[TxMt] Re: First impressions

[Jacob Rus]

Konrad Hinsen wrote:
> Python support is really disappointing. Folding is completely useless 
> (blocks end at the first blank line),

This is an unfortunate side-effect of TextMate's current folding system 
which only allows foldings at matching indentation levels.  It will 
certainly change sometime in the hazy indefinite future of later TM 
versions.  In the mean time, as a workaround, if you get the whitespace 
just right, foldings work great (there's a Cleanup Whitespace command in 
the Python bundle which does this).  It's far from ideal, but it works 
for me.

> 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, 

I've never seen python code which uses a mix of hard tabs and spaces; 
such is explicitly discouraged by every Python style guideline I've ever 
seen.  Pick either tabs or spaces and stick to it (you can set them with 
the little dropdown at the bottom of every window).  I personally prefer 
4-space tabs (never using hard tab characters in my Python code), but 
code using only hard tabs should also work fine, as should 2-space tabs 
(e.g. Google's internal code, according to Guido), etc.

> and the error output in PyMate is insufficient (I want the full traceback).

The traceback should be close to identical to that you'd get in the 
regular Python shell.  Do you have an example where it differs 
significantly?

> 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?

It can't be done for now.  So we just have to keep our fingers crossed 
for Allan's speedy progress. :)

-Jacob