[TxMt] first impressions

[Trevor Turk]

Hello,

I just started using TextMate about a week ago, and I've been  
collecting some of my impressions, and any notes for things I had  
trouble learning how to do. I was going to add this to the wiki on a  
User Page, but I can't seem to find how to do that.

Overall, I really like TextMate. I was actually prompted to try it  
out by someone on IRC when I asked what people thought of BBEdit -  
since they're having a sale for $99 right now. So, I was going to buy  
it, but I was scared off when people kept talking about "bloat" and  
whatnot. So, I'm giving TextMate a shot, but I've become rather  
familiar with TextWrangler, so most of my feedback has to do with  
coming from that paradigm - just to warn you.

Anyway, here's the beef:

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= TextMate Notes =
===============================

====================
= Feature Requests =
====================

make it so that you can always show the file browsing drawer
allow a "single window" interface where new files opened are always  
opened in the same window (like textwrangler)
looking for an easy way to make textmate the "default text editor" or  
something to that effect
if you move a file (via the finder or whatever) while it is being  
edited, textmate can't follow it (textwrangler did)
collect color "themes" on website for easy download
option to make file browsing drawer on the right

=====================
= 2005-10-14 snippets =
=====================

snippets are specific to the language.
you can find them in the menu - Automation -> Insert Snippet
go to Edit Snippets to look around
You can choose Tab Trigger from the drop-down to see the trigger
a Trigger is important - you have to be in the right language for the  
trigger
to see, for example, the auto-link thing on the home page video...
make sure you're in html, and then type "ref" and then <tab>
then you can tab to the two areas of the tag you'd want to edit
note - and this is very cool - you can use PHP language snippets in  
html...
just open the php stuff with the tags <?php etc - and within there,  
php snippets will work

================
= 2005-10-14 Balance Tags =
================

coming from textwrangler - one of the first things i looked for was  
tag balancing
that's where it will highlight all the code between two { } things
this is good to make sure you're balancing your tags out

==================
= 2005-10-14 Multiple files =
==================

dragging a folder into the textmate icon in the doc will open them  
with a drawer to see all the files

=================================
= 2005-10-19 The Project Drawer =
=================================

choose file -> new project to have the file browser appear
you can make folders in the project drawer
one trick might be to make a single project with many folders that  
contain all of your text files