Hello there,
I downloaded the trial version of TextMate 3 days ago and payed for it yesterday, am quite happy with what I have seen so far. One of the big selling points for me is that there is no toolbar! In the past I used Mellel and chose compact view to turn off the toolbar; I prefer the floating pallet. Toolbars are just way too distracting on the eyes, especially MS Word (a way too busy toolbar).
So as a nursing student (RN program in Seattle) I will start using TextMate and LaTeX to write my papers. One of my prereqs was English 102 in which I had to write a 20 page paper with over 20 references, 4 graphics, using MLA citations. I used Mellel without any type of bibliography software, and Mellel worked like a champ, quite good at setting styles; but I never worked with TOC or sections. I did have to spend extra time manipulating the text to eliminate widows/orphans and other layout issues. During the 2nd quarter of the program I had to write a 7 page paper using APA citations. For that one I used Apple's Pages and rolled my own references again. But first I used CopyWrite to write the paper before importing into Pages. I did not use fullscreen mode - don't like it. CopyWrite was really nice for organizing that paper, and plan on using it again.
This summer I have no classes, so I have spent time learning LaTeX and have converted the 7 page paper to LaTeX, using BibDesk and the apacite package. That was using TexShop. To make TextMate a little like TexShop I installed Schubert's PDF plugin, changed the pdflatex command to "Command-T" and created a bibtex command set to "Command- B". I copied latexErrWarnHtml.py into the local Latex.tmbundle (are there other mods I need to make?).
So I think I am set for next quarter's 15 page paper (on the cardiac and respiratory systems), and for the Masters program (whenever that may be).
Thanks for an excellent program for editing LaTeX.
Cheers, Jeff