TextMate service works with Pages

Recently Eric Hsu confirmed that the TextMate service works with Pages and today Eric Curtis mentioned that people are using various services to counter Pages apparent editing short-comings.

So I figured I should mention that you can download this service, and will then be able to select text in every service aware application and hit command-escape to take that text to TextMate, edit it, and save + close the window. You’re then brought back to the originating application, and the text has been updated with the changes you did in TextMate.

Eventually this service should make it to the normal distribution of TextMate, but for now it’s a separate download.

Screen scraping with TextMate

One of the capabilities which get little mention is TextMate’s recordable macros. I even get feature requests for things which could easily be done with a macro (in seconds) and macros do not require any programming , so they are probably a little overlooked. What follows is one example where I wouldn’t have been without them.

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Elevating the standard

Since Bare Bones think that “These overnight text editors don’t reflect well on the genre or the platform” I thought I’d try to make it into my normal (beta) release routine to mention just a few of the things that TextMate is bringing to the platform, accompanied with a little movie.

I just released beta 3 which has two new productivity features. One is the ability to quickly go to a file in your project by hitting ⌘T and enter an abbreviation for that file (inspired by LaunchBar & Quicksilver) so e.g. type “td” for your “ToDo.txt”, a movie showing this in action is here. The abbreviation matcher for beta 4 will btw be much improved!

The other productivity feature that I personally have grown quite fond of is an extension to the column typing. Instead of overtyping the selection you can press ⌥⌘A to append to each line in the selection. This is not just useful for adding a trailing comma, period, semi-colon, </li>, or similar, but can also be used to type entire blocks of code as in this movie. So if you have a list of conditions, you can quickly type a skeleton body for each of these. The movie also makes use of snippets, auto-indent, auto-insertion of closing braces, and completion, which of course is also mirrored for each code block.

Missing bundles in 1.1b3

The new beta wouldn’t show any of the default bundles because I’d placed these in the wrong folder.

This is now fixed, and if you have this problem (i.e. downloaded the beta before 7 AM UTC) then please re-download it (if you want these bundles to show).

TextMate is now €39

The dollar has lost 10% in value since I started to sell TextMate (from a European point of view) and is predicted to lose even more. So I have decided to change the price to euros.

If your primary currency is dollars you can still buy it for $49.

2006-01-24: This offer is no longer valid (and todays exchange rate should make it roughly $49).

Software Patents

If you haven’t taken a stand on software patents or would like to see them brought to Europe: TextMate would hardly exist if all programs prior to its release had been able to get a patent on whatever new idea it “invented”.

Seeing my ideas cloned in a competing product is nothing compared to having limits imposed on what code I can write or what the code I write can do. So I was very happy to sign the “Thank you, Poland!” letter and would encourage others to do the same, if they appreciate the recent act by a government that seems to understand IT, unlike my own (text in Danish).

And of course happy holidays to all of you! It’s now 80 days since I released TextMate 1.0 and am very pleased to see the user activity which already surrounds it and the loyal user base which has been responsible for spreading the word. I’ve started work on TextMate 1.1 which will see some nice improvements, especially with regard to language awareness, but I’ll be sure to release betas throughout the process, which turned out to be a great success with the 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 updates (much shorter feedback cycle for me). And just a reminder, all 1.x versions are free upgrades.

Email bounces

If you have written support, bugs, feedback, or sales since last friday (where macromates.com was moved to a new account on a new server with new software and a new IP, which did break a few things) your email has bounced (as you probably know). The problem will hopefully be fixed in a few hours (I’ll update this entry when it is fixed).

In the meantime feel free to (re)send to allan (at this domain).

Sorry about the inconvenience it may have caused you.

Update: The aliases should once again work. And just to clarify, “new account” only means a new user account at TextDrive, not that I have left this great hosting company!

TextMate 1.0.2 released

An update of TextMate is now available for download.

For those who haven’t been using the intermediate beta versions the most noticeable enhancements are probably:

• supports printing (both for normal text and the web preview),
• has a multi-page OS X style preferences window, and
• supports the ODB Editor Suite so that TextMate can be used as external editor in those applications which support this.

There is probably close to a hundred other fixes, enhancements, tweaks or similar since the 1.0.1 release. Check the release notes for details.

