Allan,

Thanks!  I downloaded ThisService and used it to define my own service, a Perl script that translates IP addresses.  Works in Terminal, but the output went right into the Terminal instead of appearing as a tooltip.  So I tried PerlTk to open a small text window to display the result, but PerlTk requires that X11 be running.  So I rewrote it in Ruby and used Tk in Ruby.  It works!

My only gripe is that that the window opens somewhere on the screen other than next to the cursor.  I realize that I'm far afield from TextMate here, but can you suggest another approach that would open a tooltip window next to the cursor, as TextMate does?

-- Pete

On Jul 30, 2007, at 7:58 PM, Allan Odgaard wrote:

On 31. Jul 2007, at 00:02, Pete Siemsen wrote:

[...] I can place the caret in an IP address, autonomous system number or VLAN number, hit the "help" key, and TextMate looks up and displays a tooltip window that tells me what I'm looking at [...] I'd like to have the same functionality when I'm logged into a device interactively.

Not as convenient as customizing TextMate, but OS X has “services” which are actions you can run on the selection in basically every application. ThisService [1] is a way to write such services in a scripting language. So in practice you might be able to write a service for this IP address look-up which can be used in Terminal.