TextMate News

Anything vaguely related to TextMate and macOS.

Default App for Typeless Files

Apple has hardcoded the Finder to open files without extension in Terminal when they are executable and otherwise TextEdit.

Starting with Snow Leopard you can however use Michel Fortin’s Magic Launch ($14) to alter the behavior. It can also be configured to open the same file type with different applications based on location, content, or similar.

categories General

21 Comments

Heh - you know when you mentioned your desire to blog a bit more regularly I think I misunderstood the subjects upon which you would opine…

I’ll take whatever I can get though, if it moves us towards version 2… =P

23 January 2010

by Daniel Wood

Great! One less feature you need to implement for v2.0!

23 January 2010

by Sebastian

While they’ve made it far harder to remove a file extension, as I can’t seem to do it in the Finder (it looks like it works but listing the directory in my terminal shows that it still has the extension), it doesn’t actually look to be hard coded. While they reset my default when I upgraded to Snow Leopard (bastards), after changing it back, extension-less files seem to open just fine in TextMate, even though the Finder still lists TextEdit as the default application, which is misleading, but not quite what I would consider hard coded behavior…or does LaunchServices reset the default application after restarting your computer?

23 January 2010

by stakadush

i signed up to get updates about textmate, not promotion for your friends’ applications, mate! ;)

Sebastian: use the Finder Get Info window to remove the extension for real.

About the Finder not showing the right default app for files with no extension: that’s because when you use the system’s APIs to query the file type you get public.data, the base UTI for any file. But when you feed such a file to LaunchServices, it uses the public.plain-text handler application. I had to hard-code this inconsistency into Magic Launch to make it work correctly with those files. Apparently, Apple isn’t as desperate as me to make file associations work correctly in the Finder.

Will Magic Launch allow me to open files in TextMate 2.0?

;)

Wow are you serious. To bad TM 2.0 isn’t made by a friend of your… maybe then you’d write about it.

Latest statistics (for about 3 years now) shows that people come here to hear about TM 2.0 and not to see some other product promoted :)

28 January 2010

by UserNotFound

I agree with Peter, no one cares anything other than TM 2.0 related updates in here. Don’t waste your time.

29 January 2010

by Paul McCann

Dear morons (not so sure about that plural, I’d put a small wager on the last four comments coming from the same “contributor”. At least it agrees with itself…).

Please take your pea-sized brain(s) to another venue. Preferably your own blog, or maybe one of those “under construction” sites you linked to above.

Thanks, Paul

Well, sorry Paul but Peter and UserNotFound are true. People come here just to see if there is something new about TextMate. I’ve been doing so for two years now, and the comments above should be enough proof that I am not alone.

Thanks Gaël,

At first I did want to respond to Paul, but then I thought I’d be no better than he is.. even in a polite manner. So I’m just ignoring. Sometimes it’s the best way to deal people who insult you.

Yeah, only talk about TextMate 2.0. Not 1.x or 2.x, only 2.0. I come here every single day to read posts about TextMate 2.0 and I got unbelievably excited when I saw a new post because I can’t stop thinking about TextMate 2.0. What a let-down to find a post about a useful utility. I don’t want useful utilities and I don’t want to know about anything that isn’t TextMate 2.0.

I just talked to my lawyer and showed him the contract I signed with Macromates when I subscribed to this blog’s RSS feed. I signed that contract with the understanding that I would only see TextMate 2.0 posts. He agreed that I have a valid lawsuit and could win a substantial amount of money for the damages that I have suffered.

Everyone knows that blogs should be single-purpose and I have decided that it is my responsibility to make sure all blogs stay focused on one topic and one topic only.

Well, just in case you misread the name of this page, it is called “TextMate blog”, not “a friend of mine coded yet another Finder plugin and asked me to talk about it-blog”.