This release is likely to be the last 1.0.x release — 1.x releases are still free upgrades, but focus is shifting from minor to major improvements, since most obvious show-stoppers are hopefully gone with this release.

This release also has a new 30 days trial period.

G5 "benchmark"

Today I got my Dual 2.5 MHz G5 and can therefor answer the two questions that have been on my own mind: how fast is it? and is it really made for whisper quiet operation?

To answer the first question, my previous system was a 733 MHz G4 and it took 30 minutes to make a deployment build of TextMate. This has been reduced to 3 minutes and 50 seconds, so that’s almost 8 times as fast.

This makes it much more enjoyable to work on TextMate, and I just did a deployment build of beta 4, although a little before schedule, but the longer I wait with the betas, the more I tend to think I need to put into them ;)

Regarding whisper quiet operation, well, generally it makes less noise than my previous G4 Quicksilver, I’d say half as much – but it’s still not whisper quiet. And it does have one very noisy fan that starts each time I go to 100% load, but it generally stops again after 10 seconds or so, even when the CPU load continues for minutes.

Update: And now there is a beta 5 which doesn’t require my private OakDebug.framework.

PHP Command Completion

Ian White has put together a set of commands to provide code completion and online help (as tool tips) for PHP.

For more info visit Ian’s page with instructions.

Printing in TextMate

If you are as disappointed and/or outraged as drunkenbatman seems to be about TextMate’s lacking ability to print plain text files, we recommend you update to the latest beta which has had printing for some time now (relative to TM only being a month old). A 1.0.2 release is expected within 4-7 days (this will also significantly improve loading time for large files).

The back story that drunkenbatman seems to seek is that TextMate’s initial goal was to work with structured text (like LaTeX) and not to be the next killer application in the domain of plain text printing.

I’m happy to report that betting on the former goal for the initial release hasn’t been as big a fiasco as drunkenbatman seems to make it out to be! :)

FTP in TextMate? Tell them, not us!

TextMate 1.0.2 beta 3 implements the ODB Editor Suite standard for integration with other applications. This means that the developers of Transmit, Fetch, FTPeel, and other applications that offer ODB support, just need to add TextMate to their lists of applications and the integration will materialize.

We’re eagerly awaiting these developers to follow the leading example of ecto that already supports TextMate in their beta version. So if you’re impatient, do write the developers of your favorite FTP program and ask them for TextMate support. We’ll be cheering for you.

And many thanks in advance to the developers of all of these great applications for adding TextMate support. It’s much appreciated!

Update (2004-11-06): There is a wiki page to track the status of the miscellaneous programs. Please check this before you write the author of a given program, and update the page accordingly when/if you do.

TextMate appears on VersionTracker

VersionTracker has finally picked up on TextMate, so we’d love for people who had a longer relationship with TextMate to write about it there. Thanks to the three guys who already took their time to bless it with rave reviews. Much appreciated.

TextMate 1.0.1 emerges after nine betas

The first official update to TextMate has emerged from the trials of nine betas before it. Before talking about what’s in it, we’d like to thank all the early adopters that have made it possible for us to iterate at this insane speed. Your time and money are incredibly appreciated and your trust and belief in the product has made all the difference in the world. We’re honored to serve you with this update.

Anyway, 1.0.1 is really the release we would have liked to be everyone’s first taste of TextMate. It ships with syntax highlight and various levels of support for around thirty languages, so opening files in your language should hopefully be a more pleasant surprise now. It has a much more polished look, especially regarding tabs and font rendering. And there’s much more power to snippets (read in the sidebar here).

But most important are the close to one hundred changes of varying size. These are all the small squashed bugs, relieved annoyances, and resolution of minor disturbances. In other words, the sharp edges have been softened.

What this release doesn’t do, though, is cure all you’d like it to. It’s just the first “minor” upgrade after 15 days in the wild. It still doesn’t cure world hunger, satisfy everyones wet editor dreams or any of the following:

• Preferences: TextMate still does not have a preferences window.
• Printing: TextMate still does not support printing.
• Speed: Currently focus has been on features, when these stabilize, we’ll get around to optimizing!
• Meta data: Several users have reported that when they go back to TextMate, it drops meta data like foldings, bookmarks, and collapse folder references – we are still looking into this.
• Syntax Highlight Colors: This still have to be done by editing property list files, but an editor (and separation of grammar and style) will soon see the light of day.
• Regex problems: TextMate currently do not handle incorrect regular expressions gracefully, i.e. repeats on zero-character matches will cause infinite loops etc. This is of course also something we hope to fix ASAP.

