[TxMt] primer on markdown & textmate

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On May 16, 2006, at 11:13 PM, nachodog at mac.com wrote:

> General Comments/Questions
> =======================
> 1.  Textmate's web preview integration with Markdown is awesome.   
> This feature has drawn me into textmate.
> 2.  I am so tired of bloated Microsoft Word files.  Other than the  
> files that people send you, has anyone adopted Textmate as their  
> primary text editor?  It seems like a fantastic editor for code,  
> but how is it for someone in education?

what do you mean "someone in education" ? I am teaching at a liberal  
arts college, and I have never had the need to use the likes of  
Microsoft Word. Can you be more specific what you are asking?

Also, we probably are using the phrase "text editor" in a very  
different sense. Microsoft Word is NOT a text editor, it is a word  
processor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor). So yes,  
Textmate is my primary, and only, text editor (http:// 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_editor).

> Writing a Markdown document in Textmate
> =================================
> I understand the basic principals of markdown, but typing the code  
> (albeit, simple) seems burdensome.  Is it possible to:
>
> *  highlight selected items and add a "*" (bullet) at the beginning  
> of the list?

If I undestand correctly, you want to go from:

one
two
three

to

* one
* two
* three

In that case, select the first two lines, press option followed by  
star and space. Or better, create a command with code the single line:

sed 's/\(.*\)/* \1/'

with input set to selected text, fall-back line, and output set to  
replace selected text.
With this command, you'll want to select all three lines.

> * create triggers for the various markdown codes?

markdown codes?

>
> Markdown Conversion
> =================
> I have had great success in putting markdown document on the web.   
> What are recommendations for converting a markdown document into a  
> text file?

A markdown document is already a text file, as good as they come in  
fact.
Do you perhaps mean an rtf file? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
RTF_files)

> Thanks,
> Stephen

Haris