I never thought I would be pleasantly surprised by a text editor in the year 2005, but here we are! Since switching over to the Mac from Linux as a primary web development platform, I have been searching for powerful tools.

I come from a background of using Vim for nearly all of my text file creations, from emails to software. So I was accustomed to have the text editor act more a conduit for the full power of the operating system, as opposed to trying to implement everything all over again, by itself. With nearly everything I tried, I felt the applications were trying to hard to re-invent the wheel. Some of them, like skEdit, were quite slick about it, but by the time my trial period lapsed, I felt a bit like the software was hollow; mostly because many of the things it was trying to do can be better done using pre-existing tools.

Other applications, like BBEdit, felt even more this way, and as if they had been coded long, long ago, and never fully updated to the modern Mac system. Then there were the lot of applications that just were not powerful enough, or lacked the modular capabilities that allow Vim to become much more than it ever could be all by itself (even though it is a great deal, all by itself.) Why not just use Vim? I tried that, but I found that a lot of what makes the new Macs as elegant and amazing as they are is an entire layer of functionality that Vim, given its underpinnings, cannot really interface with. While you can macro execute shell and editing commands on your file, and such like that, you cannot have it access the colour wheel and dump your selected colour, in HEX, into the text stream — to give an obvious example.

So then I came across TextMate, I don't recall exactly how, and I've been quite pleasantly surprised with that it has going on. To me, it does not feel as if it is 100% there yet, but judging on the amount of power it already wields on a text file, after so short a development life, I feel it will become everything I need, and more. I don't think it will ever be a massively powerful as Vim, and that is just fine. Vim is free, and I can always use it when I need to do a complex algorithm on my file, but I think this not be a frequent need.

The main thing that I miss, coming from that background, is the modal editing ability. While you can do a lot of things with the default Mac set-up, you just cannot quite duplicate the pure ease of text navigation that Vim and Vi's modal keystroke power gives you. The power of numerically incremented, single keystroke editing is woefully forgotten in the modern world of development, which is fascinated with the use of the mouse — something I think should be avoided at all costs in a text editor. It would be neat to see TextMate come up with a Bundle, or something, that you could toggle on that would allow a Vi-esque keyboard access mode. 70i- to create a row of hyphens, or 5kdd5jA to jump up five lines, delete the line, jump back down 5 lines, and then resume typing at the end of the current line.

Actually, thinking about it, TextMate reminds me a lot of NEdit, a text application I used occasionally in Linux. NEdit is free, and available for Mac OS X. For those who are unable to afford TextMate, you might want to check it out, though it has some of the same integration problems as gVim for the Mac has, due to its coming from a different operating system.

Anyway, just thought I would post my thoughts after two days of usage. I intend to give it a very exhaustive check-out over the next month of the trial period, in a real work environment. I'll spend the $50 if I feel it is worth it at that time. So far, so good! Thanks for having the guts to develop a "non-standard" application for the Mac.

My ratings:

Ease of use:
4/5. I found it incredibly easy to pick up on, but I generally "get" applications pretty fast. There might be a bit of a learning curve for some people, but since it makes no statement to being an "easy" text editor, I think it deserves better than the three it probably is for some.

Support/Documentation:
4/5. I cannot say anything for support, since I haven't requested any. Documentation is quite sparse, though. The help file only goes over some of the more advanced topics, and briefly at that. The organisation of these topics is not well thought out. However, I am quite forgiving when it comes to documentation, especially for a new product. I know first hand how difficult it is to code and write docs at the same time. The way it is right now is a good compromise. Some day, an exhaustive manual will be necessary. There is a lot of un-tapped power in this app, I think.

Features:
5/5. Obvious. Though a 4.5 might be close to the truth, but I cannot select half stars. There are still things that need to be polished and things that need to be added, but what already exists is amazing work.

Quality/Stability:
4/5. I hesitate to put a vote on this one, since I am using the beta version. However, I did have it crash on me once, and like I said, I've only been using it for two days. If it was non-beta, that would be bad, but since it is beta, I'm willing to let that slide. The 4 is more for lack of polish, mentioned above.

Price:
2/5. Like I said, I come from a Linux background. I am not accustomed to paying anything for the most powerful text editors on the planet. I am not a raving GNU advocate though, and see the merit in putting bread on the table for making projects which benefit others. I do feel it is a bit over-priced though. I know the conversion rate between Euros and Dollars is bad right now, and that is part of what makes it feel bloated, but I can only speak for what I would have to pull out of my wallet to use the program beyond its month trial.