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Comment by sqs | Hacker News Reader

I know some Mac users who've said they would switch to Linux if there were a TextMate-like editor available. This could be it.

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I don't get why people are building these fancy new editors - You can get both Emacs and Vim to behave Textmate like in many ways. They are both usable everywhere, including in a terminal.

No matter which editor you want to use, you have to learn it and it takes time. A few years back I decided between Emacs and Textmate and learned Emacs - the main reason was because I can still use it when I am forced into a terminal or Windows.

Not everyone is a huge fan of re-learning how to type. Cause that's really how your doing it, with all the chording and such. Some of us are just used to typing in a box and hitting file->save to save.

People create new editors cause there is a need to fill.

A standard Emacs install fulfills that requirement nicely.

The fact that you listed two be-all end-all text editors suggests that neither of them is the perfect solution for everyone...

OK, good point.

But isn't writing a text editor one of those garden path problems - a near never ending amount of work to get to just what exists already? I guess I also wonder what inspires developers to start new text editor projects too! Perhaps its just dis-satisfaction with what is there already.

There's a reason you have to be convinced to learn emacs or vi, the user experience is horrible until after you've finished climbing a learning cliff. They work differently than just about every other text editor in the world because they're so old that they don't by default use modern hotkeys people are accustomed to.

Any debate about them being better really misses the point, it's the dvorak querty argument all over. Better doesn't matter as much as familiar to new users. Textmate is immediately useful to a new user and feels like a modern editor. Emacs and vi look and feel archaic and require too much effort to feel productive in.

That's my two cents anyway after many attempts to use both. Can't stand vi, can get by with emacs just don't really dig it. For quick editing in a shell I just use nano because it's usually just editing of config files.

Actually, I hate editing any code outside of Vi nowadays. I've gotten used to 'cb', 'dat', etc. I've been using Vi heavily for about ten months.

I call ad hominem on the age attacks.

Comparing how emacs and vi/vim are different from other editors and like saying no one will ever use lisp because of all the parentheses.

Hate to tell you, but virtually no one does use Lisp. It's not ad hominem, it's just the facts; I'm not saying it's right or that's how things should be judged, just that they are.

because marketing (more than technology) matters

Textmate has huge marketing... NOT

But vi (and likely emacs as well) has terrible discoverability. I can modify my gedit or eTextEditor syntax highlighting easily. You could spend an hour learning how to do the same in vi. Hell, to even find 'colorscheme' you'd have to wonder round vimtutor for ages.

This was my biggest beef with Vim when I started using it. gVim just doesn't have the ease of configurability as Textmate either. Syntax definitions and highlighting in Textmate is also easier. Aside from that, I'm happy in Vim-land.

You're right. But it isn't hard to learn with a deliberate effort to do so. You have to treat it like learning a new programming language. When you do that, and read a book on it ( i like http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Editor-Nutshell-Linda-Lamb/dp... ) then it comes together and you start to really feel like a maestro.

As a follower of Emacs (I'm having a golden GNU built as an idol for the office), I have to say a good part of the problem is knowing where to go for docs. There's still a good bit of oral history to these editors, even if a lot of that is available online.

The last emacs book was published quite some time ago, and no matter how much of it is still valid, it's just not up to par with providing people with the same level of familiarity and desired features as one of the new ones. At work, we're all using gvim or emacs, but most are aching for eclipse or visual studio.

I try to mention ctags to them and they just stare at me blankly. I suspect the field has started to move rather quickly in the UI and lingual diversity fronts, and it's time editors need to diversify as well.

Still, lisp (or the bastard stepchild, emacs lisp) is a very good language for an editor. It's a shame it's the only place I use it.

No the problem is needing docs. Emacs is software out of a different age of computing where it was not considered a dick move to make people read documentation for changing the color scheme. These times are over but people who got used to it or have acquired mastery of the editor obviously do not feel the pain in that.

I used emacs for 10 years and know lisp quite well but I'm a textmate user now. There are a lot of us.

I'd recommend jEdit.

It's my editing weapon of choice for OSX, Linux and Windows.

By default it's a bit plain, but the plugins available are fantastic: http://taat.pl/en/jedit/

Download it here: http://www.jedit.org/

I'd second that. Used jEdit for years, and thought I'd give TextMate a try... not impressed, so I may switch back to jEdit now.

I tried JEdit like two years ago or so and found it to be an excellent editor, but that the startup time of approx. 10 seconds was unbearable. Have they fixed that yet?

Yes, they created a "JEdit server": http://www.jedit.org/users-guide/starting.html It keeps an instance running so startup time is smaller.

jEdit is the BEST. The hypersearch capabilities and windowing options are first class. Three cheers for jEdit.

Ever tried Scribes? http://scribes.sourceforge.net/

It has been around for a while, and I think is the closest thing to TextMate under the Gnome environment.

No Scribes is a unique editor of its own. It shares the snippet system with textmate. But it has a rather radical aproach in reducing on the basics.

I am one of those, I stay in MacOSX because: MacOSX itself, Textmate, Transmit, Things and a other number of Apps that makes my work much easier.

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