TextEditing
Support for indenting with tabs, aligning with spaces
This is a popular way of resolving the tabs/spaces debate. It lets everyone indent with a different number of spaces, but does not mess with vertically aligned source. I've been trying to work like this, but TextMate assumes all-spaces or all-tabs when re-indenting code, rendering that feature useless for me. Please see below for more details.
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_spaces
-- Chris Lord
Here's a related idea titled "Elastic Tab Stops", I'd love to see this available in TextMate:
http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/
--Ethan
Sectional Background Color labeling
Using colors is a good way to quickly identify something. In the same way as Apple's Finder allows you to label a file or folder with a color, it would be nice to be able to mark a selection of code with a chosen background color.
This could also be useful for, prioritizing code or marking things as "todo" or incomplete.
Vaughan
Show non-printable character in selected area (like e-texteditor)
Alessandro Mek
Seconded! They're distracting when shown all the time, but it's so handy to see them quickly in just a small area!
-- Cory
Add "strikethrough" as another Font style-option in the theme editor
This would be very useful for bloggers and other writers; probably not so important for programmers. I believe, displaying a passage striked out is not possible as of now.
thanks for considering, Dan
Uncomment debug output
When developing for the web many developers tend to use the basic method of echoing out their debug messages and variables. However, setting these debug messages on and off is a tedious task. So when I comment out my debug messages I often use a given syntax (// Debug: my debug message for an example) in PHP so that I later on can search for // Debug: and uncomment these lines.
But I was thinking that since Textmate has knowledge of how comments are used in the different languages that it could use such a syntax that becomes invisible for the eye, but available for Textmate to, with a simple click, turn on and off.
This would clearly boost productivity when developers have hundreds of debug messages to maintain.
Show invisible characters through selection
I find one particular "Pages"-feature very useful: Automatical display of invisible characters in selected text; whenever a passage is selcted (highlighted), the contained invisibles become visible. Not only obviates this the "Show invisibles"-toggle but makes checking for tabs/spaces/returns etc. blindingly fast and intuitive.
Intellisense/AutoCompletion
I would absolutely LOVE to see true intellisense/autocompletion (without having to use Esc or Alt+Esc) in TextMate. This would be a feature you would need an on/off switch for because not everyone would want it. Could you let us know if this is something that is coming in online hold em or TM2?
Keep up the awesome work!
-- Scott
Ditto. This is the ONLY reason why I still use SubEthaEdit for Python programming.
-- Tiago
Multiple words selection
the 'e' editor for Windows allows selection of multiple words, regardless of their location in a file, and editing them in place simultaneously. This is really cool feature and is missing in TextMate.
-- Martin
Seconded. I really like the multiple words edit, and i think TextMate should have it
-- Andronicus
I created a tciket for this feature: http://macromates.com/ticket/show?ticket_id=4AC5352B
--Hendrik
Smart Soft/Hard tab guessing'
It would be nice if, when opening a file, TM could adjust itself to whether it uses hard/soft tabs and how big the tabs are by looking at said file. that is, if I open a file using hard tabs, adjust automatically to use hard tabs. If its using soft tabs of 8 spaces, adjust to do that same thing.
Of course I realize thats not what everyone would like, but you could always add the ability to toggle it in the prefs, say a checkbox "Adjust tab settings when opening file" that would be unchecked by default.
Full Screen Editing
I'd love to have the ability to shift into a full screen mode for editing (to get rid of distractions—think Writeroom [http://hogbaysoftware.com/projects/writeroom]), especially if it contained all of the file group st
Highlight a line via the shell
It would be nice to be able to highlight a line in a file via a shell command. It would be possible to connect the output (warnings and errors) of a compiler wih a file edited in TM.
-- Another Martin
Better handling of large text files'
Sadly TextMate seems to really bog down on text files that are only a few megs in size. I frequently need to search/replace/regex files of 5-10MB, and whenever I attempt it, TextMate heads to the beach with sunscreen and a nice big ball of waiting. (This is with 4GB of ram, multicore processor, yadda yadda)
-- Greg Combs
Comment toggling
Sometimes you want to divide certain file into chunks of code, especially on JavaScript when you can't have too many javascript files because it will make the browser use too many requests.
It would be nice to have a way to insert these toggles manually using something like comments.
-- Nadav