[TextMate] TextMate first impression (longish)

[Sune Foldager]

Some comments on behalf of myself and Allan who is quite burried in 
support mails ;-).

On 7/10-2004, at 0:32, Luc Heinrich wrote:

> However, this v1.0 looks like nothing more than a good draft to me.
> Yeah, shoot me, but that's David's hyping machine fault... :p

Isn't that a little hard? :-). I mean, I think that BBEdit any version 
looks like a draft ... ;-). At any rate, of course there will be 
substatial improvements in some areas in the future.

> - Now let's go straight to the GUI itself. Here's a screenshot of a
> TextMate default window (with my own default background color):
<snip>
> Here's my (photoshop) take on this:

Very nice actually, and Allan thinks so too. This will certainly be 
taken into serious consideration for updates to the visuals :-). Great 
job. Some details:

>    + A simple gray line to separate the gutter from the text area.
Yes that one is really needed, I agree :-).

>    + The gutter is a bit larger to allow 5 digits line numbers.
I think in the future it will be dynamic according to the length of the 
file.

>    + The outside limit of the wrap line is drawn in the same color than
> the text area but with a lower brightness (that's currently how BBEdit
> 8 does it, it looks really nice imho).
Yeah... We thought about making the wrap line a complement of the 
background color or something, but I like your idea better :-).

> Doesn't this look much tidy and cleaner like that ?

Indeed, it is a nice improvement. A seperate status bar could still be 
desirable in the future if more information makes its way into it 
though.

> Let's move on to the project window. Here's how a basic project
> currently looks in TextMate:
<snip>
> Here's my take on this:

Again, it looks quite nice I think :-). I don't personally have a 
problem with the "tabs" not really being tabs.. it's just a matter of 
convenience and I doubt people find them hard to use now... I don't 
think they look bad, maybe just a bit plain. Yours look good also 
though, and will be considered :-). Details:

>    + Smaller icons in the drawer list allowing for a more balanced look
> (quite impressive to see what a couple more pixel space can do uh ?).
Yeah, that does make it a bit less cluttered.

> - Find and replace feature:
>    + There should be a "Use selection for replace" menu shortcut.
>    + There should be a "Replace" menu shortcut.
>    + There should be a "Replace all" menu shortcut.
>    + There should be a "Replace and find next" menu shortcut.
> All these would allow to perform basic search & replace operations
> straight from the keyboard, *without* having to open the find panel at
> all.
>
> - I guess that you guys already know that and are already preparing
> something to fix this problem, but I'll say it anyway: having to
> manually go and edit plist files [...] is ridiculous.

Again, isn't that a little hard? After all, you don't change those 
settings every time you edit something, and it's not that hard. But 
yes, there IS a built-in editor for those planned, as well as a general 
revision to some aspects of the Syntax Highlight system.

> - Something which I found pretty weird: each tmbundle defines its very
> own color settings right ? [...] a syntax file
> could either inherit attributes from the defaults, or override with its
> own values. That would greatly simplify the whole coloring settings I
> think. Thoughts ?

Yes, this is actually already part of the plans for the next-generation 
syntax highlight system: More inheritance, more nesting possibilities, 
global and local repositories for patterns used in several places, and 
also for colors etc. The exact details have yet to be worked out 
though, but thanks a lot for your input on this :-).

> - Another pretty obvious one: there is no "function popup", or any
> other way to quickly navigate through the list of functions or methods
> of a code file, or the structure of a markup file.

Currently, there are hardly any "hardcoded" features in TextMate 
pertaining to different languages etc.. but I think this could be 
implemented in a general way, and it is not a bad idea at all :-).

> - Snippets are great, but the snippet menu is already pretty crowded. I
> think that allowing snippets to be grouped in families (based on the
> tmbundle they're coming from, to begin with) or categories or whatever,
> could help minimize the clutter. Ditto for macros and commands.

Yes, I agree again :-).

> - How about the ability to have the snippets, macros and commands in a
> palette ?

I don't know how Allan feels about this, but I don't have anything 
against it.. not sure I would ever use it though.

> - How about giving some basic abilities to a command to specify when it
> is actually applicable ? A command menu item (or palette entry ;))
> could then be disabled if it is not. For example, the "Compile" command
> does not make sense for a '.html' file, or the "Reload in Safari"
> command does not really make sense for a '.rb' file.

Yes, something like that would be nice. Also, there will be more things 
that will be syntax-aware in the next generation highlight, such as 
smart type settings, indentation etc.

> - Being able to write commands in something else than shell scripts
> could be cool. Like, being able to directly write applescript instead
> of having to go through 'osascript' commands.

I don't know if this is planned or not... My guess is, not for the 
immediate next version.

> - Hey, you seem to have pretty good text editing widget (that
> OakTextView thingy), so why not also use it for command editing ? Heck,
> why not even also use it for colored regexp editing in the find panel ?

I think (from what Allan tells me) that there are some practical 
problems with this approach that need to be solved. It's already used 
in one place, where it has some minor resizing-issues. But it may come 
around also :-).

> - Detail: it seems like a lots of ATSUI related debug messages are
> still being sent to the console.

Yes, this is a slip..  :-). It will be corrected in the next release, 
thanks :-).

> - Snippets, macros and commands are good ways to automate a lot of
> stuff, but are there any plans to allow TextMate plugins, for those
> tasks which would require an elaborate GUI ?

Maybe, but I don't think in the immediate next version or anything like 
that... plugins could also be used for many other things such as tricky 
language-aware stuff like checking if variables are defined etc.

> Oh, and one final comment: I *R*E*A*L*L*Y* *H*A*T*E* the icon. It's
> butt ugly. Really. Heck, you have John 'Magic' Marstall on the mailing
> list, I'm pretty sure he could do something about this :))

Yes, but this icon is what the budget allowed MacroMates to come up 
with... I don't think it's ugly btw, but maybe a little naïve.... I 
don't know, I guess there are different opinions :-).

-- 
Sune.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
http://cyanite.org  --  Content follows ;-).

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