I wrote the basic script in Ruby to run as a TextMate command:

input = STDIN.read
 
# Quick function to add commas to long values
def add_commas( number )
  number.to_s.reverse.scan(/(?:\d*\.)?\d{1,3}-?/).join(',').reverse
end
 
# Scan for numbers in the text
arr = input.scan(/\.?\d[\d,]+(?:\.\d+)?/).map{|line|
  # remove non-decimal characters from results and convert to float
  line.gsub(/[^\d\.]/,'').to_f
}.sort
 
print input # output the original text
 
# if there were 2 or more numbers found, output the additional information
print "\n - Average of #{arr.size} numbers ranging from #{arr[0]} to #{arr[arr.size-1]}: " + add_commas(arr.inject(0.0) { |sum,el| sum + el } / arr.size ) unless arr.empty? || arr.size == 1

The script is simple enough that it should be easily adjustable to perform any kind of basic math on the array of numbers found in the text. The numbers don’t have to be in any order in the input; they can be listed vertically or horizontally or can just be scattered throughout text or messy table code. The regular expression should find them.

The TextMate command suited my needs just fine, but then I started thinking about sharing it. What format would make the most sense? A System Service that accepted text and appended a line with the average? A TextExpander snippet that ran on the clipboard? A LaunchBar action that worked with Instant Send or Copy/Paste? I couldn’t decide, and since the script was the only time-consuming part, I went ahead and made all of the above.

The TextExpander snippet is now in the Tools group of my TextExpander projects. If you’re subscribed to that group via URL, your group already updated with the “Average numbers in clipboard” snippet. Otherwise, go ahead and download it or set up a new subscription.

The other two versions (and the script) are in the download below, and I threw in the original TextMate command, too. The LaunchBar action is actually a Script Bundle with the Ruby script packaged inside. If you’ve ever wondered how to reference a self-contained script in AppleScript, it’s a decent example. It installs to ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Actions. The System Service is a standard Automator action using the script above, and installs to ~/Library/Services.

Want to see a video of it? Really? Why? I’m in that semi-asleep state where I thought it would be easier to show what it does than explain it. Since I doubt anyone else really has a need for this script, the video is a tribute to my ability to waste time in the early morning.

Related posts:

1. Geeklet: 1-minute average CPU load
2. Seriously easy HTML5 video encoding
3. Fog In The Valley

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at An average morning

Control-Right and Control-Left are already set up in the Markdown bundle to indent and outdent lines within lists. These two macros just add Control-Up and Control-Down for quickly shifting the order of a list. They only work with single lines; if you want to move a chunk of lines, you’ll want to use the old select and hit Control-Command-Up/Down method.

You can download the TextMate List Macros from here, but for more details, check out the video I added to the Blogsmith Bundle Video Site.

Here’s a quick, semi-related tip: TextMate’s Web Preview running through MultiMarkdown 3 is wicked fast. There’s no visible latency. It’s practically an nvALT killer for people who primarily use nvALT for its MultiMarkdown preview. Definitely give it a shot. Fletcher Penney’s video on setup and usage is all you need. Well, that and MultiMarkdown 3. By the way, the next release of nvALT deals much better with custom MultiMarkdown 3 installs. Coming soon.

Related posts:

1. AutoTag2: smarter tagging for TextMate and WordPress
2. nvALT 2.1 progress report
3. New Markdown Service tool: HTML to Clipboard

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at A couple of TextMate Macros for Markdown lists

Thinking about it for a minute, I realized I really did miss the functionality that AutoTag had given me. While I’ve toyed around with blogging from Vim, I still primarily use TextMate, not least because of the Blogsmith Blogging Bundle. Until that kind of functionality is ported to Vim, I’m happy right here. Thus, I spent my Sunday afternoon reviving the AutoTag bundle.

If you use TextMate to blog on a WordPress site, you’ll want to see this.

