Mac Developer Tips » TextMate

TextMate and Xcode

john — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:44:30 +0000

I’ve been spending time getting familiar with Xcode as I learn to write applications in Objective-C, with the larger goal of writing applications for iPhone. My editor of choice on the Mac up to this point, is TextMate, an great all around code editor. I’ve written a number of tutorials/tips on TextMate on this blog (check out the TextMate Category for links).

One of the things I’ve become quite accustomed to is tabbed based user interfaces. For example, in FireFox I typically have a screenful of open tabs. When working with projects inside of TextMate, you can have multiple source code files open in tabs. Unfortunately, this is not a feature supported in Xcode (that I am aware of).

So, I spent a few minutes poking around at various options and came up with an approach that is far from perfect, yet offers a blend of coding in TextMate and managing compiles/builds in Xcode. Not perfect, however, it’s working for me.

Click on the image below to learn more.

TextMate: Working with Comments

john — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:30:06 +0000

In a recent email exchange with Allan Odgaard, creator of TextMate, I asked if he had any suggestions for tips that would make for a good screencast. Allan mentioned that on the TextMate IRC, there are often questions about working with comments. And with that, he shared a list of tips that you’ll find in the video that follows.

There are five tips on working with comments, including toggling comments on/off, commenting a subset of a line, inserting comment blocks and a short section on how to insert todo lists inside a comment block.

Summary of tips:

Apple-/ Togggle comment
Alt-Apple-/ Comment a block and comment subset of a line
“head” tab-key Insert comment header at top of file
Control-Shift-B Insert comment banner (top of declaration, function, etc)
“todo” tab-key Insert todo block

Note: In order for these features to work, you will need to make sure the Source and TODO bundles are enabled within TextMate (see the video for more information).

The music in the video is J.J. Cale and the song: Call Me the Breeze.
Click to hear a longer clip of J.J. Cale: [audio:/2008/jj.mp3]

TextMate: HTML Tag Completion

john — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:03:28 +0000

The HTML bundle in Textmate offers a wide selection of features for formatting, working with tags and previewing within a browser. One of the options that offers great mileage is Insert Open/Close tag with Current Word. If you have been working with TextMate and HTML for any length of time, this tip won’t be new. However, if you are new to either, I think you’ll find this little trick quite helpful.

The tip is all about working with tags, essentially offering an automated means to insert matching tags and intelligently placing the cursor based on the tag type. Once you get used to using this trick, you’ll spend a lot less time trying searching for that unmatched tag in your source, resulting in valid HTML the first time around.

The music in the video is J.J. Cale and the song: Call Me the Breeze.
A longer clip of J.J. Cale jamming: [audio:/2008/jj.mp3]

Click the image to see more about about JJ and the CD (at Amazon)

TextMate: Execute Inline Ruby

john — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:02:00 +0000

When working in TextMate, if you have a one or more lines of Ruby code that you would like to have the interpreter run, without the need for passing the entire file to the interpreter, this tip may be just what the doctor ordered.

For example, when debugging, often times it would be really handy to run a simple script at a specified location in your code to look at a value, call a method on an Object… The key point here is that you can have as little as one line of Ruby processed by the interpreter and the return value will be inserted inline.

This easiest way to get the gist of this is to watch the screencast below:

If you want to insert the results of one or more lines of script, directly into your code, using # => markers is the way to go.

The music in the video is J.J. Cale and the song: Call Me the Breeze.

A longer clip of J.J. Cale jamming: [audio:/2008/jj.mp3]

DOMAssistant Bundle

john — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:15:26 +0000

As a huge fan of TextMate and always one on the lookout for new bundles, I want to pass on interesting DOM Assistant bundle developed by Roger Johansson over at 456 Berea Street.

Seems Roger has been using the DOMAssistant JavaScript library written by Robert Nyman, however, he was looking for a more integrated tool for use within TextMate. So, as any entreprising developer would, he wrote his own bundle.

Once installed, the DomAssistant provides a list of options as shown below. I don’t spend a great deal of time working with DOM, so I may not be the best judge of the completeness of the bundle, however, from this perspective it looks pretty good.

You can read Roger’s post about the DomAssistant here, download the bundle here and it may also be worthwhile to bookmark the Google Code Project. Also, Roger is looking for comments and suggestions, so if you find the bundle helpful and have some ideas, leave Roger a comment.