Allan:
First off, let me tell you how much I respect you. You've created a tremendously valuable product which has literally logged more than a 1000 hours of usage for me. I've enjoyed extending it (RubyAMP, Git textmate bundle, contributing to many more), and have really gotten full leverage out of it.
Now the sobering part.
Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
I use both Emacs and VIM. There are many strengths that TM has over it, so I still consider it to be a superior editor in many regards. Some of these I've articulated in my blog post, http://tim.theenchanter.com/2010/02/emacs-baggage.html
I can't help but wonder if your promise of "free upgrades" has blasted a crater in your motivation to work on TM2. Is there a possibility of this, Allan? If so, I would suggest the following:
* Release a version of TM as TM2 with all the critical bugs fixed. Everyone gets their free "upgrade" (except the macheist users as you've previously stated). Perhaps include one or two new features. * Post a public apology for over-promising TM2 features, and state that you miscalculated how much you would be able to include in it as a free upgrade, and from a business standpoint it's impossible to fund all of new development as a free upgrade. Say you are terribly, terribly sorry, that you are doing your best, and hope that people will be forgiving. (I know I will). * State that TM3 will be released with those features, and will be a paid upgrade for everyone.
I would prefer to have a paid upgrade to TM3 than a non-paid non-existent upgrade to TM2. Right now I can't pay any price to upgrade to TM2.
I think you have a shot at this to make this a profitable move for yourself. Lots of people still use TM and many may come back. If my hunches are correct, then I plead from you: don't sell us all short by selling yourself short.
With the highest respect I'm capable of,
Tim Harper
Seconded.
Regards
Michael Ward -- Head Honcho CustoMike Solutions Member, FileMaker Business Alliance Member, FileMaker Technical Network FileMaker 7 Certified Developer FileMaker 8 Certified Developer FileMaker 9 Certified Developer FileMaker 10 Certified Developer 10 Wandoo Crt Wheelers Hill, 3150 ph 0414 562 501 headhoncho@customikesolutions.com
On 30/04/2010, at 6:28 AM, Tim Harper wrote:
Allan:
First off, let me tell you how much I respect you. You've created a tremendously valuable product which has literally logged more than a 1000 hours of usage for me. I've enjoyed extending it (RubyAMP, Git textmate bundle, contributing to many more), and have really gotten full leverage out of it.
Now the sobering part.
Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
I use both Emacs and VIM. There are many strengths that TM has over it, so I still consider it to be a superior editor in many regards. Some of these I've articulated in my blog post, http://tim.theenchanter.com/2010/02/emacs-baggage.html
I can't help but wonder if your promise of "free upgrades" has blasted a crater in your motivation to work on TM2. Is there a possibility of this, Allan? If so, I would suggest the following:
- Release a version of TM as TM2 with all the critical bugs fixed. Everyone gets their free "upgrade" (except the macheist users as you've previously stated). Perhaps include one or two new features.
- Post a public apology for over-promising TM2 features, and state that you miscalculated how much you would be able to include in it as a free upgrade, and from a business standpoint it's impossible to fund all of new development as a free upgrade. Say you are terribly, terribly sorry, that you are doing your best, and hope that people will be forgiving. (I know I will).
- State that TM3 will be released with those features, and will be a paid upgrade for everyone.
I would prefer to have a paid upgrade to TM3 than a non-paid non-existent upgrade to TM2. Right now I can't pay any price to upgrade to TM2.
I think you have a shot at this to make this a profitable move for yourself. Lots of people still use TM and many may come back. If my hunches are correct, then I plead from you: don't sell us all short by selling yourself short.
