TextMate News

Anything vaguely related to TextMate and macOS.

TextMate Homage

When David first wrote about TextMate he mentioned how on Windows he had UltraEdit, and knew of TextPad as a decent alternative. In fact there should be at least half a dozen well known editors on Windows.

These editors still exist, but based on my inbox (and the latter comments for this blog entry) Windows users are craving for more, they want TextMate!

My interest in writing Windows software is still nil, but it seems the chances for a TextMate inspired editor on Windows is getting better. Presently I am aware of three projects which try to recreate it, yet so far only one has left vaporware state.

Introducing e Editor. This editor uses the TextMate bundles as-is, and is written by Alexander Stigsen, a fellow Dane who I met with a few weeks ago.

categories General

28 Comments

20 November 2006

by Matt Tavares

Laugh, this must render that intype editor totally useless now.

Hopefully he’ll release a linux distro since its based on wxWidgets.

21 November 2006

by Tor

apple.com/getamac ;)

21 November 2006

by Benedikt

Although it’s not available yet, Intype looks pretty promising too as a TextMate Windows alternative. Never heard of “e” but I’ll definitely check it out.

21 November 2006

by kamal

I have actually tried the editor out on my work laptop which is running XP. I do run TextMate at home on my PB and was eager to try out some of usual things I do.

I can say that the ‘feel’ is quite comparable to TextMate. It does stall for a bit when running commands as I think it spawns a shell to pipe the commands to and of course, it stumbles when commands call Mac OS X binaries, like CocoaDialog (TextMate.call_with_progress) and pbpaste. I’ve started a thread on the e Editor forums to document workarounds or suggest Windows alternatives.

21 November 2006

by Jeremy Wilkins

Have you considered a port to linux or win32 using the gnustep libraries - would this even be feasible?

21 November 2006

by Matt Tavares

Have you considered a port to linux or win32 using the gnustep libraries - would this even be feasible?

I’m pretty sure allan’s text view uses ATSUI to render the characters, which is apple only.

21 November 2006

by p4bl0

I’ve never heard about “e” but until now i use notepad++ when i work on a windows pc.

Now that i’ve just read the “e”’s author blog, i’m totally exited, he made a very good job and i hope we will be able to share our enjoy for TextMate (or “e”) with PC’s user !!!!

21 November 2006

by Steven A Bristol

I downloaded e and I must say it is a far, far cry from textmate. Even in this poor state, it comes as a 30 day trial, so I’m afraid I will never get to see if it improves.

Thanks for textmate, it is the best. I used to say that MS Visual Studio was the best IDE the world has ever know. I no longer say that. When I use VS I long for textmate. Keep up the good work! Thanks for making something that makes our lives a little nicer.

21 November 2006

by Luke Scott

It was just better for me to switch to Mac.

Heck when you see a laptop boot in like 30-40 seconds (to the point where it’s idle, not just showing the mouse)… You never go back!

I hate waiting for my PC to boot up. My MacBook has 512 MB of RAM and my PC has 1.5 GB of RAM and I’m using my Mac Book 98% of the time now! Constantly using it for developing.

The only use I have for my PC at all is Adobe Photoshop CS2. Why do I use this on my PC when it can be for Mac? Well (1) PhotoShop is expensive as hell, (2) CS2 is made for the IBM architecture and is emulated under the Intel one, so there’s no use in wasting money now, and (3) according to the Mac store CS3 will be out some time in the not so distant future for the Intel architecture. After I get that, no more excuses!

I’ll have to admit that I will have to upgrade my RAM on my Mac. But it is still is better than my PC.

One of these days I’m going to get a MacPro (Tower). When that happens, I plan on taking my PC outside.. getting a sledge hammer… And have a little fun :)

21 November 2006

by Allan Odgaard

Jeremy Wilkins: That wouldn’t be feasible. I think GNUStep is where Cocoa was 5 years ago or so.

21 November 2006

by p4bl0

How can we trackback a post from this blog ?

21 November 2006

by Allan Odgaard

p4bl0: I don’t support track backs — mainly because of the spam they generated when I initially had them enabled.

21 November 2006

by Thomas Aylott

Everyone is copying TextMate. As long as the formats are kept open, this is great for everyone!

