Why are you looking for an alternative to something that does what you

want in the first place?

I think the point is that there are some issues with TM1. Like you said, there really isn't any alternative, but that shouldn't stop us from having a frank discussion about TextMate's (very few) shortcomings. I'm pretty sure everyone here absolutely adores TextMate, especially after seeing the spurt of activity here in the past few days.

Since we are some of TextMate's largest fans, I think this is a somewhat appropriate place to discuss the future of TextMate (if not TextMate proper, then the bundle systems which can theoretically fill whatever gaps we need given enough elbow grease).

Since there are only a few short messages from Allen himself over the past year, we can only discuss alternatives and what we would like to see updated/fixed, and wait for news. Given another year, maybe a competitor will be to an advanced enough stage that with some work it could become usable.

One possible alternative could be E-TextEditor (http://www.e-texteditor.com/). The only problem is that it is Windows only...but I've used it and it seems to have very good support for all TextMate bundles (it uses Cygwin). That could be a possibility lacking any further news on the future of the real TextMate.

Cheers Brandon