Arrr mateys!

I'm a recent TextMate convert, and I absolutely love it ;). Still, I have a couple of requests... I searched the archives and couldn't find much about the first two:

1) On my (Belgian) keyboard, typing a [ or ] requires option+shift+( or ). This makes the block indent shortcuts very cumbersome to use because the command key is also required, meaning it's a 4-key chord each. One solution would be to add e.g. command+( and command+) as extra shortcuts for this (which are 2-key chords for anyone else on a Belgian and French keyboard).

But in many other editors, there is a much easier and intuitive way to block-indent: just select multiple lines of text, and press Tab or Shift-Tab. In TextMate, the first just replaces the selection with a tab (not so useful IMO), and the second does nothing. So, please consider adding this feature.

2) The bracket matching seems clumsy. The highlighting is only a short flash, so you need to move the cursor back and forth to see it again. And because it only highlights the opening bracket, it is often hard to see which is the matching closing bracket. Especially when you are around multiple nested parentheses, and you are doing the 'back and forth' thing to see it flash again. Finally, it does not work in reverse (highlight the closing bracket when you are at the opening bracket).

I think it would be a much more usable feature if it highlighted both brackets in a pair, when you are at either of them and did so permanently (i.e. based on cursor position) rather than just when moving over a bracket from left to right (i.e. based on cursor movement). It would also get rid of the artificial pause it has now.

3) I'd like to voice my support for smarter insertion of bracket pairs in the middle of text (as has been requested before). All too often, I get 'foo()bar(...)' when I want to wrap 'bar(...)'. Selecting the text to wrap first (what was suggested before on the list) just doesn't feel right to me. My instinct groups the bracket with the keyword in front of it, so doing keyword -> highlight -> bracket is icky. I'd much rather have no closing bracket inserted when the next character is not an operator/whitespace/end-of-line.

I hope having a license gives me at least some nag credits ;). Steven Wittens