There are two parts to this: a WordPress plugin that adds an XML-RPC call for getting all of the tags in use on the blog, and a small TextMate bundle for making good use of it. The TextMate bundle cribs off of my previous AutoTag project, and borrows most of the remote functionality from the original TextMate blogging bundle. Why reinvent the wheel? I’m bundling both together in the download, so if you want to use the WordPress plugin to port the functionality elsewhere (say, Vim?), you can just pull out the parts you need.

[Skip to download]

AutoTagging in TextMate

What the bundle does (short version) is find the most appropriate tags for your content based on tags you’ve already used before. This helps you easily keep your tag collection trim and useful. No disparate tags because of inconsistent capitalization, plurals or conjugation. Things that are related stay related. This can be especially difficult blogging from TextMate because you can’t quickly see “all tags” the way you can from the WordPress editor. This solves the problem.

Install the WordPress plugin

Standard install, like any other (manually-installed) plugin:

• Upload the gettags-rpc folder from the zip download to your wp-content/plugins folder on your server.
• Open your admin page and go to the Plugins panel.
• Activate the GetTags-RPC plugin in the plugin list.

If the plugin activates without error, you should be ready to go. It’s a very simple plugin without a lot of error checking, so let me know if you have any trouble with it.

Install the AutoTag bundle

To install AutoTag in TextMate, double click on the bundle in the download zip file. It should open TextMate, pop up the Bundle Editor and show you the installed bundle and its commands. Done.

Assuming you have AutoTag installed in TextMate and the GetTags-RPC plugin installed in WordPress, you’re ready to go. Well, you’ll need to have your blog set up (Bundles > Blogging > Setup Blogs) in TextMate, but we’ll assume you’ve done that by now.

Using the commands

The AutoTag commands can be triggered in two ways. First, you can just put your cursor one space after the colon in the “Keywords:” line of the template headers. If you don’t have that line in your template, you can just type “Keywords: ” on a line before the end of the headers, or add it permanently by editing the template in the Bundle Editor. Hit tab from there and you’ll get a menu of the three commands in the bundle. You can trigger that from the same point even if you already have tags on the line; it will add appropriate commas automatically. Second, you can use Control-Option-T to get the same menu at any point in the file, although I’m not sure why you’d call it from anywhere other than the “Keywords” line.

Commands

AutoTag: This is the primary command, or at least my favorite in the bundle. It’s only good when you run it after you write your post; it doesn’t have anything to work with on a blank template. Finish your post (or open an existing one) and trigger the command. It will grab all existing tags on your blog and compare them to your text, resulting in a dialog with a list of the best matches ranked by relevance. If you’re curious, here’s what it does when processing:

• Strips out all punctuation from the content of your post and creates an array of words
• Uses the Porter Stemming algorithm to get the stem of each word. This makes plurals, adjective, adverb and verb forms all represent the same word.
• Compares the list of stemmed words to the stems of each tag returned by your blog, keeping matches.
• Measures the frequency of each match in the content and sorts the list accordingly.

Common Words: This command ignores the tags on your blog and just gives you the most common words from your post for selection as tags. It’s a good way to figure out what new tags might be worth adding. Again, it’s not very useful if you don’t have your content written yet.

All Tags: If you’re not finding the AutoTag results satisfactory on a given post, or you want to tag before you have any content, this command will simply return your entire list of available tags. You can use it to check what form or casing you used on an existing tag, and it can be run at any time.

That’s it. If you use WordPress and TextMate together, I know you’re going to love this. Let me know how it goes! By the way, I’ll probably (eventually) build similar functionality right into the WordPress editor, and I’d love to see this ported to Vim, too. Any Vim plugin writers want a challenge?

Download

Related posts:

1. Markdown QuickTags: WordPress plugin for Markdown lovers
2. TextMate as WriteRoom, for free
3. Getting back into real TextMate blogging

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at AutoTag2: smarter tagging for TextMate and WordPress

There are a few things we need to pull off:

• Hide other windows, desktop and icons
• Match the background to our TextMate theme background
• Maximize the TextMate window, preferably remove top bar
• Hide scrollbar when not needed

The first step is easy. I used Isolator, which can hide everything but the foreground window and let you specify a background color (taking care of the second point as well). There are a few apps that do this well, Isolator is just simple and free. It’s great for screencasting, too.

