On Oct 20, 2005, at 10:30 AM, Trevor Turk wrote:

I just started using TextMate about a week ago, and I've been collecting some of my impressions, and any notes for things I had trouble learning how to do. I was going to add this to the wiki on a User Page, but I can't seem to find how to do that.

Overall, I really like TextMate. I was actually prompted to try it out by someone on IRC when I asked what people thought of BBEdit - since they're having a sale for $99 right now. So, I was going to buy it, but I was scared off when people kept talking about "bloat" and whatnot. So, I'm giving TextMate a shot, but I've become rather familiar with TextWrangler, so most of my feedback has to do with coming from that paradigm - just to warn you.

I actually own BBEdit and had been using it for years when I discovered TextMate. I haven't launched BBEdit since then.

Anyway, here's the beef:

=============================== = TextMate Notes = ===============================

==================== = Feature Requests = ====================

make it so that you can always show the file browsing drawer

You mean the drawer you get in a project? In TextMate 1.1 that only applies to projects - other files are just single windows, so file browsing doesn't make sense.

BTW, you are aware that the drawer doesn't have to represent the actual file tree on your system, yes? You can create a new project and drag multiple folders and files into the drawer to have them all show up side-by-side regardless of where they are on the system.

Anyhow, the project interface is going to be re-done in TextMate 1.2, and I believe the single-window-per-file paradigm is going to be dropped, so it should do what you want then.

allow a "single window" interface where new files opened are always opened in the same window (like textwrangler)

See previous paragraph.

looking for an easy way to make textmate the "default text editor" or something to that effect

Select a text file, hit get info, go to the Open with: section, select TextMate and hit Change All...

This will only affect documents with the given extension, though, so you may have to keep doing it with other extensions (for various different programming languages) as you run across them.

if you move a file (via the finder or whatever) while it is being edited, textmate can't follow it (textwrangler did)

Yes, that would be nice.

collect color "themes" on website for easy download

That would also be nice

option to make file browsing drawer on the right

The project drawer isn't locked to the left side of the window, it's just a Cocoa drawer with no preference. This means if there isn't room on the left, it will open on the right (and stay on the right until there isn't room there next time it opens). So just close the drawer, move the window to the left side of the screen, and re-open the drawer.

Note: this technique works in all drawer applications unless the drawer is fixed to the side (some apps fix the drawer to a side, but that generally only happens when the app may have multiple drawers and each one has a designated side).

===================== = 2005-10-14 snippets = =====================

snippets are specific to the language. you can find them in the menu - Automation -> Insert Snippet go to Edit Snippets to look around You can choose Tab Trigger from the drop-down to see the trigger a Trigger is important - you have to be in the right language for the trigger to see, for example, the auto-link thing on the home page video... make sure you're in html, and then type "ref" and then <tab> then you can tab to the two areas of the tag you'd want to edit note - and this is very cool - you can use PHP language snippets in html... just open the php stuff with the tags <?php etc - and within there, php snippets will work

This appears to be notes on how snippets work. Is there any actual feedback associated with this?

================ = 2005-10-14 Balance Tags = ================

coming from textwrangler - one of the first things i looked for was tag balancing that's where it will highlight all the code between two { } things this is good to make sure you're balancing your tags out

Try cmd-shift-B (Edit -> Select -> Block). Also, when you type a closing brace (or paren or bracket) it highlights the opening one.

I'd also recommend you try Smart Typing (in preferences).

================== = 2005-10-14 Multiple files = ==================

dragging a folder into the textmate icon in the doc will open them with a drawer to see all the files

Yes, it creates a new scratch project for that folder. Very handy.

================================= = 2005-10-19 The Project Drawer = =================================

choose file -> new project to have the file browser appear you can make folders in the project drawer one trick might be to make a single project with many folders that contain all of your text files

Again, any actual feedback here, or just notes?

On 20/10/2005, at 22.09, Trevor Turk wrote:

Kevin, thanks for the reply. Sorry if I wasn't clear, but a lot of that was just notes. I hope that they could be indicative of many users first few questions. I noticed that there isn't too much documentation, so I started collecting notes as a learned, in the hopes that it might be useful for any documentation later.

It is, thanks! :)

Some other tips when working with HTML:

1) for new tags: type the name of the tag you want and ctrl-cmd space, this turns it into <tag></tag> and places caret in the middle.

2) for wrapping text in a tag: select the text and type ctrl-shift W, this wraps the text in a tag pair, and allows you to overtype the tag name (and add arguments).

3) a variant of #2 is when you want to make the text a link, use ctrl-shift L instead.

4) when you want to insert an <img> tag, dropping the image into the text area inserts the tag with proper width and height dimensions.

5) for closing open tags: option-cmd . will insert any </missing> tag for the current context.

My own use of HTML is limited to what I put on macromates.com, but for that I make frequent use of 1-4, and these can all be edited in the bundle editor, e.g. I have a variant of the image drag command that scales down the image to 75%, centers it, and makes the image a link to the actual image URL (for when I post on my blog) -- I also have the ctrl-shift L snippet use the contents of the clipboard for the actual href, but this (currently) only works when e.g. Quicksilvers clipboard history is enabled (something I'll solve in the future).

On 10/20/05, Trevor Turk trevorturk@yahoo.com wrote:

looking for an easy way to make textmate the "default text editor" or something to that effect

You want RCDefaultApp: http://www.rubicode.com/Software/RCDefaultApp/

It's a prefpane for managing all file<->app associations.