[TxMt] Re: Changing cursor position from command

[Charilaos Skiadas]

On Feb 13, 2007, at 7:52 PM, Juan wrote:
> 	Thanks Ale
>
> only one thing.  That not was the point.
>
> The point it is impossible to build a recursive scope in HTML.  In  
> HTML, for example, if your are inside a nested tag and you press ^- 
> Opt-B one time, to times, three times, etc, you will get _all_ your  
> source selected.  Never at the third (etc) level out in the  
> nesting.  I like a lot TM, I can assure you, for many reasons.  But  
> I don't understand why the main problems are so tabued.

This might be relevant for the HTML stuff: http://subtlegradient.com/ 
articles/2006/02/05/my_textmate_bundles_etc

As for your last question, it is not that we are not willing to  
discuss particular questions about how TM could be improved, it's  
that we don't agree with what you consider to be the only answer to  
them. Your repeating API,API,API is not helping. TextMate has gained  
such popularity in two years exactly because it is doing things in a  
novel way. Just repeating what other editors have done is not  
necessarily the right way about it, unless it is backed up by enough  
examples that should be done that would benefit the user, and an  
understanding of whether these things can be done in TM or not at  
this point.

As Jacob already suggested, here is how a productive conversation  
would go:

1) Think of a particular task you'd like to do, that TM seems to your  
eyes not to be able to do.
2) Read TM's documentation to make sure you understand what TM can  
and cannot do with Snippets, Commands, Macros and Scope Selectors.
3) Bring the question up in the list, asking how one could do this in  
TM.
4) If we can't come up with a reasonable way, then we can start  
asking about whether this is something that would really boost the  
user's productivity, and what the best way for TM to add it would be.  
At this point, finding the correct abstraction would be necessary.
5) It might end up, after discussion, that perhaps there are other  
ways around what you were trying to do, that would benefit the user  
more.

Haris

P.S. As for your question about nested scopes, there is a chance you  
could go quite a long with with subtlegradient's commands that I  
linked to above. A lot of this can be accomplished by a simple find  
macro recording.
It is still probably not perfect, and Allan is aware of this, I've  
bugged him about it as well, nested scopes appear a lot in LaTeX  
where I live. The question is what the best way about improving it  
is, and of course a better HTML language grammar would be a good  
start, at the moment it doesn't even distinguish between different tags.

I can't resist making a, possibly bad, metaphor: You wouldn't get a  
Porsche simply because you need to get to the grocery store in less  
than 10 minutes. First of all, it's a bit of an overkill, and second  
of all it doesn't have enough room for the groceries, it wasn't made  
for grocery-shopping.

In other words, let's find the right answer. API is not it, it only  
has three letters.