With the highest respect I'm capable of,
Tim Harper
textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate
On 29 Apr 2010, at 22:28, Tim Harper wrote:
[…] Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
This is understandable, and while I do feel bad about the situation overall, I dislike speaking about 2.0 — it’s a mix of many things, some I have previously mentioned, like not wanting to talk about a product which is partly just my wishful thinking of what I want the end product to be, another is that my motivation and optimism is anything but constant, sometimes I think that if I work really hard for two months, I have enough to release an alpha, yet there tend to be some stumbling block, something I estimated to just a day’s work (or didn’t consider at all) end up taking the two full months, so it seems I have made no progress at all after those two months (sometimes it may even go backwards because structural changes disable certain features), and someone will then ask about that alpha I was so optimistic about, which will make me think it is all hopeless…
So while the situation does bother me, I am content with people thinking 2.0 is vaporware and may never happen, because I don’t want to do posts of the day/week/month, as these will just be a reflection of my mood that day, which is anything but constant.
Pretty much everything I’ve said about 2.0, I have later regret. I wish I would have had the foresight to hire someone to have continued working on 1.x so I could quietly work on 2.0 — one may argue that this is not too late, but there is a better chance of me open sourcing 2.0 than going back to 1.x. 2.0 currently has bad performance, lacks a lot of surface polish, has very few features people expect 2.0 to have, but it is a very solid code base which has good abstractions, most of the hard work has been done, and is geared heavily toward many years of future improvements/extensions/features.
So… 2.0 could go alpha but would go through same mocking and ridicule that 1.0 went through — with the letter I got from Aaron Swartz, it is something I am considering, but it will be pretty hard on me, and double-so because there are so many obvious shortcomings but I am still working from my own roadmap, so I wouldn’t really want any feedback, I mean, it’s like if you build a house, you don’t want strangers to come by and tell you that you need to put in a missing window while you are busy nailing the floor — so alpha release would solely be for users, but for most users 1.5 is probably still the better choice, but I will re-evaluate when the stories for the next three iterations have been completed (Pivotal Tracker speak), as these are the most glaring defects.
[…] I can't help but wonder if your promise of "free upgrades" has blasted a crater in your motivation to work on TM2. Is there a possibility of this, Allan?
Free upgrade surely was a mistake ;) But I tend to find motivation in other things than money, so it hasn’t really affected the timeline.
[…]
- State that TM3 will be released with those features, and will be a
paid upgrade for everyone.
It will probably have to be the 2.1 release which will have to make up for the money I left on the table with that “free 2.0” promise ;)
Allan,
My suggest is that you stop talking anything about TM2 unless you are going to release anything. I don't think there is anyone want to hear anymore from you explaining why it is not finished.
Whether TM2 is real or not, we don't care anymore. We are still using 1.5, which means, first we love your product, second we accept the truth TM2 will not come out.
On May 28, 2010, at 2:58 PM, Allan Odgaard wrote:
On 29 Apr 2010, at 22:28, Tim Harper wrote:
[?] Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
This is understandable, and while I do feel bad about the situation overall, I dislike speaking about 2.0 ? it?s a mix of many things, some I have previously mentioned, like not wanting to talk about a product which is partly just my wishful thinking of what I want the end product to be, another is that my motivation and optimism is anything but constant, sometimes I think that if I work really hard for two months, I have enough to release an alpha, yet there tend to be some stumbling block, something I estimated to just a day?s work (or didn?t consider at all) end up taking the two full months, so it seems I have made no progress at all after those two months (sometimes it may even go backwards because structural changes disable certain features), and someone will then ask about that alpha I was so optimistic about, which will make me think it is all hopeless?
So while the situation does bother me, I am content with people thinking 2.0 is vaporware and may never happen, because I don?t want to do posts of the day/week/month, as these will just be a reflection of my mood that day, which is anything but constant.
Pretty much everything I?ve said about 2.0, I have later regret. I wish I would have had the foresight to hire someone to have continued working on 1.x so I could quietly work on 2.0 ? one may argue that this is not too late, but there is a better chance of me open sourcing 2.0 than going back to 1.x. 2.0 currently has bad performance, lacks a lot of surface polish, has very few features people expect 2.0 to have, but it is a very solid code base which has good abstractions, most of the hard work has been done, and is geared heavily toward many years of future improvements/extensions/features.
