What's so great about TextMate?

text-editor textmate
Sasha Chedygov picture Sasha Chedygov · Jun 20, 2009 · Viewed 7.2k times · Source

Almost every developer that uses a Mac practically worships TextMate. Why? What extraordinary features does it have that other text editors and IDEs don't? I did a quick search and the only really useful feature that I found that most other editors lack is the column selection option, but I wouldn't use a certain editor just for that. What makes TextMate so amazing?

Answer

Thomas Zoechling picture Thomas Zoechling · Jun 20, 2009

TextMate was the first app I bought when I switched to the Mac a few years ago.
The features I like most are:

  • bundle support
  • clean UI
  • project support
  • shell integration
  • fast for small files (fast startup time)
  • HTMLTidy built in
  • CSS and XHTML validation integrated (needs online connection)

but it also has some drawbacks:

  • slow for big files
  • lack of updates (for some time now, but TextMate 2.0 seems to be alive)

Related questions

How to delete line break in textmate

How to find and delete all the line breaks? I tried \n and it doesn't work! Regular expression? what kinda of expression?

Read More
Wrapping selecting text in enclosing characters in Emacs

In Textmate I can wrap enclosing characters ('(', '[', '"', etc.) around text by selecting it and hitting the opening character. For example, if I select word and hit (, it will become (word). What does Emacs call …

Read More
Text editor to open big (giant, huge, large) text files

I mean 100+ MB big; such text files can push the envelope of editors. I need to look through a large XML file, but cannot if the editor is buggy. Any suggestions?

Read More