So many text editors, so little time… ;-)

• strip HTML from selected text
• is there an equivalent of the “QuickSearch” live text search
• can you split windows
• can you have newly opened files automatically be included in the foremost project
• can you copy/remove all lines containing a text string
• can you have a window open showing all the Snippets
• can you insert the contents of the clipboard into a snippet

Maybe MacroMates should write a “Switching from BBEdit” guide.

There’s also a large number of commands, also in the bundles, which can do similarly intelligent things with selected text, the entire document, or the file or entire project.

What’s especially powerful about TextMate’s snippets and commands is how well they are tied into the Unix shell in Mac OS X. You can send your selection, line, whole document, etc., out to the shell, where you can do anything to it that a Unix shell script (and Perl, and awk, and any other Unix command line tool) can do, and return that to replace the selection, insert into the document, or even show as a Tool Tip.

In a sense, TextMate is a lot like Mac OS X: a beautiful interface that lets you do real work in, but which also ties in directly and deeply to the underlying Unix layer, to get access to the full power of the entire suite of 30+ years of Unix tool development.

This is of course of most use to serious developers, at whom TextMate is most directly targeted. It’s still of use to HTML coders, in the sense of being able to use all the terrific bundles that are useful while doing HTML work. These folks may not create their own bundles, or even modify the existing ones, but they can certainly take advantage of the existing ones — which are improving all the time.

But to get to your question of the Zen of TextMate, you have to either already be a text editing Zen Master, or have seen one in action. I remember years ago watching Dominic Giampaolo (an engineer at Be at the time, now with Apple) editing code using, of all things, vi. It was amazing. His hands on the keyboard just did things, and made changes appear on screen. No conscious thought involved. My opinion of vi changed in about 30 seconds. I can get around in vi, but always wondered why some people actually seemed to love it. Well, when you get the Zen of vi, it’s an amazingly fast and efficient way to write code.

I think that anyone who wants to be a professional software developer needs to reach that level of comfort and expertise with their coding environment. And it should involve the mouse as little as possible, because that will slow you way, way down.

With BBEdit, I’m constantly reaching for the mouse — though in fairness, I’ve never felt like I reached BBEdit’s full potential for navigation and control.

But TextMate feels more natural to my brain, and in spite of only using it for 6 months half time at only one job, I’ve found myself getting very comfortable with its capabilities, to the point of wishing that I had TextMate’s editing behavior and capabilities everywhere.

That said, I still reach for BBEdit, full-time on my own laptop (but that’ll end soon, I’m thinking), and whenever I need to do a file comparison at that one job (where I use their equipment). BBEdit also has a far better multi-file search capability, and even the plain in-file search is more capable and flexible, if you’re using the search dialog. BBEdit is still far faster if you open really huge files. And there are other things, I’m sure, but can’t think of off the top of my head.

Don’t get me wrong, though; I still love BBEdit, and look forward to the day when I can send Bare Bones more money in return for a new release. Eagerly!

I was a little disappointed at first, but that’s because I didn’t understand the differing philosophies behind the two products. Now that I see where TM’s strengths lie, I appreciate it more and more. BBEdit is still in the dock, but I love having both options available for what they do best.