Maybe it isn't the answer you wanted, but I bought a Powerbook.

drool I'm envious.

Same here. New Macbook Pro comes in February. $2500 for an editor? Geesh, I must be crazy.

Have you tried jedit (http://www.jedit.org/)? Is made in Java, but you should have guessed that already. So it is multiplatform. It is a plaint-text editor with no particular or specific purpose, but it supports plugins, and it has a plugin for Ruby and Rails (rhtml).

Is not a perfect replacement for TextMate, but is good. I agree that RadRails is buggy. There's also this Arachno IDE at http://www.ruby-ide.com/ruby/rubyideandrubyeditor.php, but I haven't tried it yet.

Hope this was helpful. Just my two cents.

radrails is a bit buggy, but it's still the best..

As a longtime Mac user, I'm quite used to being in the minority when it comes to my choices in technology (just like those poor Mercedes owners feel in a world of fords :-) but I found it most interested at the just finished Ruby on Rails Studio in Denver (http://studio.pragprog.com/rails/locations.html) -- standing at the front of the room looking out at the 50 or so attendees, it was astonishing to see the approximately 60-70% Powerbooks in use there (including both of the instructors).

On Windows, I was always a huge fan of UltraEdit but if I were in that environment all day, I would probably be using RadRails. Those guys put in an amazing amount of effort to create a free tool for everyone to use.

Having said that, TextMate on the Mac just got about 1000x more attractive to me as a developer after watching and learning from some of the Rails pros at the rails studio and how they put the TM bundles to use in the real world. Cheers!

Has anyone tried ActiveState's Komodo yet? Claims to have RoR debugging and is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux.

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/features/ruby.plex

I'm using RadRails as well. My only complaint so far is the difficulty in customizing the text/background colors. I'd like to have a black background w/ light-colored code, but it's a pain to set up in RadRails. I don't want to have to wade through 10 menus setting very specific options. Just give me some pre-defined customizations and I'd be happy.

TextPad for the controllers (with Ruby/RoR syntax definition file, available as a free add-on) and TopStyle Pro for the rhtml.

I, too, am looking for an ideal solution.

I've been using Archno Ruby IDE for a couple of days(free for 30 days) 29.95 - and I like it better than the other windows based editors.

I've tried to use RadRails but had to stop due do dead-locks in the editor. I'm quite sure though that RadRails will be the best choice on windows soon (integration with RDT).

Notepad++ for quite stuff (has Ruby support).

Also well, I bought an iMac two days ago... (not specifically for TextMate, but it added some weight to my choice!).

I have tried Komodo, RadRails, and the Eclipse + RDT solution and I find that the Eclipse/RDT is ideal for me. Here's my setup. All my ruby/rails apps are in a debian vmware VM, and I edit my files directly from the VM through Samba (the share is mapped in a virtual drive letter). This cuts down the incompatibilities between doing development on windows and deploying on linux.

Let's see here, Komodo Pro (v3.5.2): Slow and simplistic. Just scrolling the file tree and expanding/collapsing nodes is not that responsive. I cannot create a file by right-clicking on a directory node and choosing "New File..". There's no such thing--you have to create a blank unnamed file, and save it while going through the file browser. If you add a file in your filesystem, you have to manually add that file to the project (yet another hassle). Not too much ruby-related features. The code browser is not that comprehensive as in RadRails and Eclipse. Ruby code in RHTML is just an afterthought with very limited code formatting. Although excellent code formatting in .rb files with numerous customization options (e.g. can even use different fonts for class names, modules, etc.) Support for Perforce is terrible (I really never bothered getting deeper into this as the solution I read on their support pages is not much of a help). Subversion support is okay and simplistic as well. You can do basic commit, update, and delete. There is no log browser or file history or anything like that, however. The diff utility is just like that--the svn diff output :) -- no fancy comparison panes.

On Eclipse 3.2.0 with RDT 0.7.0, Subclipse 0.9.105, and the other web-editing related plugins as written by Brian Hogan at http://www.napcs.com/howto/railsonwindows.html, it's really the sweet spot. The RadRails 0.5.3 is coming out soon and will probably wrap up all the Eclipse components in one installation.

It probably has to do with my UNIX background from years ago (I ended up in the ASP then .NET world due to economics, but I'm coming back due to Rails)... but I just use vim under Cygwin.

When I got interested in Ruby and Rails, I already had Cygwin on my box (I've never been able to go without grep, find, sed and awk for long when manipulating files, doing brute-force web log processing, etc), and since I did a full install of Cygwin I already had Ruby installed without knowing it. Thus, I shunned the Windows-native Ruby install, downloaded Rubygems, and pulled down Rails with 'gem.'

The learning curve for vim isn't so great for beginners, but I never have to touch the mouse, my fingers never leave the main keyboard (no arrows or home/end/pgup/pgdn for me!), and I can manipulate text with commands unthinkable in more 'conventional' editors (i.e. repetition - want to copy four lines and paste them ten times? 4Y10P. A lot better than highlight, copy, paste 10x).

I tried RadRails and also found it quirky as hell, so I pulled down Eclipse and RDT, but was disappointed at the lack of Rails support and next to nothing in terms of ERB. Of course, this was a while back, and I picked up RadRails when it was first released, but I just gave up and went back to vim and remain happy.

Also, FYI, I install Cygwin in UNIX(LF) mode, so running any programs under it is done in purely UNIX file format (LF, not CRLF), so I've never had any interoperability issues with UNIX systems (like Bugsy mentioned above).

And, of course, Cygwin is also open-source and totally free, and comes with all the UNIX utilities one comes to grow and love... plus a lot of extra X Windows crap you probably don't need, heh.

Downsides:

• Vim's default highlighting is best described as 'angry fruit salad,' but as long as your eyesight's good, it'll probably grow on you. Very high contrast.
• Cygwin is slooow. Not atrociously so, but it's certainly noticable when running WEBrick or something Ruby-code-intensive. The performance hit from it's interface to the Win32 layer becomes obvious at times like that. But for development work it's plenty acceptable on a slightly out-of-date machine like mine.
• I very rarely get quirky file permission issues when editing under Windows/Cygwin, at least on Win2K3. The main problem seems to be that files with 700 permission in Cygwin are, naturally, very fussy about their owner (which Windows normally doesn't care much about). So if you edit the file from, say, Notepad, the file might end up with 'Users' or 'Administrators' as the owner (not the group!) and suddenly you can't write to the file. Fortunately, it's easy to fix, usually with chown or "Replace permission entries on all child objects..."

I use EditPlus, which is fast and solid, but pretty lame on Ruby syntax highlighting. I also use BabelPad for heavy Unicode usage.

http://www.pspad.com/en/

Tried various editors and this one is by far the best so far. Very customisable, has syntax highlighting for Ruby and RoR ( you can also create your own or change existing ones ), very good RegEX support, macros and it's free.

Arachno Ruby is a excellent Ruby development workstation and it's includes a full debugger. Although it costs about $50, it is well worth the price of you work with Rails professionally. In time and easy of use, it paid for itself in just a few days. I'm a big fan and use it with all my clients.

I use vim, but vim for windows :) and I ftp stuff back and forth. My colors are great in vim! Snappy, too!

In all theoretical sciences, the architectonic of human reason, in all theoretical sciences, would be falsified, as is evident upon close examination.

In natural theology, the objects in space and time occupy part of the sphere of the transcendental aesthetic concerning the existence of the noumena in general.

The latest NetBeans is great (and free), but if I want just a lightweight editor I use E-TextEditor – TextMate clone for Windows.