Now we need to maximize the TextMate window, but only vertically. The most effective way to do this is with a SIMBL plugin called Megazoomer, which will remove the top bar, too. There’s a hack of Megazoomer available which only maximizes vertically. If you maximize the window to the full width of a widescreen monitor, editing is less than friendly, so this is important. If you’re not into installing SIMBL (and if you’re not using it for anything else¹, I wouldn’t), stick with zooming or take a look at the Fullscreen Plugin on GitHub.

Finally, some adjustments to the “chrome” in TextMate. The Green Moleskine mod for TextMate is worth downloading for many reasons, and I’ve used it without issue on multiple Macs. I’d recommend just doing it. It will give you a cooler icon, nicer Bundle Editor, HUD “Go to line” and more. It will also hide the scrollbars when they’re not needed, taking care of the last point. Turn off all of the “Gutter” options under the view menu.

Now, with a few clicks, you’ve got a WriteRoom-style editing space in TextMate.

Related posts:

1. Getting back into real TextMate blogging
2. A couple of TextMate Macros for Markdown lists
3. TextMate drag command for Base64 encoding images

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at TextMate as WriteRoom, for free

In the process, I wrote a quick TextMate command which lets me enter a date in natural language and have it converted to whatever format I need for my system. It has variables at the top of the command for defining the date format and output string template. I packaged it up in its own little bundle for people to play with. The command is similar to what I built as a TaskPaper script a while back. Just download at the end of the post, unzip and double-click to install.

Customizing

The output format of the command defaults to a full date in the system’s preferred format. This makes it easy to see the effect of various strings. For most purposes, you’ll want something more along the lines of “2011–02-22″ instead. To change the format, you just need to edit the dateformat variable at the top of the command’s script.

To edit the command, just go to Bundles > Bundle Editor > Show Bundle Editor and find the Date Entry bundle. Select the Natural Date Entry command and edit it in the field on the right.

Date Format

There’s a commented-out dateformat replacement above the current variable, and you can modify it to fit whatever you need. Don’t forget to comment out or remove the current variable if you uncomment the one above it. The % format elements use Ruby’s strftime format. I built the command to work with GTDAlt and TaskPaper, and on my system both use the YYYY-MM-DD format, so that’s what the secondary option is set to.

Output Template

To be practical, you probably also need to output some delimiters with the date. In GTDAlt, it would look like “due:[2011–02-22]”, and in TaskPaper it would look like “@due(2010–02-22)”. You can set this up using the outputtemplate variable below dateformat. It uses %date% as a placeholder which will be replaced with the date in the format you specified above. As an example, if you wanted to use the command with TaskPaper files, you would set it to '@due(%date%)'.

Usage

The command uses Command-Shift-D by default, but you can change that to whatever’s clever when you’re in the Bundle Editor. When run, it pops up an input dialog courtesy of TextMate’s built-in dialog system. You can enter text in an intuitive natural language format and it will output the date based on the variables you’ve defined. Here are some example strings:

• tomorrow
• tomorrow 3pm
• wednesday
• wednesday morning
• wed
• next thursday
• in one week
• in three days
• in 3 days

You get the idea. I also set it up to take “+” modifiers. You can add any number of days at the end of a string, or just use the plus modifier to add days to today. For example:

• thu+7
• +2
• tomorrow + 3

It will roll with any of those punches. Abbreviated days have to be three characters, i.e. mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, or sun.

