[TxMt] First impressions

[Konrad Hinsen]

On 30.01.2008, at 02:36, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:

> To Konrad, if your main complaint from the LaTeX bundle is the  
> folding, then I would take that to mean we've done an excellent job  
> with it ;)

I agree, LaTeX integration is one of the best I have seen in any  
editor. What I am disappointed about is not the LaTeX bundle, but the  
fact that it demonstrates how limited TextMates folding approach is.

> Seriously, it would indeed be nice to be able to fold at sections,  
> subsections etc. One could theoretically write a script that scans  
> a tex file and adds the necessary folding markers, as if you had  
> indeed used the snippets. It should not be too hard to implement I  
> don't think.

That is not a satisfying solution in my opinion. My Mercurial  
repository would soon be littered with commits saying "added folding  
markers for TextMate".

> Personally, I almost never fold, I haven't found it particularly  
> useful. What do you guys use folding for? If I want to see an  
> outline of the section structure and/or move around, I would use  
> the symbol list. But I am probably missing some other extremely  
> important use of folding.

A recent example of mine: I worked on a document consisting of a  
tutorial chapter followed by a list of exercises. With folding, I can  
see the exercise I work on on the same screen as the paragraph in the  
tutorial chapter that deals with the same subject. Of course there  
are other ways to do that (in Emacs I'd use a split window), but I  
didn't find any in TextMate yet.

> For me the most useful commands are the wrapping and inserting  
> commands. I couldn't live in a world where those aren't available.

Those are really nice, and clearly the most attractive feature in  
TextMate for me.

Anyway, it seems I won't be able to get a TextMate licence any time  
soon (my employer won't be able to handle credit card payments before  
the end of the year), so I'll just drop TextMate for now and have  
another look in a few months...

Konrad.