Bare Bones [was: [TxMt] Public to-do list for TM (was: Textile Bundle?)

[Mats Persson]

On 18 Mar 2005, at 10:59, Mark Smith wrote:
> OK. I've declined to respond to a few of these already. So what 
> follows is not intended as a specific response to Mats' levity 
> above...

Well, since my levity 'made the cup runneth over' so to speak, I have 
to respond to Mark's points.


> There is a great deal to praise about TextMate, Allan and the 
> community, but do we need to sour it with continual jibes at Bare 
> Bones ?

True praise generally comes from doing the right or good things.  Jibes 
(= negative comments) generally comes from doing bad or the wrong 
things. Sometimes they are deserved, sometimes they are not.


> I can't be bothered with this moronicity.

Hmm, I obviously must have missed some things that you've read Mark, as 
this "moronicity" has completely passed me by.
I'll ignore the "moronicity" 'word' as a badly chosen word, rather than 
anything else. ;-)


> Bare Bones Software is a dedicated Mac software developer with a very 
> well earned standing in the community.  As a long standing user of 
> BBEdit and Mailsmith and a long standing subscriber to all of Bare 
> Bones mailing lists, I can say that many of the policy jibes I've read 
> here about Bare Bones are not true.

Yes, BB is (has been??) a respected Mac app developer. I've paid for 
and used BBEdit since '98/'99 including BBEdit 8.0.x, so I think I have 
an absolute right to express my views of the company/product.

Perhaps, you can point out just a few of the 'continual' jibes that are 
unjustified in your mind ??


> That they don't listen to users, don't ever announce planned features 
> and haven't added anything significant to their products in an age is 
> bullshit.

Mark, I like the blending of several different aspect in that sentence. 
But let's address each point:

1.	...don't listen to users:
As outsiders we can only hope that they listen to their users, but we 
can only see/judge their response to our own proposals.

As you can research on this list, I have been proposing a few ideas 
here and there (I try my best to keep them to a minimum :) ) and as a 
BBEdit user I have proposed as many or more to BB over the years, to 
not see a single thing end up in the app. Most of the things I 
suggested are present in TM, so they can't all have been bad!! (IF I 
feel bothered, and need to, I can probably trawl old CD's, e-mail 
backups for the e-mails to prove that !!)

To give you a simple and very telling example please read the following 
post: [ http://www.listsearch.com/BBEditTalk.lasso?id=17218 ] It's a 
simple proposal that I made publicly in September last year, and as far 
as I can see there has not been a single bit of that implemented 
anywhere in BBEdit.  I - and others - have asked for far more from 
Allan (a single developer vs 4+ dev's) since September, and he has 
implemented, or is working on most of those requests/features.  Most of 
which seem - in my layman's point-of-view - far more demanding than 
taking the existing Glossary palette window in BBEdit and adding it to 
the drawer, which is just one of my points. Please correct me if I'm 
wrong on that point anyone ??

2.	...don't ever announce planned features = bs
Please show me where BB announces their planned features?? I've never 
seen that part before !!!  And while you're at it, please show me where 
anyone on this list has complained about BB's lack of announcements ???


3.  ...added anything significant...
I can't recall anyone on this list ever saying that they haven't added 
anything significant, they obviously must have. However, these 
additions has never been to the true benefit of my work style and 
workflow, in contrast to Allan's improvements to TM.


> TextMate is the best new mac only editor to arrive since BBEdit. 
> TextMate kicks BBEdits ass in some ways. BBEdit kicks TextMate's ass 
> in others. This will remain the case if we are lucky enough to 
> continue to have two excellent editors on the platform.

Yes, the Mac (=OS X) has more editors than ever before, and most of 
them kick BBEdit's ass in so many different areas. Something we should 
be happy and grateful for.

However, the single important point to focus on here though, is this 
one. (Business 101 coming up)

When you are successful, and/or the market leader in your niche market, 
it is way too easy to become big headed, complacent and so on. It is a 
problem that affects every single company/organisation/country 
eventually. It has affected Apple, M$, many countries/empires in 
history and countless more examples, so I'm not singling out BareBones 
here.

Just sit back, and ask yourself this very simple question, IF BBEdit 
was so damn good, and catered so well to every single need of its 
users, would there be a market for TM, skEdit, SubEthaEdit ????  Just 
mentioning three great and small apps that has started up since the 
release of OS X,  all of them produced by much smaller 
companies/numbers of developers than BBEdit. Now IF all three of those 
new apps, can implement easy USER changeable syntax highlighting, on 
top of all the other work required to build a editor, then why the hell 
can't BB do that ?? Are BB incompetent ?? No, either they have not been 
bothered, or alternatively, just focused on the wrong type of things 
!!!

Another point. The next time an app crashes, copy the CrashLog and 
paste it into new TM & BBEdit doc's and then begin typing some extra 
text into the top of the doc. TM handles this without problems, BBEdit 
is barely usable with serious lag time. (Using iMac G5 with 1.25 GB 
RAM)

There you have just two simple examples. Do I wish for BB to disappear 
??? No, I want them to wake up, smell the coffee and start working to 
keep Allan and other developers on top form. That's what's good for all 
of us, and that's what is good for OS X as a platform.


> Can we drop this now and focus on TextMate ? (That's how it works on 
> the BBEdit lists.)

In my opinion the focus has always and exclusively been on TM, and 
never ever on any other app. The only times some other app - like 
BBEdit - has been mentioned, is in a qualified reference/point. If that 
statement is wrong, I trust that I will be corrected real soon.


Finally, in order to clarify things fully:

On 18 Mar 2005, at 10:29, Mats Persson wrote to Allan's comment:
>> Competition??? oh.. the rock stars over at BareBones ;)
> Yeah, I heard about them once. They were pretty big around the time of 
> The Beatles weren't they ?? Not seen much good come out of them lately 
> ;-)

The above quote(s) was intended as light entertainment - also know as 
lame jokes (mine at least, not yours Allan).  The big clue to that is 
the smilies at the end of the sentence.  ;-)


Peace be with you all, and have a nice weekend away from the computers !


Kind regards,

Mats

----
"TextMate, coding with an incredible sense of joy and ease"
- www.macromates.com -