[TxMt] Re: A couple of thoughts from a TextMate newbie

[Darren Brierton]

On 30 Apr 2009, at 13:29, Kevin Reid wrote:

> On Apr 30, 2009, at 6:50, Darren Brierton wrote:
>>
>> 1. Good parenthesis matching and highlighting
>>
>> I'm actually genuinely surprised at this. TexMate is very weak in  
>> this
>> area. I should be able to put the cursor between say "})" and have  
>> the
>> two closing parentheses highlighted in different colours and have
>> their corresponding opening parenthese highlighted in matching
>> colours.
>
> TM's grammar facility allows very good matching, and it also has a
> default brace-matching facility -- what it lacks is UI which
> automatically *presents* this information. What it does have is Edit >
> Select > Enclosing Brackets | Current Scope.


Yes, but I don't want to select what is in between the parentheses, I  
just want a better visual cue of where I am when I am editing. It's  
really just a special case of syntax highlighting that is only active  
when the cursor is next a parenthesis character. Most other editors  
I've used have it some extent. Given that TextMate's syntax  
highlighting is so good (probably the best I've ever seen), I am  
surprised it doesn't have this, especially if as you say the  
underlying language grammars could easily make it available.

>> 2. The ability to parse DTDs and Schemas for automagic knowledge of
>> markup languages
>
> Pondering this, it seems to me that the most powerful way to do this
> would be to add a hook to allow bundles to compute the definition (as
> plist text) of an additional language grammar to be used with the
> current file (which could then be referenced by the static grammar
> provided by the bundle).


As a new TextMate user I'm afraid I don't really know what that means,  
but I'm excited by the suggestion that this is something that is  
feasible even in TextMate 1.

Thanks for your reply.

Best, Darren