Excursus

As a follow up to the last post about the latest manifestation of the Editor Wars, I want to concur with Erik J. Barzeski’s complaint about TextMate’s lack of chunk undo. However, having used TextMate’s character undo, I can see that, in certain contexts, it has its advantages. Personally, I would like the best of both worlds—with ⌘-z as character undo and ⇧-⌘-z as chunk undo.

However, Erik’s complaint about TextMate’s lack of chunk undo was perhaps only a pretext to invite his readers to share what they take to be the comparative advantages and disadvantages of BBEdit and TextMate. I have licenses for both, but now only use TextMate. There were many reasons for the switch. Let me mention a few, not necessarily the most important reasons. I find TextMate’s snippets, a method for “smart” text insertion, superior in functionality and implementation to BBEdit’s Glossary function. While it is possible to extend BBEdit’s functionality, I found this much easier to do with TextMate’s bundle system—indeed it has allowed a nonprogrammer like myself to immediately implement things that I lacked the skills to implement in BBEdit. Lastly, TextMate just feels right. (In no small part because of what Rands describes as bright, patient design.) Subjective, to be sure, but not, thereby, irrelevant. Text editing is a craft. It is important to hone this craft with a tool that you are comfortable using. If for you that is BBEdit, or Emacs, or vi, or SubEthaEdit, that, in the end, is the most important thing.

One last piece of unfinished business. It has been pointed out to me that my previous complaint about Erik was based on partial and secondhand information and is intelligible only on assumptions about what may have transpired. Fair enough, I withdraw the complaint but continue to endorse the normative principle that underwrote it, a normative principle well expressed by Merlin Mann:

[The] heart of ethical and humane networking means not asking favors of others, but instead frequently doing unrequested propers for others. And expecting zilch in return.

Though I am a philosopher, this is not a philosophy blog, and yet somehow reflection on text editing has led us to Kantian ethics—surely a testimony to the power and currency of Kantian moral ideals.