Why no TextMate for Linux?
in [Ruby]
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From: Robert Dober on 7 Mar 2010 04:45 On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Paul Harrington <xenogenesis(a)gmail.com> wrote: > David Masover wrote: >> A better question might be why so much of the Ruby community has >> embraced a >> proprietary editor which is only available for a proprietary OS. > > Probably because its very good software on a very good OS? Using > proprietary technology actually does not stop the progress of open > source. Because it is derived (completely legally) from one of the soundest and best open source projects there have ever been, openBSD. I feel that David's concern is very reasonable in a world in which Apple and Google are about to rival for domination. I am using gmail, r ight and I am not criticizing anyone who uses MacOS and Textmate. However wondering why seems legitimate. I also feel that I can do much more with gvim than Textmate will ever be able to do, but I am aware that much, much setup work is needed to get there. (Probably the same is true for emacs). Textmate is incredibly powerful out of the starting blocks, but vim is almost like emacs an OS. Ruby integration into VIM is very basic but powerful enough to get us anywhere :). Because after all this ML is about Ruby and not editors (well at least when I checked back last time) cheers R > > (That being said, I code with Vim in Linux, so...) > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > > -- Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. --- Confucius
From: David Masover on 10 Mar 2010 20:39 On Saturday 06 March 2010 10:05:04 am Paul Harrington wrote: > Using > proprietary technology actually does not stop the progress of open > source. That much is true, most of the time. There are notable exceptions -- for instance, the fact that people are starting to incorporate textmate URLs into HTML stacktraces and such, so that you can just click on something and have it pop up in TextMate, but those aren't portable at all. Far better would be to come up with some sort of standard "Go to this line of this file in a text editor" URL scheme that the open source community could adopt also. But that's a ridiculously trivial, almost contrived example. Most of the time, using proprietary technology doesn't cause problems for open source -- so long as the open source project remains independent of said proprietary technology. I'm much more interested in it on a personal level. Switching text editors at this point might be, for most of us, far trickier than switching OSes, and could be almost as bad as switching keyboard layouts. (Dvorak, anyone?) By picking a proprietary technology, you're doing several things that I can't really see being worth the risk: * You're locked-in to a single provider -- in this case, a single _person_. - If Allan Odgaard doesn't want to implement a feature you want, you're SOL. - If Allan Odgaard can't fix a bug that's annoying you, you're also SOL. - if Allan Odgaard wants money for a new car, you might find the next version of TextMate costs significantly more. * You're tied to an OS which is notorious for breaking backwards- compatibility. - The next version of OS X is as likely as not to break the current version of TextMate. It's entirely up to Allan whether there will be a fix, and how much such a fix would cost -- maybe it's only available in a new version of TextMate. - Once you do upgrade, the new version of TextMate is as likely as not to refuse to work on old versions of OS X, so you'd better upgrade all your boxes at once. - If you don't like the new OS X, for whatever reason, some new version of TextMate might force you to upgrade anyway. - Switching OSes -- to Linux, to Windows, to Plan9, to whatever -- is out of the question for you. * You're a programmer, yet you can't program your own programming tools. - I don't care how extensible it is, you don't have the source. - Look at the tricks tools like Diakonos can do. Can TextMate do that? - Basically, TextMate may be at the top of the heap now (though there's certainly room for debate), but if it continues to innovate, you can't be a part of that. I would hope tools like Diakonos would win out in the long run, because people who use them would inevitably contribute needed changes -- if there was ever a "scratch your own itch" app, a text editor is it. * Again, a SINGLE PERSON is responsible for the destiny of this editor. - If Allan should be hit by a bus (not that I am wishing this on anyone), what happens to TextMate development? Now, I don't personally hack on my own text editor. It's also MUCH less of a commitment than, say, a framework -- if you were on ASP.NET, for instance, you'd be tethered to Microsoft for the lifetime of your app or until you port, and it's much harder to port an entire app than to learn a new text editor. Still, think about it. Would you choose a proprietary programming language? Library? Framework? If not, why not, and why would you use a proprietary text editor, or debugger, or _any_ proprietary programming tool? I generally don't bother people about developing on OS X. It's annoying, but most of the Ruby stuff is going to be general Unix stuff anyway, not Mac- specific. But then, switching OSes is easy when your tools are portable. But this is just my own curiosity. If you were using IE6, I'd hate you forever, and this rant would be much longer, and it would never stop until you stopped using IE6. If you're using TextMate, I think you're making a mistake, but it really doesn't affect me that much.
