switching from BBEdit to Textmate

The sketch above is based on a photo reference I took at a weekend house session. The session was focused on practising tune sets from the Tranzac and was different our regular session in that there was more opportunity to take apart tunes a phrase at a time. The setting was also more casual; I enjoyed getting to know some of the others beyond the instruments they play at sessions. :-)

I also started to learn TextMate on the weekend. I've been using BBEdit quite a while now for my plain text editing, but what started out as a nice simple editor (the company name is Bare Bones Software) has turned into something that feels somewhat overloaded and inelegant, like an overly spiced restaurant dish with clashing ingredients, or a pizza with too many different types of toppings.

Isn't it great how pretty much everything in life relates to food?

Jeff convinced me to try out TextMate and I've been impressed by the greater flexibility, especially when it comes to programming keyboard shortcuts. It'll take me a while before my brain has absorbed the new shortcuts, but I figure it will be well worth it. I wrote this Blathering in Textmate.

I've just begun to explore TextMate, but one of the other things I like about it is that you can group several documents into a Project. This is going to be incredibly handy since I often need to reference multiple docs when working on my columns, other written pieces and my Web sites. Ever since tendinitis became an issue, I've become so much more conscious of keystroke efficiency.

I'm also learning Markdown language, which is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. It's something I should have done a long while ago. Up to now, I've always tended to write HTML from scratch; I've never used an HTML editor, preferring instead to get my hands right in the code so I can see what's really going on. Fun, but inefficient.

I'm pretty confident that the current learning curve I'm going through will pay off in the end, but meanwhile I'm curious about the rest of you.

What's your favourite current plain text editor?

If you create HTML docs, what HTML editor do you use?

Do you use Markdown?

And meanwhile, I might as well confess one of my secret vices: user documentation. I do read the manual and Help files, and enjoy reading them. Unless they're horribly written or poorly designed, in which case I rant to Jeff about bad they are. I think I could have been a tech writer in another lifetime, thought I suppose I need at least few lifetimes to do all the things I've always wanted to do.

I love thick manuals with well-designed glossy pages, generous margins and good writing. These user manuals make me happy. I am not exaggerating. When I get a nice piece of juicy new software, I'll immediately grab the docs, find a cozy reading corner and happily dive right in from page one, plow through until the appendices.

Jeff, on the other hand, turns his nose up at user docs and would rather figure things out on his own. :-) To give Jeff credit, he is scary-fast at learning how to use new software intuitively. While I see the value in this method as well, my attitude is that I'd rather at least scan the entire manual first to get an overview before I invest too much time (and keystrokes) in tinkering around with the software.

So one more question: Do YOU read the manual?

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