Textmate now mac editor of choice

I was a bit sceptical about TextMate at first. However, the more I use it the more I’m persuaded that it really is a true challenger to BB Edit.

The main thing that makes me say this is bundles. It the crazy extensibility of them that blows me away. I still admit I’m not totally savvy with the lingo. However seeing the amazing integration of tools people have made with bundles is great.

One of the things I especially like right now are the ability to create new grammars which include other grammars. This is amazing because it allows you to simply reference another grammar for inclusion. So anything that is updated in the grammar proper falls through to the included grammar. This means that if you have a language like HTML it’s possible to easily deal with complexity like embedded Javascript, for example.

The Javascript bundles that deals with minification and delinting rocks, that kind of stuff should be just part of your IDE and the way text mate does it, that becomes something that the community can provide.

Finally, Macromates have a great resource with training screencast videos. It’s available as a podcast from that page if you want to stay updated. Well worth a look to quickly buff up on how to use aspects of the interface.

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Mac, Productivity, Web Development, textmate, bbedit, javascript, jslint