So? 2.0 could go alpha but would go through same mocking and ridicule that 1.0 went through ? with the letter I got from Aaron Swartz, it is something I am considering, but it will be pretty hard on me, and double-so because there are so many obvious shortcomings but I am still working from my own roadmap, so I wouldn?t really want any feedback, I mean, it?s like if you build a house, you don?t want strangers to come by and tell you that you need to put in a missing window while you are busy nailing the floor ? so alpha release would solely be for users, but for most users 1.5 is probably still the better choice, but I will re-evaluate when the stories for the next three iterations have been completed (Pivotal Tracker speak), as these are the most glaring defects.
[?] I can't help but wonder if your promise of "free upgrades" has blasted a crater in your motivation to work on TM2. Is there a possibility of this, Allan?
Free upgrade surely was a mistake ;) But I tend to find motivation in other things than money, so it hasn?t really affected the timeline.
[?]
- State that TM3 will be released with those features, and will be a
paid upgrade for everyone.
It will probably have to be the 2.1 release which will have to make up for the money I left on the table with that ?free 2.0? promise ;)
Yan Zhou zhouyan1014@gmail.com wrote (Sun, 30 May 2010 06:43:33 +0100):
Allan,
My suggest is that you stop talking anything about TM2 unless you are going to release anything. I don't think there is anyone want to hear anymore from you explaining why it is not finished. (...)
On 29 Apr 2010, at 22:28, Tim Harper wrote:
[?] Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
So it's wrong that Allan does NOT talk about TM2 for a few months, and then again it's wrong WHEN he talks about it?
Regards, Tobias Jung
If he have some progress to share with us, I'd like to hear. If he's merely going to talk about why it is not finished, I don't understand why he ever bother to talk about that.
Those who are still here don't need any explanation. Be serious, there are many excellent software with releasing cycle more than three years. And this is certainly true for a text editor. Think about Vim, last major upgrade, 7.0, was released four years ago. And I think many of us truly understand why Allan cannot release anything now and don't need his explanation.
For those who "lost hope", whatever you explain to them, they will still be angry and post offensive things.
I confess that I am among those who desperately want TM2. But still, I don't see any point to talk about why it's not finished yet. I think he can just work silently and tell us something excited when he is ready. If there is anything make me lost hope, it's not the truth that TM2 may not come out eventually, but TM1.5 may be dead someday. It has some compatibility problem with snow leopard. Though most of them have a work around or been fixed. But what about next Mac OS X? But if I remember correctly, Allan had talked about his failure to maintain updates of 1.5 before.
On May 30, 2010, at 2:56 PM, Tobias Jung wrote:
Yan Zhou zhouyan1014@gmail.com wrote (Sun, 30 May 2010 06:43:33 +0100):
Allan,
My suggest is that you stop talking anything about TM2 unless you are going to release anything. I don't think there is anyone want to hear anymore from you explaining why it is not finished. (...)
On 29 Apr 2010, at 22:28, Tim Harper wrote:
[?] Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
So it's wrong that Allan does NOT talk about TM2 for a few months, and then again it's wrong WHEN he talks about it?
Regards, Tobias Jung
textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate
Just dont fall into the same trap Duke Nukem Forever fell into, always changing and doing something better and cooler only to find out that it isn't cool anymore after all that work and you change it all again. Its better to have a Textmate 2 then 3 then 4 then nothing at all. I love TM that I have, but I would be lying if I didn't say I didn't poke around the other editors whenever a ugly bug rears its head and pisses me off.
Ray Slakinski
On 2010-05-28, at 9:58 AM, Allan Odgaard wrote:
On 29 Apr 2010, at 22:28, Tim Harper wrote:
[…] Things have been awfully quiet about TM2 for the last several months. You've claimed you are still working on it, but I've just about lost hope. There are no signs to reinforce my faith that TM2 will ever become a reality.