Moving the command

This command has to be distributed in a bundle because it requires the Ruby library “Chronic” for the date conversion. The library is included in the Support/lib folder of the bundle. If you happen to have RubyGems installed, you can install the Chronic gem (sudo gem install chronic) and then modify the command to allow you to put it wherever you like without needing the support folder at all. To make the command use the gem instead of the bundled library, change the require statements in the command to look like this:

SUPPORT = ENV['TM_SUPPORT_PATH']
BSUPPORT = ENV['TM_BUNDLE_SUPPORT']
DIALOG = ENV['DIALOG']
require SUPPORT + '/lib/ui'
require SUPPORT + '/lib/exit_codes'
require 'rubygems'
require 'chronic'

It would also be pretty easy to port to any other system, including an OS X system service. You’d just need to make sure you include the Chronic library, either bundled or install the gem, and find a way to get the text input without using TextMate’s dialog. CocoaDialog or a service that acts on selected text would fit the bill.

I think this will be handy for more than just to-do lists. Let me know if you find a use for it elsewhere!

Man, it took me twice as long to write that post as it did to put together the command and the bundle. Like I said: Sunday.

Download

Related posts:

1. OS X Service for natural language dates
2. Natural language dates for TextExpander
3. A couple of TextMate Macros for Markdown lists

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Natural language date conversion for TextMate

Notational Velocity is an amazing note-taking tool, elegant in its simplicity and without much need for expansion. I love it. nvALT is the result of my desire to get back into Objective-C and begin by reverse-engineering an application I adored. That’s how I learn, working backward from the desired result. Notational Velocity happened to be Open Source, so that’s where I dug in. I didn’t believe that I was going to make NV better, I thought I could build something from it. What follows is my vision as it stands today, some elements more concrete than others.

I’m hoping that as I develop nvALT, it will become its own application, viewed not as an evolution of Notational Velocity, but as a grandchild. Something with roots in the original application, but serving a different purpose (and yes, I’m pondering new names).

What do I see it developing into? A writing app. A Markdown-specific, minimalist application for gathering and developing ideas, indexing them, making them portable and cross-platform and then sharing and publishing them. The basic elements are already there: widescreen view, collapsible notes panel, MultiMarkdown integration, preview and source output, and Dropbox and SimpleNote sync. I see incorporating the full-screen mode that other forks have already accomplished, but I also see creating a nearly-invisible text editing system which stays out of the way but which makes editing Markdown as easy and efficient as possible. It will always work in plain text, so editing in SimpleNote, or in any of the numerous iPad apps with Dropbox or SimpleNote support will be a given.

I’ve already built this system for WordPress (soon to be a Safari extension), but need to rebuild it for Cocoa. It involves no buttons, just features that manifest as you type, and in an intuitive way that you don’t have to think twice about. It’s basically the TextMate MultiMarkdown bundle for text views. The essential elements:

• Auto-pairing of brackets, parenthesis and quotes
• Auto-completion of reference link titles
• Automatic list creation, continuation and conversion
• Wrapping selections in any auto-paired characters
• Shortcut keys for bold and italics insert Markdown syntax
• Pasting links on their own line creates references automatically, title determined by elements of the url
• Typewriter mode (current editing line vertically centered)

I’d like a “Publish” menu, in addition to (or in combination with) the aforementioned sharing feature. WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr (if it’s up), etc., and sending of HTML messages through your default email client.

I’m also thinking about making the HTML preview inline, so that you click a button and the main editing area becomes the preview, and clicking the source button opens the HUD. That seems more fluid to me, especially for full-screen editing. The ultimate goal is to retain the absolute minimal interface it began with, but make it as powerful as possible.

It should also be able to create beautiful documents. Fletcher Penney has already built excellent XSL files for converting MMD files to PDF and Word documents, and the next version of nvALT already has Table of Contents rendering built into it, so the tools are already there.

So, that’s the roadmap right now. I don’t claim any of these ideas to be terribly original, I just want to build what seems like the ideal combination for me. I’m always open to feedback and suggestions, so leave a comment or contact me directly. The timeline is long, as I have painfully little time for development, but I’ll keep it moving. Let’s have some fun creating a useful tool that fulfills a need that Notational Velocity doesn’t already have well-covered.

