[TxMt] What I _really_ want in TM2

[Allan Odgaard]

On 31. Jul 2007, at 19:26, Kenneth McDonald wrote:

> [...] what _I'd_ like [...] is--simplicity. I'd like Alan to  
> concentrate a significant part of his design and programming  
> prowess on making TM not more powerful, but more obvious.

Introducing new abstractions / infrastructure is generally of higher  
priority than specific features (well, everything is a case by case  
muddiedby dozens of trade offs, technical challenges, and resource  
constraints), and new abstractions is generally what make things  
appear simpler.

> My canonical example of this is the whole keybindings issue [...]

Here’s what I posted in a blog comment [1]:

     I am aware that the current key binding system is fragmented
     and thus confusing. This comes from drawing on the OS as much
     as possible, which is necessary for several reasons. Even if I
     want, I can’t write a full replacement for what the OS does
     with “events”, i.e. to have better control of things, but I am
     doing what I can to make things appear more harmonized in the
     future.

So I am aware of this and do have ideas that can improve things.

[1]: http://macromates.com/blog/2007/textmates-many-key-shortcuts/ 
#comment-2531

> (This may have something to do with age. At 43, the days when I  
> both had the time and the desire to learn about cool "new"  
> features, keybindings, etc, are long gone. [...])

I am surprised you spend this much time *changing* the default key  
bindings. Most people will just learn the defaults, which is the path  
of least resistance ;)