There will be more excellent developers working to improve the bundles and commands and grammars. The more applications that support the TextMate formats the better all these apps will get.

Who knows, maybe in 5 years even BBEdit, Dreamweaver and Visual Studio will support textmate bundles.

22 November 2006

by Urbanose

…and the great themes like Brilliance Black 42 :]

23 November 2006

by Richard Morrell

So thats e Editor, Intype, is the third one public if not yet out of vapourware?

23 November 2006

by Ville Säävuori

TextMate on Windows would be like driving a Ferrari on a road full of huge potholes. What’s the point?

26 November 2006

by Xilon

Well it’s great that there’s a clone and all, but did the author of “e” have to clone every aspect of TextMate? I’m talking about it being shareware… come on, if I still used windows I wouldn’t even look at TextMate and use Notepad++ instead as it is a really good text editor. On linux I’d probably have no choice if there was to be a linux version of “e”, but damn would I prefer it to be open source, or at least freeware.

That’s one thing I dislike about Mac OSX… it’s basically Windows except stable and more secure etc.

27 November 2006

by Nick T

You mentioned that you are aware of three projects that are trying to recreate TextMate on windows. Can you please state these three projects (I am only aware of e Editor and Intype).

Thanks

27 November 2006

by Allan Odgaard

I don’t think the third one has a public face yet.

18 December 2006

by Rosey

I’d love to have a Textmate version for windows. Until then - an alternative I am pretty happy with is EditPad Pro - (www.editpadpro). I prefer it to any of the other poor windows substitutes mentioned.

23 December 2006

by Geoff

I’ve tried just about every windows editor out there. Notepad++ and PSPad are probably my favorites. I’ve just downloaded e, and with a but of tweaking (had to install gems into cygwin) I’ve got it working.

It’s nice, and looks like there’s a lot of potential. There are some pretty unique features (apart from bundles): graphical multi-level, branched undo history and built-in revision control.

I do think it’s a bit odd he’s charging for an unstable beta version. Seems to me he should keep it free during the beta period (or let you pre-order Version 1 if you choose). You shouldn’t have to pay $30 for software that doesn’t work yet.

I do hope he succeeds. I can’t afford to replace all my machines with Macs quite yet!

10 January 2007

by Rhywun

There’s an InType alpha now - it looks pretty promising. I tried ‘e’ a while back and didn’t care for it, and especially didn’t care for someone charging money for a beta product. I use Mac at home and Windows at work so I’m kind of looking for something like TextMate on Windows even though I do most of my work in Visual Studio.

15 January 2007

by Geoff

Follow-up. I paid for my copy of e even though the trial period wasn’t up yet. The editor is completely usable and I’ve had very good response time when contacting the author. Development has been proceeding at a good clip, and I’m just getting a better vibe than with InType.

InType is, for me, not usable for real work at the moment, with no undo at all, no multiple document capability, and so on. Also, the ability to pull bundles and have them work in e is great. (The notable exception is AppleScript commands which, for perhaps obvious reasons, don’t work under Windows, and macros.)

24 February 2007

by Nick T

Hello again.

Any news on the third alternative? Or is it still not public?

05 March 2007

by Charles

It’s gotta be said, the undo history functionality with branching is absolutely awesome - will something similar be implemented in TextMate? I really dig the whole Cooperation rather Competition thing, but will it be a two way process?

05 November 2007

by Jeremy

e is the replacement. I had textmate envy till I found e. Not only can it do a many a things textmate can do but apparently there are things available in e not on textmate. I personally do not know as I have not used textmate extensively but would recommend e to anyone looking for a good powerful text editor that has not been swayed by the apple advertisement for a shinny slow machine with pointless effects (my opinion on machine speed i based on flash and video work done on my xp machine to co-workers osx, now leapord machine ). :P

28 February 2008

by nichlas

E is pretty awesome, I’ve been using it for a couple of days now after finally getting sick of JEdit. See my blog post here: http://blog.heavenlymedia.co.uk/?p=10 It has all the useful little features I used to use on JEdit but just a little nicer, plus there are the textmate bundles which are great!

04 November 2008

by albemuth

User experience is king, IMO that’s why people buy TM / IDEA instead of using the free stuff, no other text editor I’ve tried gives you the same feel as TM