Related posts:

1. Notational Velocity ALT 1.0 release
2. Notational Velocity alternative MultiMarkdown version
3. Notational Velocity ALT 5.3

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Notational Velocity ALT expatiation (and roadmap)

Background: Zen Coding is a Python script that can run in various extensible editors, my favorite being TextMate. It turns strings like div#branding>h1#header+ul#nav>li*5>a into a fully marked up HTML branding div with a single shortcut. It’s immensely useful, and if you haven’t tried it, you’re missing out. Skip it, though, and jump straight to Sparkup.

I use Zen Coding constantly in TextMate. It’s replaced 75% of my HTML snippets with one shortcut. What Sparkup adds is the ability to move back up levels using the “<” symbol, as well as the ability to add attributes (like an href for a link) and content to elements from within the shortcut string. See the Sparkup readme for examples. Awesome stuff.

Related posts:

1. Testing from Vim
2. A quick TextMate KeyBindings tip
3. Quick Tip: Extracting Mac App Store reviews as text

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Quick Link: Sparkup rocks my world a little

In case you’re wondering why I’m using the wrong tag for my acronyms, the HTML5 spec pretty much does away with the <acronym> tag, and <abbr> appears to be the new, all-purpose solution. It’s not perfectly semantic, but there doesn’t seem to be an ideal solution for acronyms in the spec. This command is really geared toward using the <abbr> for acronyms, but you could easily alter it to insert an <acronym> tag (especially if your doctype is anything other than ‘html’), and it works pretty well for just quickly creating an actual abbreviation, too. It just doesn’t try to guess how to abbreviate anything other than apparent acronyms, but it gives you Snippet tab stops for quick manual editing. If you run it with no selection, it will create a blank <abbr> tag you can tab through and fill in.

To use the command, just create a new TextMate Command in the Bundle Editor, preferably in your own personal bundle (create a new bundle with your name, if you need to). Set the Input to “Selected Text” or “Word”, and the output to Insert as Snippet. Assign a key equivalent if you like. Since it’s outputting HTML, it probably makes sense to set the Scope Selector field to “text.html”, but who knows, you may prefer to use it outside of normal HTML source documents. Once it’s set up, add the code below.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -rjcode -Ku

input = STDIN.read

if input =~ /^[A-Z]+$/
  print %Q{<abbr title="$1">#{input}</abbr>$0}
else
  acronym = input.scan(/[A-Z]/).join()
  if acronym.length < 2
    print %Q{<abbr title="${1:#{input}}">$2</abbr>$0}
  else
    print %Q{<abbr title="#{input}">${1:#{acronym}}</abbr>$0}
  end
end

It’s probably not useful on a frequent enough basis be memorable in cases where you’d actually need it, but there it is. It’s actually a small part of a larger experiment I played with today. I’ll probably post about it this weekend, as it’s useful not just with <abbr> tags, but with any tag with a descriptive attribute. Just a few lines of jQuery which can make the PTWW be more immediately useful, accessible and, well, look cooler.

And yes, I did just make that acronym markup with the above TextMate Command. I feel like a salesman who sells people things which seem perfect for situations they’ll never find themselves in.

Related posts:

1. A System Service for to. url shortening
2. TextMate drag command for Base64 encoding images
3. Natural language date conversion for TextMate

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at A TextMate Command for fast abbr tags

I know, it’s stupid for two reasons: first, it’s just not that big a deal, and second, I could just use the Emacs keybindings (^F,^B,^P,^N, etc.). Well, to that I say “phooey” on both counts. It is a big deal; I’ve probably lost hours of my life to that motion. As to the latter, I didn’t grow up on Emacs, and those shortcuts have just never nestled into my muscle memory. In related news, I already have some of those keys bound elsewhere.