Still, we aim to serve. The betas will still be flowing steadily and if you want in on that early, slightly edgy, action, do this: Close TextMate (we know it’s hard), launch the Terminal and enter: defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakCheckForBetaVersions 1

Thanks again for all the support so far. This is just the beginning.

We're open for business again (after PayPal failures)

It’s once again possible to buy a license for TextMate after we’ve been having problems over the last few days. PayPal upgraded their systems over the weekend, but apparently weren’t ready for the roll out. It appears they’re back in business, though, which mean we are too.

UPDATE: We spoke too soon. PayPal is down again. We’re glad that we just work on simple shareware and are not responsible for holding back millions of transactions. Oy, the pressure!

UPDATE 2: PayPal now announces that everything should be back to normal. We’ve had registrations coming in all day today as well, so the problems seem to finally have cleared up.

Living on the edge with TextMate betas

We’re working hard on preparing the first update to TextMate in form of version 1.0.1. If the anticipation is too much to bear, you can come live on the edge with TextMate betas. Roughly one will be released per day, so you should be fit too keep up.

To activate beta notifications, close TextMate, start terminal, paste defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakCheckForBetaVersions 1. You’ll get the requester on first startup.

Beware that betas will contain new and untested features. There will most certainly be bugs from time to time.

All "minor" versions will be free upgrades

TextMate 1.1, 1.2, and all following minor upgrades will be free to all registered users. This means that by buying now you’ve also secured the rights to get hold of SFTP integration, SVN/CVS support, and what other goodies we come up with in the 1.x line of releases.

So by registering TextMate, you’re funding the continued development of the product, and will be rewarded with all these new features as they become available.

Once the day comes for a major upgrade (such as TextMate 2.0), we’ll also make sure to have a very reasonable upgrade path in place.

Thanks to all that have already supported TextMate by registering. Your kind acts have had a powerful influence on our motivational energy and we’re working hard to return the favors by improving TextMate to the best of our abilities.

MacZealots.com early review of TextMate

MacZealots.com is the first ‘zine to review TextMate and they’ve done a very decent job considering the short time they had. It’s certainly a review with mixed feelings, but many of the unique features of TextMate stands out with exceptional praise. Such as project management using tabs:

The ability to quickly switch between open documents by simply clicking on a tab directly at the top of the application couldn’t have been smoother. Compare that to BBEdit’s obtuse fold-out documents “drawer” and you’ll quickly see that TextMate’s tabs provide more of a slick working environment than that of the dull, lackluster drawer implementation in BBEdit.

Unfortunately, the compressed reviewing cycle didn’t leave time for some of TextMate’s most important features: Automation. Hence, you won’t find any mentioning of snippets, macros, or column typing. Three of the otherwise most highly praised parts among users.

Concerning the folding “…functinality just isn’t mature enough”, we’d like to inform everyone reading that it’s real, mighty easy to add or tweak the syntax highlighting files for any language. Including how to set folding markers. It’s even all described in details in the Help file. Ian has already gathered such additions and tweaks for a ton of languages.

Matt Willmore and gang have promised to remedy the situation shortly, though. We’ll point again when they have.

TextMate bundles here, there, and everywhere!

While we scramble to keep up with all the end-user innovators, Ian Phillips has done a great job of just that. On his TextMate Feature Bundles page, you can find syntax highlighting files for a wide range of languages. Everything from Java, to OCaml, to C#, to Python. And he’s adding more options all the time. Thanks, Ian!

TextMate 1.0.1 is on the way

We’re currently sorting through the flood of feedback that we’ve received for version 1.0 (the mailing list alone has had close to 300 messages in the first two days!). We’d like to aim for a minor upgrade in about two weeks that will incorporate many of the minor annoyances people have had with TextMate. It will also include many more default syntaxes as people have been producing those with great speed (thanks for that).

We’ll make a change list available once we’ve settled on the things that are going to change or be added. Thanks again for all the enthusiasm. It’s clear that TextMate has caught the imagination of many just the way we hoped for. With due polish, we hope to catch the imagination and excitement of even more.