From: andrew mcelroy on 10 Mar 2010 20:55 [Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.] On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 7:39 PM, David Masover <ninja(a)slaphack.com> wrote: > > > * Again, a SINGLE PERSON is responsible for the destiny of this editor. > - If Allan should be hit by a bus (not that I am wishing this on anyone), > what happens to TextMate development? > > > My earlier statements apparently went totally ignored. Redcar is making a lot of progress. It is a JRuby text editor that is attempting to be a complete clone and fully compatible with the text mate snippets. It has been stable enough to begin to code with for a little while now. It is a shame that this editor doesn't get more attention. The idea of the editor its self being ruby is pretty hip. You could theoretically meta program the editor much in the same way you can IRB. Redcar if I am not mistaking is bsd licensed. Andrew
From: David Masover on 10 Mar 2010 23:48 On Wednesday 10 March 2010 07:55:09 pm andrew mcelroy wrote: > Redcar is making a lot of progress. It is a JRuby text editor that is > attempting to be a complete clone and fully compatible with the text mate > snippets. It has been stable enough to begin to code with for a little > while now. Looks interesting. The only reason I mention Diakonos is that if I was going to start learning a new editor, I might want a console one if I can make that work -- it'd be something I can actually run over SSH, on remote machines, without having to mount the filesystems first via sshfs. Right now, I just use Kate, and vim when I have to ssh. > You could theoretically meta program the editor much in the same way you > can IRB. That's the idea. And yes, more power to Redcar, and Diakonos, and anything else. My rant was specifically against relying on a single piece of proprietary software for your development -- if there's actually a reasonable replacement by now, so be it, though if I went that route, I'd suggest Redcar on OS X as well.
From: Seebs on 10 Mar 2010 23:42
On 2010-03-11, David Masover <ninja(a)slaphack.com> wrote: > I'm much more interested in it on a personal level. Switching text editors at > this point might be, for most of us, far trickier than switching OSes, and > could be almost as bad as switching keyboard layouts. (Dvorak, anyone?) By > picking a proprietary technology, you're doing several things that I can't > really see being worth the risk: Just as a data point, I still use vi as my primary editor (nvi by preference, I dislike vim). And yet... I have TextMate, and BBEdit, both, on my Mac. > * You're locked-in to a single provider -- in this case, a single _person_. > - If Allan Odgaard doesn't want to implement a feature you want, you're > SOL. > - If Allan Odgaard can't fix a bug that's annoying you, you're also SOL. > - if Allan Odgaard wants money for a new car, you might find the next > version of TextMate costs significantly more. Sure. But if the CURRENT version meets my needs, great! It's not as if most people can realistically get a real feature change into vi. Even most programmers would be unlikely to find it worth the time and effort. > * You're tied to an OS which is notorious for breaking backwards- > compatibility. lolwut? I have things from OS X 10.0, written for PowerPC systems, which still run on Intel in 10.6. I'm not seeing a real issue here. > - The next version of OS X is as likely as not to break the current version > of TextMate. You have any evidence for this? I've been using OS X as one of my desktop platforms for about a decade now, and thus far, I've had VERY few programs broken by upgrades -- and those were always things which I would have expected to break, like low-level hacks into the window manager or something similar. > - Once you do upgrade, the new version of TextMate is as likely as not to > refuse to work on old versions of OS X, so you'd better upgrade all your boxes > at once. Again, this claim "as likely as not" seems pretty implausible to me. It's extremely unusual for anyone to make a tool like this not work on at least the two or three most recent revisions. Do you have any kind of data to back this claim up, or is this just generic FUD? If we're gonna be doing FUD, how about I warn people that they shouldn't be relying on Ruby, because a new version of Ruby might break existing scripts? Oh, wait. That actually *happens*, so we