TextMate
Published on 14 Jul 2008 · Filed in Musing · 247 words (estimated 2 minutes to read)Until just recently, I was using the free text editor Smultron for my text editing needs. To be absolutely honest, my text editing needs aren’t really that great; basically, I use a text editor to:
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take quick notes during a meeting, seminar, or class;
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edit the WordPress code (more precisely, the CSS style sheets most of the time) for this blog when I’m feeling adventurous; and
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write articles to be submitted to my editors in plain text format.
Smultron is free and is a very capable text editor, but lately I’d been thinking of moving to a different text editor. Everyone raves about TextMate, so I downloaded it and I’m giving it a whirl. So far, so good; everything seems fine and performance is great. But here’s the real question: am I using a sledgehammer when what I really need is something much smaller?
I mean, TextMate seems like the “power user’s text editor,” and when it comes to text editing, I’m not a power user. Sure, I do a lot with my Mac; at any given time, I’m running Mail, Adium, Camino, NetNewsWire, OmniFocus, Ecto, various Office 2008 applications, Pukka, Skim, Preview, Graphic Converter, Colloquy, and VMware Fusion. So I would consider myself a “Mac power user,” but not a “text editing power user.” Make sense? Is TextMate too much power for what I do? I’d love to hear from readers as to their text editing needs and what tools they use to meet those needs.