TextMate

TextMate, from macromates.com, is similar to the free Bluefish and the free jEdit but costs US$59 andonly works on Apple's version of Unix, not any of the common operating systems.

TextMate has a multiple file search equivalent to jEdit and in the latest Bluefish. There is nothing else to distinguish TextMate in thework I do. Some of the features sound like they would be useful in programming languages I do not use.

If you use an Apple computer, TextMate is somewhere in between TextWrangler and BBEdit for features. The TextMate Web site points out that OSX is just Unix with a pretty face then tries to sell you commercial software for an operating system designed for open source software. Weird.

The TextMate website has the heading the missing editor followed by code and markup brought into the 21st century. Perhaps the Mac is so limited in software that TextMate is something special. I doubt the range of Mac software is that limited.

By Windows standards, TextMate is not much of a step forward from the commercial editors of the 1990s including homesite from 1995. If it was free and open source, it would be big news.

US$59 is cheap if you use an editor full time and there is something in TextMate to save you a few minutes each day. You lose the savings when you switch to a different computer and have to use a different editor and relearn everything.

TextMate has a 30 day trial if you want to test it. The opensource competition has unlimited free trial. I prefer to start with open source and cross platform then resort to commercial software only if the open software cannot do what you want.