You may want to consider making the dash/color/fill tappable, instead of relying on the tiny disclosure button. It would definitely speed up access to those features.
Word choice absolutely does affect how people think. Terms like "intelligent design" exploit this by cloaking nonsense in the guise of logic, and if you explain to a kid that a lightbulb or an electric skateboard works by "magic" that's a lot less inspiring than saying "a kid just like you studied how things work and invented it."
That we're having this discussion about a text editor that hasn't seen a real release in around six years (not counting the TM2 beta) is a testament to the enthusiasm. I'm hopeful and optimistic.
While flat files are a good thing, that doesn't preclude having a good interface in your app that lets you edit them. Furthermore, that is not an unfair expectation for an app that wants to be considered a good Mac citizen.
The last bit is in response to the parent post by frou_dh:
I feel ST2 is healthily past "good enough" as a Mac application.
The difficulty here is to ensure said interface doesn't make trivial changes to the flat files. Emacs has this down. As a counterexample, Visual Studio 2010 stores its settings in an XML file that, after pretty-printing, is quite human-readable. But, formatting aside, VS tends to reorder elements in this file even when you don't change anything, making sensible source control unnecessarily difficult. The somewhat manual workaround is to store important settings in a well-formatted settings file and use this as what VS calls "team" settings, because the IDE doesn't write or rewrite team settings files; this is also a nice solution because you probably don't want to sync things like window sizes and positions between a desktop with a 27" monitor and an 11" MacBook Air, and team settings only override local settings when they're defined.
> ST2 is native enough for me and cross-platform should be on the list of every programmer's requirements for a text editor.
I used to feel this way. I worked really hard to make all my configs and editors act the same across OS X and a few unix platforms. Then one day I woke up and decided I just wanted to work with the best editor on the best platform. (Both personal, subjective opinions, of course.) And that choice has worked out great for me.
When I was first looking at Sublime Text and I saw it as a disadvantage when I noticed they had Windows version. I don't mean to come across as smug, I just mean that I fundamentally feel that OS X is a lot better than Windows. (A personal opinion.) My point is that I need to be philosophically aligned with my editor's developer. And if they have chosen to support Windows, they could have spent that time pushing the OS X app forward, which doesn't align with my position. I want the best editor possible, not the best editor on every platform.
The other way I look at it is to applaud their ambition and results with creating a great cross platform editor. I think cross platform software is incredibly important, but I would paradoxically prefer my editor was not. In other words, I'm glad that ST exists, but I don't it's for me.
> My point is that I need to be philosophically aligned with my editor's developer.
This is taking things a bit too far, I think. If you're a one platform kind of person the most important thing should be "How well does it work on (my platform)?".
You're right, that is absolutely the most important thing. But as we've seen with TM, the way the project is run is really important too. It's a totally self-centered sentiment to say I wish my editor development to be exclusive to my platform, but it would certainly result in a better app for me to use.
Luckily my preferences have nothing to do with the outcome, much like the weather.
I thought about this a little more Considering the amount of attention that specific software licenses get with regards to choosing software, I think it's not so uncommon to want to be philosophically in line with your app of hooves developer.
The fact that they have a windows version is nice, but when I say cross platform I mostly mean Mac/Linux. It's one of the main reasons I chose vim in the first place. Mac/Linux/Windows GUI/Terminal. And not to start a flame war: OS X isn't getting any better for developers. It's ok. It's just not their main focus. Lucky for everyone Linux is rad and getting better all the time. Now if only there was a cross platform Fireworks like program I could switch for good...
And while it's unlikely: I may find myself in a position where I have to use Windows. I'll be glad not to need to learn a new editor I don't want to. Or maybe I'm away from my Macbook and I want to code? We aren't all complete masters of our own destiny like DHH. I like to be prepared. :)
> I tried Textmate many times, but single-character undo was always unforgivable.
I've heard this complaint before. On the other hand, I can't forgive multi-character undo. I think it's just user preference.
Furthermore, I still use TM1 all day every day. When people call it sub-par or compare its features to other editors it often reminds me of the checklists comparing the first iPhone to other (crappy) phones at the time. You can check all the boxes you want, but if the product doesn't get the details right it doesn't matter. TM isn't for everyone, but it's certainly for me, and I shopped around. (I don't mean to imply all other editors are crap.)
edit: I'm a life long Mac user, 15 year emacs user. I think it has a lot of appeal to non-switchers. That said, it definitely rode the Rails wave.
Are you kidding about the undo thing? I can understand that some people might like TextMate despite its flaws, but I cannot imagine that anybody would really prefer one-character-at-a-time undo.
I've been developing for the Mac for since 2000, and TextMate is the only app I can recall seeing with that "feature".
You may want to consider making the dash/color/fill tappable, instead of relying on the tiny disclosure button. It would definitely speed up access to those features.
edit: It feels a little naked without pinch-zoom.