I used to use KeyRemap4Macbook to map control-j,i,l and m to the cursor keys, but haven’t installed it since my last clean wipe (just in case it was part of the reason I had to do the clean wipe to begin with). I missed that convenience, though, so after 15 minutes of Googling, here’s the answer…

Allan Odgaard, creator of TextMate, offers the beginning of the solution on the TextMate blog. I found a little more detailed information around the net, too. Basically, you can add or edit a file called DefaultKeyBinding.dict in ~/Library/KeyBindings/ to add the keystrokes to all Cocoa applications. Mine looks like this now:

{
  "^j" = "moveBackward:";
  "^l" = "moveForward:";
  "^m" = "moveDown:";
  "^i" = "moveUp:";
  "^E" = "\"editInTextMate:\"";
}

The first part of each pair is the keystroke, and the second part is the action. To find a list of the available actions, I just looked at /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Resources/StandardKeyBinding.dict, which has all of the default OS X keybindings in it. You’ll need Property List Editor to view the file in its default state. To view the file in a text editor, you have to convert it to an XML (old school and plain text) plist. If you’re curious, copy the file to your Desktop and, in Terminal, run plutil -convert xml1 ~/Desktop/StandardKeyBinding.dict.

After editing DefaultKeyBinding.dict and restarting your Cocoa apps, your new keyboard shortcuts will be available. That’s when I found the next problem. TextMate has ^J mapped to “Reformat and Justify” under the Text menu. I never, ever use that command, so that was just annoying. I first tried to just override it in System Preferences->Keyboard->Application Shortcuts, but that didn’t do anything. Next I found a post on macosxhints that offered a Terminal (defaults) command for changing default Application shortcuts. For example:

defaults write com.macromates.textmate NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Reformat and Justify" "nil"

Guess what? That didn’t do it. TextMate was still pwning the ^J shortcut. Next stop, the Resources folder of the TextMate application. There I found KeyBindings.dict, where it was easy to locate the offending shortcut. I commented out the line (//) and restarted TextMate. Ta. Dum. My new keyboard shortcuts now function perfectly.

By the way, the reason I didn’t use “k” for down is I actually do regularly use the kill keybinding to delete to the end of the line (as well as ^a to move to beginning and ^e to the end). Also, you might skip mapping “m” to down, as “n” right next to it is already mapped to moveDown:, as mentioned while complaining about Emacs keybindings. I have them both mapped now, so I can have lazy fingers if I want to. Further, note that these keybindings will not work when selecting text; once you press the shift key, you’re in a whole new world. You’d have map those as well if you wanted that functionality.

I’m happy now, and so are my fingers. Have any other brilliant keybinding stories? I’d love to hear them.

Related posts:

1. KeyBindings: new, improved “surround” commands
2. KeyBinding madness
3. The keys that bind: KeyBinding Madness part 2

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at A quick TextMate KeyBindings tip

If you’ve never created a TextMate Snippet before, read on. If you’re an old pro, skip down to the code below.

Creating a TextMate Snippet

To create a Snippet in TextMate, go to Bundles->Bundle Editor->Show Bundle Editor. If you don’t already have a “personal” Bundle, you should create one to keep your custom Snippets and Commands separate from other bundles. Just use the plus sign button in the bottom left and choose New Bundle, then name it with your own name (or whatever you like).

Select that bundle in the left column and use the plus sign button at the bottom again, this time choosing New Snippet. Name the new Snippet “Placeholder Image” and set the Activation to Tab Trigger and enter your preferred shortcut in the field next to it. I’m using “dummy,” which is the same as my TextExpander snippet, but I have TextExpander disabled in TextMate, so it overlaps nicely.

Next, insert the following code in the main text area for the snippet…

The Placeholder Image Snippet

<img src="http://placehold.it/${1:width}x${2:height}/${3:333333}/${4:dddddd}&text=${5/ /+/g}${6:+($1x$2)}" alt="${5:Placeholder} $1x$2" width="$1" height="$2" />

Using the Placeholder Image Snippet

Snippets in TextMate don’t save until you select another one or close the Bundle Editor, so change your sidebar selection before you try it out. You should be able to create or edit any HTML or PHP file now, and type your shortcut, followed by a tab, and get a placeholder image. After it’s inserted, you can tab through and change the attributes.

