Long-Delayed TextMate 2 Arrives as Public Alpha

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Long-Delayed TextMate 2 Arrives as Public Alpha

In 2004, a developer by the name of Allan Odgaard released a new text-editor by the name of TextMate. Over the next few years, the application became extremely popular with coders because of a number of powerful features, including extensive customization, macros, and much more.

TextMate 2.0 was originally announced in 2006, and three years later Odgaard wrote in a blog post that he was still hard at work on TextMate 2 and it was 90 percent complete. He hoped that "an alpha version will be ready before too long, but I can?t make any promises about dates." Time passed, and Wired named TextMate 2 to it's year-end vaporware list in 2009, along with StarCraft II and the US release of Spotify.

TextMate 2.0 has finally been released to the public in the form of a public alpha -- typically the development milestone that precedes beta.

The excitement for a new version has been tremendous and today we?re finally able to repay the much appreciated loyalty and moral support from the community by releasing the first public alpha:

TextMate 2.0 alpha (r8930)

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It?s important to stress though that being an alpha release; it is not complete. It has reached a point where it may suit some early adopters and provide some relief to those who have been questioning TextMate?s future. For the time being, the alpha builds are only for people who already have a TextMate license and an Intel Mac.

Being a complete rewrite there are too many changes to sum up but here is an

overview of notable changes since TextMate 1.5.10

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The TextMate 2.0 alpha is only for current TextMate license holders and will only work on Intel Macs.

TextMate is available for ?39 (just over $50 at current exchange rates) from the MacroMates website.

Source: Mac Rumors

[Xtreme $niper]

Let's see how this goes. I have temporarily switched to Sublime Text 2 but I can switch back any day given that they are both $50 and I've already paid for the license of TextMate.

[Elliott]

Now I've gotta make a choice between TextMate 2, Chocolat, and Sublime Text 2. :p TM2 looks like a good start, but Chocolat is shaping up nicely too.

[threetonesun]

Now I've gotta make a choice between TextMate 2, Chocolat, and Sublime Text 2. :p TM2 looks like a good start, but Chocolat is shaping up nicely too.

Oh, never saw Chocolat before, looks quite nice.

I was never entire sure what the whole "where's 2.0!" deal was with TextMate. It's a Text editor... any updates are nice. At least with Coda I sort of understand the demand.

[Quillz]

I ended up switching to BBEdit, later TextWrangler. TextMate was great, and I'll probably give v2 a try, but I found it was far more complicated for my needs.