Introducing Amy, Web 2.0 Collaborative Editor

As any Mac developer can confirm, there really is only one option when selecting your favorite text editor. It’s the TextMate created by Allan Odgaard.

There have been thousands of requests for porting this truly amazing piece of software to Windows and its user base. Sorry folks, this will probably never happen… or so you thought…

Working on a hobby project (along with two friends), an amazing Ruby on Rails Playground (the launch will be announced soon), I suddenly realized it would be really fun to try something chasing me for ages. Being a JavaScript addict for more than a decade, I was able to develop a proof-of-concept text editing component and receive one of these rare heureka moments when it just clicks :).

For those of you (likely 95%) coming from Windows world, i will list quick set of instructions:

• editor is extended using so-called Bundles. Bundles are sort of like plugins, they define key mapping (yes it’s possible to define vim-like key shortcuts), languages (JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, C#, Java, HTML, YAML, …), snippets and several other things not revealed yet :).
• snippets are pieces of text triggered by writing a shortcut and pressing TAB key. Once displayed, pressing TAB key again will shift the caret (cursor) into next tabstop. I know it won’t say much, but simply write funp then type TAB, write class name (any name will do), press TAB again, write your method name, TAB again, enter your parameters, TAB again and now you should be inside the method body and ready to start writing your own code. Try if TAB, ife TAB, v TAB and so on.
• word completion is a killer feature. Simply pressing Esc on uncompleted word you’re writing will cause the editor to lookup any combination of document words starting by the same sequence of characters in both directions (before and after current word). You will be offered the nearest word followed by second-nearest etc. To toggle among word variations, simple keep pressing Esc key. And if you were too fast, press Shift+Esc to change the direction :).

No more talk, let’s see it in action already and launch the damn Amy Editor :). Note to Internet Explorer users – wait, it’ll work some day, meanwhile use Firefox instead. Of course it works with Safari and Opera (little bit weird rendering coming from Norway though:)

Screencast (~31MB, 15’22)

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