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From: sl4m on 12 Mar 2010 15:51
[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I'm going to keep a watchful eye on Redcar, thanks.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 09:01, Roger Pack <rogerpack2005(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Steve Kim wrote:
> > While I have not tried, the linux version of e-texteditor (originally
> > only
> > for Windows) is free and available here:
> > http://wiki.github.com/etexteditor/e/.
>
> It is free but unless you register will give you a popup at startup time
> saying "your license has expired" (then allowing you to continue) :)
>
> The only open source textmate clone I'm aware of is Redcar. It just
> released a new version with snippets now :)
>
> http://redcareditor.com/2010/03/redcar-034dev-released/
>
> -r
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
>

From: David Masover on 12 Mar 2010 18:39
On Thursday 11 March 2010 06:50:07 am Diego Virasoro 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:
>
> To be honest with you I find your arguments weak at best. At the end
> of the day the data it spits out (the files you work on) are simple
> text files.

Yes, I acknowledged this, and it's why I care much more about people using IE
than people using TextMate.

> Yes, it may cost some retraining time to move to another text
> editor but so what:

So, that's a nuisance and a cost, and depending on how much you find yourself
relying on a given tool, it may start to be significant.

> Do you make your own car on the off chance that the car makers will
> make a car you won't like?

Bad analogy -- I don't have to "make my own car," there's things like RedCar,
Diakonos, and others.

But there isn't really a lot of choice in cars. If I want a decent car at an
affordable price, I pretty much want something manufactured, probably
something used. It's entirely impractical to build it myself.

If you want a better car analogy for this sort of thing, I recommend Neal
Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line":

> Or maybe create your own mobile phone
> because you are worried that tomorrow Nokia et al. will produce phones
> you don't like?
>
> Everytime you move from one product to another you need to retrain
> yourself. Those of us who bought Textmate did it for what it is, and
> that will not change. And as any other complex product in life if the
> future Textmate will not be good enough, we will not buy it and get
> something else.
>
> Diego
>

From: David Masover on 12 Mar 2010 19:13
On Wednesday 10 March 2010 10:55:11 pm Seebs wrote:
> But if the CURRENT version meets my needs, great!

So long as the current version continues to work.

> 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.

Most likely -- but having the ability is important.

I'm unlikely to ever want to, say, burn an American flag, but it is important
to me that I have that right.

> > * 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.

And I've seen things break from 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5.

> > - 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.

It's been long enough since I've used OS X that it's possible I'm remembering
low-level hacks. Then again, I remember even things like VLC would require at
least 10.3, and this is when 10.4 was the latest. So...

> > - 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.

Two or three is nice, still means you're going to have to upgrade when it's
four, five, or six revisions out of date -- either the program or the OS.

Again, I don't mind this so much in open source, because in cases where an old
version had some merit, and we think they screwed up the new version too much,
we can fork the old version and maintain it. In particular:

> 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?

1.9 might, yes. But Ruby is open source. Don't like 1.9? Fork 1.8.7, or even
1.8.6. I believe someone is currently maintaining a stable 1.8.6.

With proprietary software, that's not an option -- Microsoft wanted to force
Vista on everyone, so they threatened to pull support for XP. That would've
meant security vulnerabilities, among other things, making life difficult for
those of us wanting to stay on XP -- no chance of any bugfixes. Microsoft
maintains support for old version of Windows, but to a point -- beyond which,
the community CANNOT take over.

Now consider the case of a killer app developed by a single individual. What
are the chances he's going to expend significant time and energy maintaining
old versions of TextMate when he could be working on a new version (and
charging for it) instead?

Can you see why I might be more inclined to trust a popular open-source
project developed by dozens (hundreds?) of people around the world, rather
than a proprietary project developed by a single person?

> > - 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,

My text editor of choice right now is Kate, and the entire KDE project is
cross-platform. My other text editor of choice is vim, and it even runs on
Windows, with some help. For school, I'm forced to use Java, so I use Eclipse,
which is also cross-platform. Ruby is cross-platform. Rails is cross-platform.

My web browser of choice is Google Chrome, which is cross-platform. My other
web browser of choice is Firefox, which is cross-platform. Third would be
Konqueror, which is as portable as KDE.

For writing and publishing, I'm using OpenOffice and Scribus, which are both
cross-platform.

For image editing, Krita or Gimp -- cross-platform, and cross-platform.

For remote management, I use ssh and rdesktop -- cross-platform, and... oh,
there it is. I bet rdesktop doesn't have a Windows version, huh? That's OK, I
can use Windows' native Remote Desktop client.

Whew. That was hard to find the one tool which isn't portable, and I'm not
even sure about that -- it might run under Cygwin!

> > 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.

Really? Android doesn't? That's interesting.

> > If not, why not, and why would you use a proprietary text
> > editor, or debugger, or _any_ proprietary programming tool?
>
> I don't have a problem with proprietary tools, IF they do their job well
> enough to justify the hassles.

I tend to agree, yet I notice, again, a trend where people like that
everything Ruby is open source, yet don't care to look for the same in their
OS or editor.

And that is a big if...

> > 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'll do that, if it's enough sooner and enough less effort to justify the loss
of flexibility. I'd much rather spend a bit more time and get it right the
first time, using portable, flexible, open tools, so that I don't have to
completely redo it if something needs to be changed.

There's always a tradeoff, I just find it interesting where people draw the
line. For example:

> 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.

sudo apt-get install samba

A fileserver is about the easiest thing to set up. I have to ask how much
you're being paid where half an hour or so of your time is more valuable than
the hardware markup for an OS X server.

