[TextMate] Feature Request (and some thoughts on Preferences)

[Ian Phillips]

How about this as a solution for preferences:

1. Move all of the preferences off the menus and into a separate
    (command-, invoked!) window.
2. Add a toolbar and allow most of the preference options to be added
    to it via the "customize..." option.

This would allow users to make frequently changed preferences easily 
available, and it seems to be the method that a few other apps have 
chosen.

And now for some feature requests:

1. Allow projects to define their own variables in the same way that you
    can with the defaults command line tool. This would be useful when
    setting up templates and snippets.

2. Add a separate "New" sub-menu, which bundles can contribute to, I see
    this working like the existing templates feature, but with parameters
    in a similar to snippets. Probably need to have the parameters
    configured in the property list that would go with the template file.

2a. An alternative to this would be to allow template property lists to
     specify a series of parameters that would be prompter for in a 
dialog
     before the file is created. E.g.
     {
         parameter = "1";
         displayName = "Class Name";
         defaultValue = "MyClass";
     }

3. A minor UI tweak: have the encoding and line endings embedded in the
    status bar, this could either be a read-only display, or a combo-box
    to alter them.

4. Add a preference/option to show or hide white space characters
    (e.g. line endings, tabs, etc.).

What do people think?

Yours,
Ian.

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