I believe Allan does have a personal site entirely dedicated to non-textmate related questions:

http://sigpipe.macromates.com/

Call me dumbass if you want, but I think most people following something called the “TextMate blog” want to know about… you know… TextMate.

Gaël et al.: Lots of TextMate users have asked about how to have Finder open files without extension in TextMate (when double-clicked) and Michel is not “my friend”, so stop your stupid heckling and just unsubscribe if you dislike the content, perhaps you should follow @wasTM2released instead as this blog is about anything I deem useful for TextMate users, and despite my sparse postings, there should be lots of past evidence to show that this isn’t limited to the topic of “TextMate 2”, on the contrary.

As for SIGPIPE, that is for programming-related topics, and I have been asked to just post that to this blog instead, as many are eager to see me post new content, even if you guys think you speak for the majority.

Regardless, both blogs are mine and I decide what to post — the comments are meant for users to leave feedback which add value to the posts or ask questions related to the content — it’s sad that I have to clarify that, especially to the self-proclaimed “blog police”.

Well, of course you can post anything you want on your blog and I don’t pretend to be any kind of “blog police”. My reason to jump into the conversation was Paul McCann calling the first repliers “dear morons”, a name I don’t think they deserve as they /do/ represent a large part of your userbase, of which the mailing-list isn’t a representative sample.

Come on, people have been waiting for years now and every single post on this blog is a memo about a minor utility or a “I really, really try to post more” kind of excuse. Many people chose TextMate because it was improving at a rapid pace, plus the upgrade to the next version was free. And yet, 3 years after, you keep telling us that this version isn’t ready yet, and still far from it. Don’t be surprised…

I found the blogpost really useful and very related to my work with Textmate.

I wonder. If TM2 never releases, why would Alan stop this blog? I tend to appreciate the blogposts that don’t are about TM2 more. And I also get more of the feeling that Alan has his focus on making Textmate better from this posts, than when he have to console some of his customers.

Allan lets us down again and again during the past three years. But this doesn’t mean we shall not be more gentle. After all we are all using TextMate 1 now, which without Allan it cannot happen at all.

However, I hate to wait so long for TextMate 2 as much as most people here do.

Yan: I am really sorry that you feel I let you guys down “again and again” — I really tried to be clear (early on) that TM 2 was my Duke Nukem Forever, and people should not expect a release anytime soon.

The problem apparently is that if I say nothing, people build up expectations about it “being around the corner” (as I have seen stated countless times, even though I always stress the opposite, our “License Policy” even makes it sound like 2.0 may never happen) or they get annoyed because I don’t communicate, yet as long as there is no release, the little communication I do is quickly seen as “excuses” (quoting Gaël).

And now we have reached a point where I can’t post anything without users immediately going down the “TM 2” route… probably time to just disable comments altogether until 2.0 has been released. What a shame that it has come to this, but all this negative 2.0 talk is a serious strain on my mental resources :(

Allan, there’s always a jerk that thinks they have the right to abuse you just because they’re a customer. You’re not building TextMate 2 for them, you’re building it for the rest of us.

Blog about whatever you want, TextMate-related or not. Most of us can make decisions on whether or not we need to read it. To those who can’t figure that out for themselves aren’t very smart so they probably don’t make enough money to buy TextMate 2 anyway.

TextMate 1 is perfectly fine for me, and I suspect for 99% of the others who use it every day. I’ll buy 2.0 when/if it ships, but 1.5.8 isn’t keeping me from being productive. Take your time and deliver something you’re proud of.

Peter “coderiot.com” Tikhomirov is late with his site that he promised would be launched in January 2010 and I bet Gaël Deest has missed a deadline or three (hundred) in his lifetime. Maybe they’re both waiting for TM2 to solve all their problems? I would be willing to bet that neither of them has even attempted something as difficult as building a great programmer’s editor.

+1 for the silent majority that loves TextMate 1 and does not feel entitled to anything more. TM2 is your project and we wish you all the best in your endeavors.