[TxMt] First impressions

[Konrad Hinsen]

Following positive to enthusiastic reviews, I downloaded TextMate  
last week for evaluation. While it is based on powerful concepts and  
there are some impressive features in there, I am overall rather  
disappointed by its practical usability - many details just don't  
work as they should. However, I may be overlooking something, so I'd  
appreciate corrections by more experienced users.

My two main file types are Python and LaTeX source code. LaTeX  
support is rather nice, once it is properly configured. But I had  
expected a more reasonable folding: what I want to fold is sections,  
subsections, etc. not begin-end blocks.

Python support is really disappointing. Folding is completely useless  
(blocks end at the first blank line), tabs are not handled in a  
reasonable way (using hard tabs with an indentation other than 8 is  
an invitation for disaster in Python code), leading to indentation  
errors, and the error output in PyMate is insufficient (I want the  
full traceback).

I looked a bit at the language definitions, and I have the impression  
that reasonable folding for LaTeX and Python cannot be implemented in  
TextMate, as the beginning and end of a block must be defined by a  
regular expression matching a single line. Or did I overlook something?

Konrad.