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Mar 09

TextMate: Embracing the outsite, and why it is so smart

IDE, Tech Add comments

I use a bunch of editing tools. OmniOutliner, TextMate, IntelliJ IDEA, vi, the editor that lives in my email client, etc.

One of the great things about TextMate is that it groks the power of the shell, and of the platform.

This is shown throughout the product, from being able to type a command and have it kick out, run it, and put the results back in the document, to the plugin system.

I have written a bunch of plugins in TextMate to make my life easier. Why haven’t I done this in IntellIJ or Eclipse? The thought of doing those is daunting. Time consuming.

With TextMate I can write a plugin in any language that I want because the contract is so loose. It will shell out, and I can run ruby, perl, lisp, or whatever I feel like for the given problem.

This is a truly killer feature.

5 Responses to “TextMate: Embracing the outsite, and why it is so smart”

  1. RefuX Says:

    My fave tool: VoodooPad

  2. Lars Fischer Says:

    The sad thing about TextMate is that it is only available for the Mac. I’d like to have a real good text editor for Mac, Linux and Windows.

  3. Keith Pitty Says:

    The great thing about using a Mac is being able to use tools like TextMate and VoodooPad ;)

  4. Anjan Bacchu Says:

    hi dion,

    was expecting to see emacs but vi didn’t totally disappoint me.

    no other tool has merge the shell into the editing environment as well as emacs/XEmacs. But I guess the macro language was, say Javascript/ruby instead of only Emacs Lisp.

    BR,
    ~A

  5. Olle Jonsson Says:

    Seeing Textmate do its magic made me crave a Mac, and I got me one. Textmate was a tipping factor for me.

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