What ever happened to Textmate 2?

Question

What ever happened to Textmate 2?

Answer 1

I was almost positive that there was a post to the mailing list within the last 4 months that strongly implied -- or outright stated -- that there'd at least be a beta by summer 2009, but I haven't been able to dig it up, so I'm not sure.

To be honest, I'm not really that concerned about TextMate. Sure, I'd love to see it, because new stuff is always cool; but in my opinion there are only 2 big features missing from TextMate -- split-pane viewing and better undo support -- and I've found I can live without those. TextMate 2 will probably be awesome, but the current TextMate is such a great editor that I'm not anxious for TM2 to come out.

Update: A public alpha is due out by Christmas 2011.

Update: A public alpha is now available

Answer 2

From the wiki:

Q: Is TextMate 2 still in development, or has it been abandoned?

TM2 is being actively developed. If this text is still here, that is still the case. (Last updated April 7, 2009. Allan stresses that no release is "around the corner" yet.)

The author, Allan Odgaard, has updated the TextMate blog with this post:

Working on It

Over the past two years, posts on this blog have slowed to just a trickle, and a number of TextMate users have asked about TextMate’s status, or publicly worried about its future. This blog post, the first I’ve written here in a long time, is an attempt to assuage those concerns and answer some of the most frequent questions.

In short, TextMate development is going strong: TextMate 2 isn’t done yet, but progress is steady, it is starting to take shape, and the end is in sight. The rewrite has been a slow and careful process, but the ideas behind it are exciting. I hope to publicly describe some new abstractions in the coming weeks and months. Moreover, the community continues to churn out new bundles and features for TextMate 1.5, and I’ve been building up a backlog of posts describing them. While I am not writing to announce a release date for TextMate 2, I do hope that this post will be the first in a series showing a bit more transparency.

The requests for TextMate 1 have mostly been incremental additions such as split views, chunked undo, and editing over SFTP. But TextMate 2 is about more than new surface features. Every part has been completely rewritten to take advantage of the lessons learned from the years of version 1. Not only are the low-level data structures chosen for increased flexibility, but the abstractions on which TextMate is built—snippets, scope-based language grammars, context-dependent settings—have been rethought and are more powerful than ever. In the coming months, I’ll try to describe some of these new abstractions, but for now, know that I am excited about the new ideas involved.

So where does development stand for 2.0? It feels to me like most of the modules are getting close, say 90%. But as they say, on the horizon, mountains look small. While I use 2.0 for my own work, day-to-day, and the basic infrastructure is pretty solid, much of the front-end still needs work, and for now it’s all lacking the spit and polish of a finished app. Hopefully an alpha version will be ready before too long, but I can’t make any promises about dates.

And why haven’t I been better about keeping the world informed? It is a combination of many things really, but the main issue is that I am not good at writing for a large audience. I am more into informal conversations, for instance over mailing lists or on IRC. So while I started a lot of posts, I end up unhappy with them halfway through, and they don’t get finished or published. I am taking measures: I have enlisted a technical writer to help bring this blog back to life, and I’ll try to communicate more of TextMate’s status and direction through him.

Bigger than either of those problems though, as I mentioned, is that TextMate 2 is no minor facelift. It’s a major undertaking with a long timeline and its final form isn’t fully settled. I don’t want to hype vaporware, and I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up before I know I can meet their expectations.

Furthermore, I haven’t wanted to throw ideas onto the internet without having a chance to implement them myself. I’m humbled that TextMate has served as inspiration for many other products, and I hope that it continues to be a model for other developers in the future, but I want to see my ideas done my way first, before I feed them to the competition.

I am trying to slowly turn this boat. With this post, I hopefully am showing that a hand is at the wheel. I know I’ve been quiet too long about my plans. I can’t make up for that, but going forward, I aim to do better.

And Here's the official blog post, saying the public alpha version will be release before Christmas 2011. http://blog.macromates.com/2011/whats-next/

Answer 3

Here is a recent post on a mailing list from author Allan Odgaard. It sheds a little light on the current state of development.

In short, don't expect anything soon.

Answer 4

Allan Odgaard (Oct 24, 2007):

[...] there is no ETA, and I won’t speak about timing before I am certain I can provide an (alpha/beta) release within the next month – because really, the more I say, the more people ask, and having to answer the same questions over and over again is (for me) mentally exhausting. So put TM 2.0 up there with Duke Nukem Forever and be positively surprised the day it is released :)

Last I heard, it was in private alpha. Just remember: patience is a virtue. :)

Answer 5

Well it's been 1 1/2 years since this question. And no update. And no news.

I'm moving on from textmate. Shame really, cause it was the best editor on Mac. But, hell, even dreamweaver has passed it up.

Answer 6

I can scarcely believe this is true, but I just read that it is scheduled for release at the end of October, 2010.

http://wiki.macromates.com/FAQ/TextMate2

Answer 7

TextMate author was hired by MacRabbit (company behind the Espresso editor) so it could be that Espresso will be the next TextMate (it's a real shame..)

It doesn’t say that anywhere in the article. Besides, this is simply not true. MacRabbit is also a 1 person company like MacroMates. Textmate's developer lives in Denmark; MacRabbit's lives in Belgium.

Expresso is a different editor, not Textmate 2.

Answer 8

not exactly a direct answer to this question, but since I just signed up for an account and don't have the rep points to comment on an answer (or as it turns out include more than one hyperlink), I'll leave my response here for Paul and Vasil:

You should definitely check out Ciarán's ReMate Update plugin for TextMate as it has been invaluable for me while working with NFS.

I also highly recommend Ciarán's other TextMate plugin, ProjectPlus (ciaranwal.sh/projectplus)

One last plug for Ciarán...most likely due to the fact that he has developed some great plugins for TM1, he has also been hired by Allan (wiki.macromates.com/FAQ/TextMate2) to work on TextMate 2

Answer 9

There's really no excuse in the world that could convince that textmate 2 isn't vaporware.

Even if he was secretly coding the editor to demolish all other editors, the amount of years that have passed and lack of any real evidence of anything solid whatsoever, point toward poor development practices and lack of experience producing a product.

Unfortunately it looks like textmate 1 was a fluke, and texmate 2 is the software worlds chinese democracy...

Answer 10

I think its sad that this question remains one of the top Google search items when looking for TextMate 2 information yet it is filled with rumors and insinuations.

They are working diligently on it and what they are trying to do is so very very hard. Give them a break. I even wrote an article on this: On TextMate 2

Answer 11

A new post today with title What's Next on MacroMates official blog states (bold emphasis by me):

There has been a lot of speculation and trepidation about the future of TextMate recently, mostly about whether there will be another major release. Work on 2.0 began and while we wish it could have been completed faster we are very pleased with how it is turning out. Development has reached a point finally where we can make an announcement:

There will be a public alpha release this year, before Christmas, for registered users.

Answer 12

I am predicting, right now, that he is going to surprise everyone and give us a gift on Christmas of this year.

How perfect of an opportunity would it be for him release a relatively polished non-beta on Christmas and watch everybody in the world go ape shit.

Mark my words. 10 days.

Answer 13

TextMate author was hired by MacRabbit (company behind the Espresso editor) so it could be that Espresso will be the next TextMate (it's a real shame..)