[TxMt] IDL Bundle

[Ethan Gutmann]

Hi all, I just started using TextMate (long time emacs user), and  
thought I would post to let people know that I'm developing a bundle  
for IDL (Interactive Data Language http://www.ittvis.com/idl/index.asp).

Current features :
	Syntax Highlighting : Keywords, builtin routines, system
                               variables, system commands
	Folding
	Indenting
	Recognizes a program's function names and parameters
	IDL documentation search :
		open IDL's builtin HTML help libraries
		search IDL's builtin HTML help libraries
		run DOC_LIBRARY to build help files
	tab completion for common control forms
	new program template

I've posted it at http://aster.colorado.edu/software/IDL.tmbundle.zip  
and if I can get subversion access, I'll put it in the repository, or  
somebody else can, but I'm not done with it yet... which brings me to  
my next point...

I wonder if it is possible to keep a persistent process open in the  
background and send commands to it. I'm not sure how IDLWAVE http:// 
www.idlwave.org does this for emacs, I'm afraid that emacs runs a  
complete shell of its own... I suppose this could be done with a  
separate program that just passes information back and forth, but  
that seems inelegant (and more difficult than it needs to be).  All I  
need to do is start a process, pass strings to it as standard in, and  
read standard out and error from it.  I could see this kind of  
groundwork being useful to far more than just IDL, it should work  
with any interpreted language that has an interactive mode (ruby,  
matlab, ...), and many debuggers for that matter (gdb at least).

If this turns out to be relatively easy to do, I would also like to  
inquire about the status of a plugin API.  The web page says more is  
likely to be done here, has anything been done?  Eventually I might  
want to write a simple plugin that talks to the IDL process and  
highlights associated lines in the editor window (and possibly add a  
GUI for querying and displaying variables).  Again, this seems like  
something that a wide array of programming languages would benefit  
from having a framework for (hint, hint :-) ).

Ethan