Thanksgiving saying he’ll be back “sometime after Christmas” and it’s now five years later, when your little sister tells you “he didn’t say how long after Christmas” she’s maybe not facing reality.

As TextMate users started to realize the new version wouldn’t see the face of Earth, many — if not most — looked for alternatives. While some have seen in Coda and Espresso worthy clones, most went for either BBEdit or MacVIM. A few good souls have cared to share their experiences as did Daniel Fischer, Yehuda Katz and George Ornbo — three great posts I recommend to anyone interested into switching to VIM. Fewer people decided instead to start and develop their own TM clone: so are Kod and Vico. Lastly, what started as a mere TextMate copycat for Windows, Sublime Text is now targeting Mac OS X in a effort for the apprentice to overtake his master.

Let’s cool for a second and look at each option, starting from the end:

• new apps are, in their vast majority, fairly young and mostly unstable
• TextMate’s distant relatives like BBEdit and MacVIM are currently the subject of most praises (see Watts Martin’s excellent “Text Editor Intervention” and Marco Arment’s response)
• the oldest new apps — i.e. Espresso and Coda — suffer from poor extensibility or community support and a far, far from having TextMate’s bundles library

But do I really feel the need to change?

Sure, it feels good to discover and use a great new app that aims at revolutionizing a workflow. Since TextMate hadn’t been updated in months, even years, I thought it was OK to look around and see what’s new. Now that I’ve done it¹, I feel like I have no need in ditching my favorite editor.

I admit it’d be nice if it had split views since it’s cumbersome to use @media queries in the same stylesheet². But this doesn’t outweigh everything that makes TextMate so great, even four full years since its last major update.

Because, to be honest, Allan made a such wonderful job, TextMate has only barely suffered from a minor compatibility issue³ in the last four years. In fact, it is working damn well on Lion. Redde Caesari quae sunt Caesaris, et quae sunt Dei Deo.

I’m a firm believer that Allan is still working on TextMate 2 and that this release will redefine the way we code, as TextMate 1 has already been doing since October 2004. And even though it might eventually not come, I see no reason to forgo without what has been my brother in arms for seven years now.

On a final note, while TextMate 2 was touted the Duke Nukem Forever of text editors, did you know the latter will be released in June?

There’s hope.