From: Josh Cheek on 13 Mar 2010 02:41
[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I don't understand the debate, it's just a text editor. It doesn't encode my
data in some format I can't get it back out of, it is just an environment I
work in, and I assume most of us customize our environments.

TM is simply the editor that has made me the happiest, I know how to
customize it in lots of different ways, even editing the language
definitions, macros, automating commands, impressive power editing, etc (big
thanks to James Edward Gray 2 for his TextMate book).

I would almost certainly be less happy working in a different editor, so I
don't see any reason to do so. And yes, it has dramatically increased my
productivity, and the ease with which I can do lots of different things.
Even simple things, like try out some quick Ruby script. It is so quick and
trivially easy that I find myself doing it constantly, as Linus Torvalds
said in his git talk, "That's the kind of performance that actually changes
how you work. It's no longer doing the same thing faster, it's allowing you
to work in a completely different manner." (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8) That is the kind of change that
TextMate has made for me.

For example, the "execute and update" option has utterly replaced irb for
me. I would be exceedingly unhappy if I had to go back.

And it's not just with Ruby, take C, for example, a few keystrokes to jump
from any application into a new TextMate window that knows it contains C
code. A macro to generate the basic code C requires and kick my cursor to
where it should be, write the bit of code I was thinking about, a keystroke
to compile, run, and display the results.

I can get to the point of writing the code as fast as I can think about
wanting to do it.

Anyway, while having all the source of a language or an application like
FireFox or something might mean that I can go in and change it, but as Seebs
said, that is not really a tangible ability for me. I quite simply don't
have the experience or knowledge to make such changes. While I can't go to
that level in TextMate, I can change almost everything that I would ever
want to, and the ability to do so is extremely accessible, so I've done a
lot more custom coding to TextMate than any other application. (though I do
hack different on smaller less mature libraries when necessary).

So aside from feeling a little weird about a new environment, if I have to
jump to Linux or Windows, I really see no downsides of TextMate. Of course,
I'd experience that, regardless.

As far as the link thing goes, if there is a standard, then I'd chastize
TextMate for not following it. If there isn't a standard, then I don't see
how this is a mark against them. If an open source project added this
functionality, we would be using it as an example of open source pushing
progress.

Also, Alan isn't the only dev on TextMate anymore, there is at least one
other guy. Whether he'd be able to take over if something happened to Alan,
I don't know, but it's a viable enough product that it is unlikely it would
just go away.

And also, TextMate takes a lot of influence from open source styled
projects, with a sort of community based repository of themes and bundles
and plugins (you can make dramatic changes to TM itself with plugins).

So, yeah, I generally think that open source is preferable to proprietary,
but that's a general trend, not a law of the universe, and I really can't
see any of the arguments being viable against something as orthogonal to the
code as a text editor. And there may be (and probably are) other very viable
options out there, but TextMate fits my needs and preferences extremely
well, and I am quite satisfied with it.

From: Michal Suchanek on 13 Mar 2010 08:12
On 13 March 2010 07:05, Seebs <usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-03-13, David Masover <ninja(a)slaphack.com> wrote:
>> On Friday 12 March 2010 07:00:06 pm Seebs wrote:

>> I haven't seen much of that, not that it matters -- the point is that
>> generally, open code that has a userbase of programmers will be maintained
>> across those versions, and even the old, unpopular versions are often forked
>> and maintained. Neither of these is guaranteed for proprietary software.
>
> Neither of them is guaranteed for anything.  I'd say, though, that I've
> seen a lot better support for five-year-old proprietary software than I
> usually have for two-year old open source -- because open source users
> tend to be a lot more willing to upgrade, since it's close to free to do
> so.
>
> People whose livelihood depends on the quality of their support have
> an incentive to meet user demands.

If you are willing to pay the money you did for the proprietary
support I am sure you would get support for any opensource application
of you choice as well.

>> It's also an argument against considering Windows to be the basis of your
>> business or livelihood, unless you're willing to accept that upgrade
>> treadmill. Again, before Win7, the choice was likely between XP and Vista, and
>> many savvier consumers disliked Vista with a passion.
>
> Yes.
>
> But for some users, that upgrade treadmill may be worth it -- especially if,
> say, you gain enough benefit from a particular Windows-only app that it
> is more efficient to upgrade frequently than to make do with something else.
>
>> And the only way out? Win7. But that was, again, depending wholly on Microsoft
>> to solve the issue.
>
> Sure.
>
> But so what?  People in general know that going in, and sometimes they make
> the decision that it's the right tradeoff.  I'm not trying to argue that
> there's no downside to a proprietary solution -- only that it's not at all
> obvious that it'll always, or even usually, be foolish to pick one.

The problem is that people often do not do this decision. They just
have something on their computer like the MS Access/Office environment
so they write their application in it not realizing that in 1-2 years
there will be a new MS Office version and their application will no
longer work. So bringing this up is important but it is quite a bit
offtopic here.

>
>> I'm arguing that it is a huge benefit, and I'm puzzled that people place so
>> little value on it, especially when I presume it's exactly this kind of
>> benefit that would lead someone to Ruby in the first place.
>
> Not really.  What leads me to Ruby in the first place is that it's pleasant
> to work with.  If I wanted something less vendor-dependant or less likely
> to be suddenly changed out from under me, leaving me with no practical
> support, there are probably half a dozen languages I'd be better off with
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