TextMate Txt2tags Bundle
March 30, 2007If you’re one lucky guy/girl that owns a copy of the excellent TextMate text editor, listen on and prepare the “Hooray!”.
I’m a recently converted TextMate user and as you may wonder, to edit txt2tags files is part of my everyday routine. Websites, articles and books, everything is t2t-marked.
For a few days I’ve used TextMate on the “black & white mode” and that was real unsexy. A decade of Vim hardcore use told me that syntax highlight is a Good Thing.
I’m the Great Cornholio! I need some T.P. for my Bundle!
For my total surprise, the making of the TextMate Txt2tags Bundle was a breeze. It’s damn easy to add the syntax rules and as the regexes format are similar to Python’s, it was a copy & paste dream.
Since I was there, I just couldn’t stop.
Besides the colors for the txt2tags markup, we also have:
- Tab Triggers for all the marks
Just type the mark’s character and hit Tab. For example, to start a bold sentence, hit “*” followed by a Tab. It will expand to “****“, with the cursor right at the middle, waiting for your words to be inserted. Very handy! - Keyboard Shortcuts
Still on the bold example, you can select your words and pressCommand-B. They’ll be surrounded by the “**” marks. Quick comment/uncomment a block of lines withCommand-/and move quotation in and out withCommand-]andCommand-[.
To type a link, it’s even cooler. First, copy the desired URL to the clipboard (Command-C, you know). Then typeControl-Shift-Land the link mark will appear, with the URL already filled. Type the link name and press Tab to leave the mark. Killer!
You can also select some already-typed text, pressControl-Shift-Land see it being linked without any typing. The same works for titles, images and even tables (just Tab-delimit your data and pressControl-Shift-|).
PressCommand-Escat any time to get the key listing:
Tip: Use keyboard shortcuts for selected text, use tab triggers for to-be-typed text. - Tab Triggers for all settings and macros
Never read the Txt2tags User Guide anymore. Just type the setting name followed by a Tab to have all it’s arguments shown. And what about those funky “%Y %m” for the %%date macro? No problem, type “date” and hit Tab. - Drag’n'drop support
Images, other txt2tags files and HTML files. Just drag them to the editor and watch the magic happening! - Ready-to-use template for UNIX man pages
Load the template, fill your program’s data and there it is: you have a full featured man page. To start, chooseFile > New From Template > Txt2tags > Manual Page (man). - Painless conversion process
There are several shortcuts to automate the conversion process and see the results.- Under the “Convert to…” menu you can convert your document to any txt2tags-supported format with a single click.
- Press
Control-Option-Command-P(Wow, that hurts to type, but it’s easy to press) to get an instant clear text-only version of your document, just in case the markup is stealing your attention. - My favorite: press
Control-Command-Pto convert the file to HTML and open it in Safari (or your other default browser). It avoids the boring save-convert-switch-reload every time you’re editing your site pages.
Check out the full bundle menu expanded to finally shout your Hooray!:
That’s it! Download and double click to install.
