[TxMt] Character and Word Counting of Highlighted Text

[Stuart Wheeler]

I've just discovered TextMate and am seriously considering buying a  
license.

I have tried numerous text editors in the hope that I would find one  
that really delivered. Many seem to be ports from other platforms and  
haven't truly embraced the capabilities of OS X. SubEthaEdit was  
closest I had come to something I liked (especially the price), but it  
still lacks a lot and frankly I don't need the collaborative editing.

People kept telling me that BBEdit was the ultimate editor but despite  
claims it was totally rewritten for OS X, it's still Carbon (despite  
BareBones' earlier claims of it being in Cocoa - the black and white  
spinning disk is a bit of a Carbon giveaway), and it really didn't  
strike me as such. It seems like a throwback to the pre-OS X era (and  
is therefore bound to have plenty of pre-OS X cruft). I tried it  
several times and just couldn't get on with it. The file drawer was  
klunky and on several occasions I had huge problems saving and opening  
files. It's visually unappealing with its stupid little buttons. It  
feels bloated and a little buggy. Another major downside I found was  
that as I had previously tried earlier versions of BBEdit, the demo  
period would suddenly end without warning and any work I was doing was  
suddenly lost. Thanks, BareBones, not the best way to woo a prospective  
license owner!

The only thing I did like about BBEdit was its ability to tell me how  
many words and characters I was highlighting.

Today I read the following article on MacDevCenter about text editors:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/11/05/text_editors.html? 
page=1

I decided to take a look at TextMate and Smultron. In Smultron I  
instantly liked the way I could see exactly how many words and  
characters I had highlighted. This is important to me as I have a  
number of forms with specific length fields I write text for. It's also  
a fairly standard feature of many editors. In fact I prefer the way it  
is done in Smultron over BBEdit. There are a few other things in  
Smultron I liked, but when I fired up TextMate I was instantly blown  
away. It just felt right.

Now all I need to do is work out how to determine the number of  
characters and words I am highlighting (without manually counting  
them). Is it possible to do that in TextMate at the moment? If I can  
find that out then I'll buy a license.

Regards,

Stuart