nuzzaci - an online journal

The last two years or so I have received this question (title) a few times. More and more people I know are switching to a Mac and more and more people don’t know the answer to this question.

Every time I answer the question i give a different answer depending on who’s asking. There is no right and wrong. It depends what you are after.

This is a short and brief breakdown to get you in the right direction.
In alphabetic order:

• BBEdit, the grandpa of editors. For many years it had the throne.
• Coda, the guy’s who gives us lovely Transmit have recently launched this application in an attempt to optimise the workflow.
• SubEthaEdit, invite people on the network to do the work for you. Innovative. Fun.
• TextMate, is my every day tool. It’s just an amazing sofware and time saver.
• TextWrangler, the free version of BBEdit. Used this for many years. If you are after “just an editor” and don’t want to spend money or have annoying “please buy this product” messages, this is the daddy.
• Xcode, with Apple’s developer package comes a editor. Maybe an overkill, but if you have installed the Developer Tools you already have an editor on you machine.

So… what is the first thing you do with a brand new computer you have been waiting for for over 4 months (besides opening a good bottle of wine)?

Well since it’s not my first (or only) computer, the exploration phase doesn’t really exist. There is not enjoyment in trying the new applications or learning a new user interface. No, It’s just a matter of setting up the computer; install the software you normally use, fine tuning settings and appearance and off you go - back to normal.

In alphabetic order, these was the first ten application I installed:

1. Adium
2. Entropy php5 module
3. Inquisitor
4. Last.fm
5. Quicksilver
6. Synergy
7. TextMate
8. Transmit
9. UnRarX
10. VLC

I notice this (the top ten) through my download manager in Safari… and to be honest - I kind of wonder why the first ten are the first ten.

Now this is just brilliant!

You can, with TextMate, install a ‘Edit with Textmate’ feature into every cocoa application!

This means, with a keyboard shortcut, you can send emails, web forms etc to Textmate, write it, save, close and your back to where you started.

It’s very nice.
Here’s how you install it and do it (I used Mail as an example).

1. Start Textmate
2. Close Mail
3. Under ‘Bundles’ select ‘Textmate’ and then ‘intall “Edit with Textmate”…’
4. Start mail
5. Select a message, and press commando+r to reply.
6. Press ctrl+commando+e, this will bring the email into Textmate.
7. Write what you like to write, then just save it (commando+s) and close it (commando+w)
8. And now your back into the email, ready to be send with ‘commando+shit+d’.

This also then works with textareas and inputfields in safari… basically all cocoa apps!

Now this is good stuff - brilliant! The admin tool for most blogs are generally quite shit - I’m not claiming that all blogging system designers or developers have done a shit job - it’s the web an it’s forms that puts the limit.

I normally write my post in my main editor - TextMate. So the fact that they have created a bundle where you can fetch post, post post, upload images etc and so on directly in TextMate is just…. pure candy.

This post is actually the first test of this bundle. so… let’s see if it works!

• Read and see about the bundle
• TextMate website

update
It worked like a charm!… almost. I didn’t manage to add tag’s to the post. Still - this is sweet!