Use TextMate to organize files into projects

November, 03 2005 12:07 AM Filed in: How-to
TextMate Project
TextMate's project feature is the key to the universe. Seriously. For years I've been playing with all sorts of apps and schemes in an effort to efficiently organize my files and my projects. Not long ago I mentioned this quest. I think I've finally got an answer. It is only a tentative conclusion but it is more solid than its predecessors. Here's the scoop.

I'm a big fan of the simple, clean, and powerful three pane interface used by Apple for its Mail application. I'm obviously not alone because plenty of apps are adopting that general design. The problem though is that many apps that attempt to help you track information via a unified notes database will not work very well with the fantastic new search technology that Apple is developing for it's next major upgrade to OS X, 10.4. Dubbed Spotlight, the technology will rely upon the meta data of each file. Not only will you be able to find files based upon their file name, but also by the content. Given this, I'm making the decision to avoid programs that will tie my data up in a single unified database. TextMate empowers me to get the interface I like while keeping the separate file structure that will work well with Spotlight. As an added bonus this method works perfectly with apps such as LaunchBar or Quicksilver that can be used to find and open the files on your Mac. In fact using them now gives you an idea of what Spotlight will do and allows you to insert a new efficiency into your workflow.

Here's what I'm doing. First, I've organized all of my currently used text files into a single folder with sub-folders. I've labled this folder __THE HUB. The current subfolders are accounts, GTD, Notes, and Websites. Using TextMate I've created a new project (File > New Project) and dropped the primary folder, __THE HUB, onto the project. I save the project file onto my desktop. and I am now one click away from all of my most important and current text documents. Once I've opened the project I can open the individual files, create new files, rename, delete, and create groupings. I can easily add whole new folders or individual files. The resulting project file is very small, 4 KB at the moment.

Until Spotlight is released searching the content of the text files will fall into TextMate's incredibly fast project wide searching. When Apple releases 10.4 (Tiger) my files will be neatly organized and each will be indexed for Spotlight's searching. As it is now the file names are indexed by Quicksilver so at any moment from any app I can hit the Command-Space combo that activates Quicksilver to find any of these files to open or email them, copy or move them, all with Quicksilver. I could never do this with an app that locks my data into a single database.
|