In the case where what is expected is a label, then pressing escape will similarly offer all matching labels from the TeX document. Depending on your naming conventions, this could for instance offer a list of all theorems: If the labels for theorems are all of the form thm:labelname, and you have included the colon (:) in the list of word characters in TextMate’s preferences, then pressing escape when the caret is right before the closing brace in \ref{thm} will offer as completion options all labels corresponding to theorems.

If there are many matching completions, it is often more convenient to use the pull-down-list versions of the commands, which are triggered by ⌥⎋.

I do have ":_" (just a colon and an underscore, no quotations)in the preference pane as Word Characters. Is this ok or do they need to be separated / in quotations / ... ?

Neither pressing <escape> nor <escape> + <alt> while the caret is right in front of the closing bracket in latex mode, doesn't do anything.

2) <alt>+<escape> is the key equivalent for "Citation based on Current Word / Selection" AND for "Label Based on Current Word / Selection" --- this seems a little weird to me. Is this how it should be originally? Or have I changed this accidently at some point?

I remember a time when hitting <escape> (I think) actually has worked and I used "eqn:" and "fig:" for labeling and referencing equations and figures, respectively. Should the difference between <alt>+<escape> and <escape> only that <alt>+<escape> should offer a pull-down list and hitting <escape> multiple times would move through the possible choices?

Is this something that got changed over the releases (I am working with cutting edge)? That leads me to another question: when a bundle gets updated in the bundle repository... do those changes get updated in each new (cutting edge) release or would I check them out and update them as I would with any other "default" bundle?