don't worry about it. > - If you don't like the new OS X, for whatever reason, some new version of > TextMate might force you to upgrade anyway. But you don't have to get a new version, if the one you have works. > - Switching OSes -- to Linux, to Windows, to Plan9, to whatever -- is out > of the question for you. I would consider that pretty normal for a lot of tools. I expect to have to switch tools when I switch OS's. There are exceptions, but by and large, the default I expect is that any given program will probably be specific to a target platform. > * You're a programmer, yet you can't program your own programming tools. > - I don't care how extensible it is, you don't have the source. > - Look at the tricks tools like Diakonos can do. Can TextMate do that? > - Basically, TextMate may be at the top of the heap now (though there's > certainly room for debate), but if it continues to innovate, you can't be a > part of that. I would hope tools like Diakonos would win out in the long run, > because people who use them would inevitably contribute needed changes -- if > there was ever a "scratch your own itch" app, a text editor is it. I have never found myself with any complaints about the available options, preferences, or features in either BBEdit or TextMate. I use vi because I like the raw speed, and don't need the flashy stuff, but I've never found myself wishing to extend either of them. > * Again, a SINGLE PERSON is responsible for the destiny of this editor. > - If Allan should be hit by a bus (not that I am wishing this on anyone), > what happens to TextMate development? Presumably it goes to the estate. I dunno. I don't see this as a big deal. Again, if the current version works for me, I don't care about future versions for a long time. > Still, think about it. Would you choose a proprietary programming language? If it was the right tool for the job, yes. > Library? If it was the right tool for the job, yes. > Framework? If it was the right tool for the job, yes. I'm making myself an iPhone app. I dunno if I'll ever even get it to the point where I'd submit it to the app store. I want it for my own use. It is heavily tied to several proprietary frameworks. So what? Nothing else lets me do what I want. So I'll use Objective-C (not technically proprietary, but functionally so), a number of proprietary libraries, several proprietary frameworks, and a series of proprietary development tools. Because they let me do what I want. > If not, why not, and why would you use a proprietary text > editor, or debugger, or _any_ proprietary programming tool? I would use them because they had features I wanted or needed which justified their cost. If I were doing something that was targeting Intel chips, and I needed the best possible performance, you BET it'd be using the Intel proprietary compiler. If I were targeting Cell, and I needed the best possible performance, you BET it'd be using the IBM compilers. If I had a short deadline for debugging something, and a proprietary tool had a feature that would let me debug it, yes, I'd use a proprietary tool. Purify does stuff that most other allocation checkers I've tried didn't. If I desperately needed to fix an allocation bug, I might well tell management "get me a license for Purify or move your schedule". (Well, probably not, since I'm pretty good at those anyway...) I don't have a problem with proprietary tools, IF they do their job well enough to justify the hassles. > I generally don't bother people about developing on OS X. It's annoying, but > most of the Ruby stuff is going to be general Unix stuff anyway, not Mac- > specific. But then, switching OSes is easy when your tools are portable. It is usually a bit of a tradeoff. I'll accept some non-portability of tools to get jobs done sooner and with less effort. I am a moderately experienced Unix geek, but the shared disk used by the various computers in my house is attached to a box running OS X Server, because the cost of my time to set all that stuff up correctly is an order of magnitude more than the cost to have something where I click the "yes, make this available to Windows too" button. ...Which is gonna go away now that the two people who had Windows machines have moved out. But I'll still probably use OS X Server, because it does what I want and stays out of my face. Good enough. -s -- Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated! |