While cleaning up my recently modified bookkeeping XSLT-voodoo today I suddenly refused to manually complete any more tags. I love SubEthaEdit, but I just couldn't bear it any longer to first have to type <xsl:template match="/"> and then </xsl:template>all over again for the gazillionth time in my life. As a geek I strongly believe that no person should have to do manually what can be done automatically (unless, of course, one should chose so and there are many valid reasons for doing that. But not in this case.)

Anyway, so while I was googling for tag-completion with SubEthaEdit I ran across a link to TextMate and thought to myself "Hmm, that sounds familiar. Isn't that that relatively new, slick editor, that I had given a try a while ago? It seemed promising at the time but lacked in the XML department.".

So I gave it a try once again and what can I say? I'm close to ecstatic! I believe, that my search for the ultimate editor is now over. It's a bit like getting married: once you've found your woman you can stop looking for others and life becomes a whole lot more relaxed ;-)

While XML support isn't built-in at the moment, all it takes is a download of Brian Lalor's XML bundle and you're good to go. Of course, by now I had become so used to SubEthaEdit's syntax coloring that I immediately hacked Brian's bundle to approximate that. In case you're interested, you can find it here. Give TextMate a try, there's much more than tag-completion.

Features that I've found useful immediately are its file management, code folding and tabbed editing. Others like automation and multiple clipboard still will take some getting used to. But, as they say themselves "In the end it's all about the touch and feel."