So I partially take back the thing about AS being the answer. AS (or apple events) will definitely be the first thing used to expose the editor API, which should allow the editor API to be called in most scripting languages.

osa (applescript) would be a good start.

and like you say below, it would be needed to get back into textmate with a simple cgi-type callback interface.

But for callbacks I'm not sure AS makes sense with the current anti-AS attitude of TextMate (and AS just being crappy for the things you'd normally do in a callback/user function).

it is kinda high-overhead. and fiddly.

One (easy to achieve) solution is to run a script using bash, as currently done with commands, but give it arguments and probably re-use the environment space for all callbacks made for/from the same buffer.

simple is good. for me.

but i likely wouldn't be doing things that required much state, so simple might bother others more than me.

The other extreme is to embed a scripting language interpreter into TextMate...

python. =)

would love it if it was a language i liked. wouldn't like it so much if it was a language i didn't know/like. suspect others feel the same way.

...some people would be happy because you picked what they wanted. more people would be unhappy because you didn't pick what they liked.

...if you choose to embed python, ignore that comment.

Another solution (which could simply be in addition to the shell solution) would be to have TM delegate all scripting stuff to a plugin, and the 'embedded language' would lie entirely in this plugin. That way it would appear as if the embedded language was Python, Ruby, etc.

i fear you would end up with one good plugin (the one you use) and a stack of broken plug-ins. but i'd be delighted if the textmate community came through and proved me wrong.

a plugin would be harder to write that a syntax file.

hmm... I'll need to give this some more thoughts -- though this is not something I plan to do over the next weeks, so there's plenty of time, and I'm just thinking out loud here! :)

not registered, demo's expired right now. fell back to textwrangler (funny that the free editor is better than bb****. pay less, and they remove the bloat for you).

but i follow the list more than any other list currently.

can't wait for textmate to grow up. mostly i'm waiting for inter-process communication of some sort (what's being described by allan here).

...and some way to keep the windows from staggering all over the place when they open. that drove me nuts. just let me open them all on top of each other, i'll navigate with the keyboard.

i really miss snippets. can't wait to come back to textmate.