TextMate News

Anything vaguely related to TextMate and macOS.

User contributions

Beta 6 will take a little longer than usual, since I’m making major changes to the syntax system which should allow for some neat new stuff (and shared styles among different languages, if desired).

Though if you miss the bi-weekly update then there are other sources for new TextMate stuff!

I have a subversion repository which serves as the collecting point for TextMate bundles. Since beta 5 the subversion bundle has been much improved, there is a neat TODO bundle to collect your TODO’s from your project, there is preliminary diffing support, apache config file syntax coloring and so on — many thanks to Chris Thomas, Torsten Becker, Eric Hsu, Brad Miller, and the other people who work together to provide all this extra functionality in TextMate!

You can checkout the entire repository (username and password is anon) to your ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles directory if you want to use the latest user contributions and there is an RSS feed where you can monitor updates.

If you have contributions to the repository (like support for a new language or updates to one of those currently supported) then please write me privately (allan at this domain) and I’ll give you write access to the repository.

Chris Ruzin created a bundle that allows you to convert the selected source code to XHTML (for posting on your blog or similar, works with C/C++, Perl, PHP and Ruby) and both Eric Hsu and Fred B. reacted on request from Mats Persson to have a “New TM Document…” action in Finder’s contextual menu (both using the OnMyCommandCM utility) which you might also find useful.

Wolfgang Bartelme updated his TextMate icon pack to include even more document icons plus an icon for TextMate bundles in the “new style” that Jonathan Raphaelson initiated.

Finally I should mention that the long awaited Transmit 3 has been released which supports TextMate as external editor (but you probably already knew that).

categories General

20 Comments

I tried to email a new PHP bundle at allan(at)you-know-what but it continues to be bounced back.

I am evaluating your good TextMate. I need a text editor primarly for XHTML authoring and PHP programming and I noticed that the PHP bundle is rather incomplete.

Here ( http://cubiq.org/tut/PHP.plist ) you’ll find a redesigned (beta) PHP.plist filled will ALL 3500+ PHP’s functions and a new color scheme closer to PHP native syntax highlight. Hope you’ll find my bundle usefull and maybe it can be further implemented and tested with the community help.

I’ll add this comment to the wiki as well.

Thanks! I installed the bundle (plist actually) and it works great. I’ve been wanting better syntax highlighting and more of the functions included in the highlighting.

I still can’t wait for some speed to get into the app, and that screen blinking to stop. ;-)

where’s b6?? i want b6!!

Looking forward to the next beta as well. :)

I dig the new icon. Play on, playa.

Well, it is indeed taking you a while :)

03 April 2005

by Dan Kelley

Is there an ETA for the next beta?

Is there a feature list we can drool over?

Dan, sorry, there’s no real ETA – for the last month I’ve though “in a week”, but clearly I wasn’t right, so if I give an ETA, there’s little chance this one will be right.

For features, it’s just a “normal” beta release with the dozen or more minor changes/fixes/improvements and one major change to the underlying syntax system which is detailed here.

I’m new to TextMate, but I like what I’ve seen of it so far.

One minor question/request: In the 1.1 beta, I see you can set tab sizes to 2,3,4 and 8 spaces. Is there any way to set my own tab sizes? Or at the very least, can 6 spaces be added to the list?

14 April 2005

by Jay Soffian

I’d like to suggest a change to how syntax highlighting is defined.

Right now, you setup an array with matching patterns and directly map those to font styles. This makes it a bit of a chore to define alternate styles since there is no layer of abstraction between mapping text to a style and assigning attributes to that style.

Perhaps Syntaxes could be split into two files.

The first file could identify text as a particular style, giving it a name.

The second file then maps those named styles to specific font attributes.

For example, if you look at Python.plist and PythonLight.plist files, they are indentical save for the font definitions. Wouldn’t it be simpler if there was a single Syntaxes/Python.plist that was responsible for mapping Python code to style names, and then a Styles/Light.plist and Styles/Halloween.plist to map those named style to specific font styles?

Done this way, you could even give users a GUI to map the named styles for each bundle to their own font styles.

I have to wonder if you didn’t already have this in mind since the current Sytax bundles name all their styles. (BTW, the syntax highlighing docs don’t specify what the name attribute used in pattern definitions is for…)

Hope that makes sense.

Jay: I’ll add an “Other…” option to the tab settings shortly.

Regarding syntax, that is indeed how it’ll work in next beta.

For how to name the elements in the current syntax files, there’s a description in the wiki.

Does the new syntax system mean the next beta will have a function navigator menu?

Dan: yes, there is a very rudimentary symbol list popup in beta 6, where the contents is chosen by the user using scoped settings.

Man, I find myself coming back again and again to this site to see if the next update is here yet. I just love TextMate so much I can’t wait any longer. And I don’t even use it every day. But the times I do use it are so efficient and useful that I want to get as much out of it as I can.

Keep up the good work. I’ll proabably be back this afternoon to check again.

Amen to that, Steven!

I’m constantly visiting the site to see if there’s a new toy (esp. the new syntax stuff) in the form of a fresh beta waiting for me to play with it.

And, just like you said… Even on days when I don’t even use TextMate I often check the page. =)

The wait is killing me, Allan… But I know it’ll be worth it! :-) Thanks again for the great, killer, hooshah, kickin’, wicked, awesome app!!

James, Steven: Thanks for the kind words! Actually beta 6 was unofficially released a few days ago.

It was an unofficial release because all languages needed to be updated to the new system and some nice color themes had to be created. But much progress has been made in the last days by the bundle contributors, and the Simple Theme looks very nice.

I expect beta 7 to follow in a few days which is probably also going to be unofficial (meaning it won’t auto-update via the software update) and then beta 8 hopefully before Tiger, which will be an official release!

But anyone is free to grab the unofficial betas.

23 April 2005

by Dan Kelley

Should I infer from the “won’t auto-update” statement that beta 6, 7, and 8 are a bit more like alpha versions? That’s fine, but I’d like to know.

I’m finding TM so helpful that I don’t want to wreck things by installing an alpha. On the other hand, your beta versions seem to have been releasing pretty.

And on the other hand (3 hands, what the heck), I don’t want to have to wait several more months to get an update.

If we had an ETA for this ‘official release’, then we’d be /so/ very happy :-)

My tiger cd is due to arrive in a week. So TM is going through several beta versions before then?

Dan: I just posted a longer reply to your inquiry. But basically, beta 6 shouldn’t break anything as long as you either check out the settings from the repository or set a selection color.

Beta 8 should be official and should hopefully be out in less than a week. Beta 7 and 8 are not major undertakings (as beta 6 was), it’s only about picking up the loose ends and finding the proper face to this new styling (theme) concept.

27 July 2006

by daniel oberhoff

Hi, I can’t check out from the bundle repository. Using the link directly )or stripped of the pw/id) i get “PROPFIND request failed/failed authorization” (roughly translated from german). using svn:// instead of http:// gives me a timeout

daniel: you do need to provide the user/pw — if that fails, it might be some local problem with your network (e.g. behind a proxy)