[TextMate] First impressions

[Nick Hristov]

Let the flamewars begin!

> 6. Context sensitive code completion that is included in skedit and DW 
> (XHTML/CSS are most importnat to me).

In my opinion that is a bad idea. This will bloat the editor. XHTML and 
CSS are not all that hard to learn, and you can quickly learn by heart 
the properties. Is this going to save you that much typing?

It would be more applicable for cocoa where you have things such as 
initWithACalibratedPredefinedButtLongMethodNameColor: 
withThisParameter: andThisParameter: andMoremormeoParameters.

And Xcode already does that for cocoa.

2. The issue about CSS.

Again, this would unnecessarily bloat the editor. CSSEdit is a great 
stand-alone application, it does what it is supposed to do perfectly. 
Just run it in conjunction with TextMate.

Nick

On Oct 6, 2004, at 11:52 AM, Eric Curtis wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Well I happen to be one of the people that was eagerly awaiting TM 
> after reading all the buzz and never having been that fond of BBedit. 
> With that said let me share some of my initial impression after a 
> couple of hours of work.
>
> 1. Has a great feel overall.
> 2. Has the best project file list that I have seen, like DW but fast 
> and pretty. The Drag and drop from the finder is great.
> 3. Integrated macros are a big timesaver.
>
> Before the following list I just want to say that TM is the closest to 
> perfect text editor I have used however for me it still has a few 
> missing items. I would also like to encourage the developers to listen 
> closely to these because I have a sense that this might be the perfect 
> editor for a heavy duty programmer but the html designer/coder that I 
> am might not have been the main focus and with a few improvements they 
> could tap a whole other market (please take no ill will from this 
> assumption I am quite ready to be told I am wrong, I also think that 
> one or two of the following points might be solvable now).
>
> Criticisms and Wish-list (in order of desire to see improved)
> 4. Dragging an image from the project pane into a HTML file should add 
> something like <img src="eric.jpg" alt="eric" width="100" height="100" 
> /> and not the actual source code of an image at the insertion point.
>
> 5. IMO the preview window needs help. I really do not like the fact 
> that it closes when I switch to another document and even worse does 
> not reappear when returning to the original document. This is might 
> commonly be done when switching to another document to copy and paste 
> something. I would much rather see a non-modal preview window that 
> updates when as the user switches between files. It would also be 
> helpful if it did not display non-html files such as css files.
>
> As a web designer that adheres to web-standards I find myself doing 
> quite a bit of work in the CSS file while needing to
> to view the html file.  I need to have a html preview open while 
> editing the CSS file. I find that I am doing just as much designing in 
> code as in photoshop these days. I use a wonderful program called 
> CSSedit (http://www.macrabbit.com/cssedit/) for this right now and 
> while there preview is not perfect it is much more usable right now. 
> Please go and check it out and see if you can provide a quick fix or 
> two.
>
> 5a. Preview to Browser seems like it is almost there however the 
> command currently refreshes the front safari window however it does 
> not but the page that I am viewing into safari first! It seems like 
> there should be two commands - first preview current page in bowser - 
> and then secondly the current command to refresh the page. I think 
> this one might be a quick fix as it is in the commands menu (I would 
> do it and share if I could but alas I do not know applescript yet.)
>
> 6. Context sensitive code completion that is included in skedit and DW 
> (XHTML/CSS are most importnat to me).
> 7. Column select but with the option for discontinuous selections 
> (selecting every other line) like subethaedit.
> 8. Working with a remote server/FTP like DW
> 9. Split Pane Views
>
> BUGS
> 1. HTML highlighting seems to break after the following:
> <script language="JavaScript" src="behaviors.js" 
> type="text/javascript"></script>
>
> 2. If you open an HTML page with a Quicktime movie and then go to 
> another page the preview window closes (as mentioned above in point 5) 
> however I noticed that the movie (or at least the sound) kept playing 
> even though the window was gone. So an uneducated guess might be that 
> the window is not disposing of all elements that where in it and it 
> might represent a significant problem/memory leak if it also not 
> disposing flash/shockwave and graphics.
>
> Keep up the great work. I would be very interested in feedback about 
> my suggestions from the developer and if they are on the table to be 
> taken care of I would strongly consider purchasing a copy now.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Eric Curtis
>
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