This is understandable, and while I do feel bad about the situation overall, I dislike speaking about 2.0 — it’s a mix of many things, some I have previously mentioned, like not wanting to talk about a product which is partly just my wishful thinking of what I want the end product to be, another is that my motivation and optimism is anything but constant, sometimes I think that if I work really hard for two months, I have enough to release an alpha, yet there tend to be some stumbling block, something I estimated to just a day’s work (or didn’t consider at all) end up taking the two full months, so it seems I have made no progress at all after those two months (sometimes it may even go backwards because structural changes disable certain features), and someone will then ask about that alpha I was so optimistic about, which will make me think it is all hopeless…
So while the situation does bother me, I am content with people thinking 2.0 is vaporware and may never happen, because I don’t want to do posts of the day/week/month, as these will just be a reflection of my mood that day, which is anything but constant.
Pretty much everything I’ve said about 2.0, I have later regret. I wish I would have had the foresight to hire someone to have continued working on 1.x so I could quietly work on 2.0 — one may argue that this is not too late, but there is a better chance of me open sourcing 2.0 than going back to 1.x. 2.0 currently has bad performance, lacks a lot of surface polish, has very few features people expect 2.0 to have, but it is a very solid code base which has good abstractions, most of the hard work has been done, and is geared heavily toward many years of future improvements/extensions/features.
So… 2.0 could go alpha but would go through same mocking and ridicule that 1.0 went through — with the letter I got from Aaron Swartz, it is something I am considering, but it will be pretty hard on me, and double-so because there are so many obvious shortcomings but I am still working from my own roadmap, so I wouldn’t really want any feedback, I mean, it’s like if you build a house, you don’t want strangers to come by and tell you that you need to put in a missing window while you are busy nailing the floor — so alpha release would solely be for users, but for most users 1.5 is probably still the better choice, but I will re-evaluate when the stories for the next three iterations have been completed (Pivotal Tracker speak), as these are the most glaring defects.
[…] I can't help but wonder if your promise of "free upgrades" has blasted a crater in your motivation to work on TM2. Is there a possibility of this, Allan?
Free upgrade surely was a mistake ;) But I tend to find motivation in other things than money, so it hasn’t really affected the timeline.
[…]
- State that TM3 will be released with those features, and will be a paid
upgrade for everyone.
It will probably have to be the 2.1 release which will have to make up for the money I left on the table with that “free 2.0” promise ;)
textmate mailing list textmate@lists.macromates.com http://lists.macromates.com/listinfo/textmate
I love TM that I have, but I would be lying if I didn't say I didn't poke around the other editors whenever a ugly bug rears its head and pisses me off.
That's it. I neither need to have new shiny TM2, but want some bugfixes (Parsing improvement for long lines) and minor features requested long time ago (Soft-wrap indention). But the fact nothing is actually happening with TM1, and long standing requests makes me peek around once for a while for alternative editor.
On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Adam Strzelecki ono@java.pl wrote:
That's it. I neither need to have new shiny TM2, but want some bugfixes
(Parsing improvement for long lines) and minor features requested long time ago (Soft-wrap indention).
TextMate 1.5 is a great editor, but it's remained fundamentally the same for several years now. There are weird little bugs in TM that aren't being addressed (the "save a new file at the root directory" one, for instance), some useful features TM has never had (pane splitting) and some things that TM has just never done well at (handling large files and having many files open at once--both things that the old fogey of the Mac editing world, BBEdit, ironically handles really well). And other editors... well, aren't standing still. It's pretty clear that both Coda and Espresso are tacitly courting TextMate users, and I expect Coda 2.0 to be a really serious contender.
I'm quite aware Allan doesn't have any interest in hearing "Dude, you gotta do this faster" any more," and that he still feels somewhat burned about the bad reaction TextMate 1.0 got in a lot of quarters. And, yeah, a buggy TM2 public beta does risk a bit of that. On the flip side, though, there's a solid TM1 release that people can be pointed to, which wasn't the case the first time through: it's a lot safer now, in terms of perception, to let the public beta be a public beta. More importantly, it would give the TM community an opportunity to start working on new bundles that TM2's final release would have available right out of the starting gate.
Okay, I'll stop now. :)
-
Adam Strzelecki -
Allan Odgaard -
Head Honcho -
Ray Slakinski -
Tim Harper -
Tobias Jung -
Watts Martin -
Yan Zhou