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

[Mark Smith]

Mats Persson wrote:


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


Indeed, fair is fair.


>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. ;-)


I would argue that it is somewhat moronic to project the notion that if you ask for a feature from Bare Bones, you won't get it and you might have to take some abuse for asking, whereas here in TextMate land, you can have whatever you want, as soon as you want and that this can be carried on into perpetuity.

However, I will allow that it was not a particularly well chosen word.


>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.

As has everybody.


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

In the last week, I noticed several. Yesterday I had also prepared a reply to a post by William Neumann in the split panes thread, but then thought again and didn't post it, because I thought this will blow over. When two more such posts arrived soon after, it seemed like it was fair enough to go ahead and say my small piece. Might have been a bad call.


>> 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.

Which in my experience have been exemplary. 

>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 !!)

But you will concede I hope that it is normal to have a significant influence in the direction of a fledgling app, but little in the direction of a mature app ? That is the main difference in this case.


>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 ??

...Ditto.


>
>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 ???

I won't resort to searching the archive and naming names unless I must, but I have seen several posts of this nature in the last couple of weeks. Honestly.

Bare Bones have, for example announced that Subversion support is planned as a priority feature addition for BBEdit. A long time back, SFTP was announced as a priority feature addition. IMAP support and savable queries have been announced as planned features for Mailsmith and these are just off the top of my head.


>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.

Two posts with precisely that allegation in the last two days actually.


>> 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 
>!!!

Just focussed on things that were not considered important for a subset of their users you mean ? A lot of this has to do with the fact that BBEdit is a mature product and its not so easy and certainly not so clever to just start a bolt-on approach to feature addition. Thats the win32 way and we all know what that leads too. So, its inevitable that a user, or group of users will find a haven in a fledgling editor where they will get a better return on feature requests for two big reasons:

        1. They are automatically a more significant proportion of the over all user base

        2. Its easier for the developer to influence the direction of their app at an early stage.

To take your example of user editable syntax highlighting, this has been introduced with BBEdit 8 and I imagine that the CLM features will expand until the C-based plugins become obsolete. Sure Allan is currently kicking their ass in this areas. Good on him. Its not though, in my opinion, a robust ground on which to accuse Bare Bones of laziness and arrogance.

Do you suppose that Allan would be so agile if he were working in C with private carbon frameworks on an app as mature, feature rich and with such a complex Apple Events model as BBEdit ?


>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)

? Yes. Its not really relevant to the (or at least *my*) argument though is it ?


>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.


Sure. You can be sure that BBEdit are aware of Allan and TextMate and maybe even concerned for the first time since Pepper got up a head of steam. I hope that this will be a positive catalyst for both. *If* anti-Bare Bones sentiments turn out to be a significant component of the TextMate community in the mid-term though, it may be that the shoe will end up on the other foot. I hope not. I hope we can throw that shoe away altogether.


>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.


Fine. It was probably a mistake for me to comment, but as I mention, there have been a number of posts in the last couple of weeks of this "flavour". Maybe more seasoned community members don't notice them so much or maybe the longer in the tooth TextMate users are those who are least satisfied with TextMate ? If the latter is the case, its guys like me that Allan will need to be recruiting as of now...

In any case, I said I'd answer the first batch. I've done that now, so I withdraw with an apology for straying off topic and an additional one for anybody that I riled with my comments.

mark.