[TxMt] Overloading the tab key

[Ed Singleton]

On 4/5/07, Thomas Aylott (subtleGradient) <oblivious at subtlegradient.com> wrote:
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> On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:35 PM, Rob McBroom wrote:
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> On Apr 5, 2007, at 9:49 AM, Steve King wrote:
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> Anyone have suggestions on how overload the tab key without losing what it
> already does?  I'd also accept some way of binding tab triggers and snippets
> to some other keystroke.
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> I'm thinking you should set TextMate to use "Soft Tabs" with 8 spaces and
> then use some Snippet or Command trickery to make it insert an actual Tab
> when you hit the ⇥ key from the beginning of a line.
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> There doesn't seem to be a way to set "beginning of a line" as a Tab
> Trigger, but perhaps you could modify the relevant language grammars to have
> a "beginning of line" scope or an "empty line" scope and have a Snippet or
> Command with a Key Equivalent of ⇥ that inserts a literal Tab only in that
> scope.
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> I say "Snippet or Command" because I'm not sure which is best here. When
> Snippets containing actual Tabs are used, the Tabs are usually replaced
> according to your preferences. There may be a way to escape the Tab, or some
> hidden XML property that can be manually added to the Snippet to prevent
> this behavior. Otherwise, you might need a Command.
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> ---
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> Rob McBroom
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> <http://www.skurfer.com/>
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> I didn't "switch" to Apple... my OS did.
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> Or you could just make a simple snippet that insets a real tab character
>  and set it to use option-tab
> Then you just have to always remember to hit option-tab for a real tab

Or you could just overload cmd-s and write a script that converts your
initial soft-tabs when you save.  Very easy to do.

Ed