On 20/6/2006, at 19:16, Kamen Nedev wrote:
[...] quote, "TextMate-like snippets (snippets.el)"...
And for vim users: “This file contains some simple functions that attempt to emulate some of the behaviour of 'Snippets' from the OS X editor TextMate” -- http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php? script_id=1318 :)
I believe this one even imports property lists :)
[...] How can a resolutely closed-source application like TM attract such an open-source-like community environment? Does it have anything to do with software architecture (a closed framework with an open approach to extensibility through bundles), or with Allan's social skills?
I think Mats Persson suggested it could be my minor in psychology which allows me to carefully play this game of double standards ;)
Seriously though, my guess would be a combination of having it be a very customizable app in nature, i.e. it really invites you to customize, then having a user base mostly of geeks who do like to customize things, and lastly provide an infrastructure to cooperate/ comment on these things (svn, rss feed for the change log, mailing lists, and irc channel.) -- and of course being present myself in this infrastructure.
Though I agree with Alaric Snell-Pym in that alone the fact that it is customizable does bread end-user innovation, regardless of what the developer does. I believe there are also very enthusiastic user groups e.g. for Photoshop who writes cool extensions, even though Adobe is probably a faceless cooperation to most.
But no matter what it is, let it be absolutely clear that I am grateful for the community which exists around TextMate -- especially since I use a lot of functionality written by other users :)