[TextMate] Why there is no preferences window (was: Preferences window)

[Ian Phillips]

>>> The trouble is -- what if you only wanted to change the font for the
>>> current document?  Perhaps I'd like to see the document I'm working 
>>> on
>>> right now in a bigger font, or I'd like to treat tabs differently
>>> temporarily.  Under the current system, it ain't temporary.
>
> How would moving the stuff to a preferences window make it temporary?

It wouldn't, but it would change users expectations so that they no 
longer assumed that changes were temporary.

>> and I think that is exactly the reason why people are so bothered by
>> this, usually in mac osx applications things in the menus only apply
>> to the current (document) window, not globally.
>
> It's been out for a day -- I think people have started it, wanted to 
> see which preferences it offered, and then stumbled upon the missing 
> preferences window, and ranted about it.  So let's give it 14 days, 
> and we'll see how people feels about it in that time.

Well, only counting top-level menu items there, and not counting 
commands, there are 80 menu items. Depending on whether you include 
"Enable Syntax Highlighting" there are either 20 or 21 which are really 
preferences. I'd say that saving 25% of the "menu real-estate" would 
definitely justify moving the preferences to a separate window.

An added advantage: if a future version implements per-project 
preference overriding, then the prefs window can be re-used as the UI 
for this feature.

For the record, here's what I think should be moved to preferences:

File -> Open With Encoding should be a Default Encoding preference 
(maybe move file encoding to the status bar)

Everything in the View menu except Fold Current Block. The fonts and 
color picker dialogs may also want to be left in the menu, but rely on 
dismissing the windows instead of having a "hide" command.

The entire Behaviour menu.

> And "keep on adding more and more", I really do not think TextMate 
> stands out with huge unstructured menus. I'm currently in Mail.app, I 
> see it has 17 items in its View menu, 5 of them are submenus.

FWIW at least 3 of those (Hide toolbar, hide status bar, use small 
icons) should really be preferences according to the HIG section that 
you mention ;-)

Ian.

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