This Snippet gives you a full image tag with tab stops¹ for width, height, background color, foreground color and title text. The title text is entered in the alt attribute, and mirrored into the query string so that you can just type alphanumeric characters with natural spaces and it will substitute the necessary plus signs in the mirrored version. The width and height are included as mirrors in the title, but you can delete that in the final tab stop.

Related posts:

1. Instant placeholder images with TextExpander
2. A TextMate Command for fast abbr tags
3. AutoTag2: smarter tagging for TextMate and WordPress

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Placeholder image TextMate Snippet

A good friend of mine, Christina Warren, just published a piece on Mashable / Dev & Design about TextMate themes, and it warms my heart to know there are other people as dedicated to this aging text editor as I am. She also made her collection available on GitHub, so check that out if you’re in the market for a new look.

Despite the lack of any major TextMate update for years now, it’s still my absolute favorite editor. I’ve tried to let go of it. I played with Coda when it came out, and even tried to port some of my favorite TextMate bundles (without much success), but in the end it turned out that I really like having multiple windows taking advantage of my multi-monitor setup. At least when it comes to Terminal (which, thanks to Visor, is never further away than a double-tap on my control key), FTP programs and my editor. So that was a wash.

Espresso came out a while after, and it was (and is) hands-down the sexiest text editor out there. I still use it whenever I can, but I just haven’t found it to be as extensible and comfortable for me as TextMate. I can make TextMate do anything. Seriously, it made the coffee I’m drinking.

And now, I’d like to pay tribute to one of the original TextMate themes which, in my opinion, is still the greatest theme ever. I’m not alone in this, people espouse its virtues throughout the search engines, it’s been ported to Espresso, Coda, even Notepad++ on Windows, and you can often find online code rendered in its pleasing pallete. I like light on dark themes in general, and I do, on occasion, like to switch to something high-contrast like Succulent or Vibrant Ink. I even like dark brown backgrounds with mellow foregrounds, sometimes. But I always end up back at Twilight, with its slate background and perfectly contrasted colors. It’s detailed and effective in just about every possible syntax, and I find it perfect for readability. I just wish they hadn’t gone and named a tale of girly vampires after it.

I will offer a bit of a tip to try to bring this post around to being… interesting? Did you know that you can actually pull off multiple themes in one? If you look at the screenshot in this post, you’ll see two different color schemes, one for my MultiMarkdown files, and one for my PHP code. It’s a customization of the Twilight theme, with custom colors added for Markdown-specific scopes. In the Preferences, under Fonts & Colors, you’ll note that every color definition has a related scope. You can add new scopes and define colors by pressing the plus button on the left.

You can use a simple TextMate command to find the scope for a particular item. Create a new command in the Bundle Editor, set it to Save Nothing, Input: None, Output: Show as Tool Tip. In the Command field, enter:

echo "$TM_SCOPE" | pbcopy
echo "$TM_SCOPE copied"

Then assign a key equivalent to it and you can just stick your cursor inside whatever you want to know the scope of, and press your key combination. The scope is in your clipboard now, and you can do what you want with it (like add new color definitions). Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. A quick TextMate KeyBindings tip
2. Placeholder image TextMate Snippet
3. TextMate as WriteRoom, for free

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at An ode to Twilight, and a TextMate tip

It looks something like this (truncated):

background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KG...AAAAASUVORK5CYII=);

The image/png changes depending on the filetype that’s encoded, becoming image/jpg or image/gif, etc. Anyway, I got tired of shelling out to encode the images, so here’s a very simple command I set up in TextMate which allows me to drag any JPEG, PNG or GIF file into a CSS rule and get the background property with encoded image all at once. Don’t try it with big images, but for the kind of thing you’d actually put into a CSS file, it works great.

The command itself is this (it’s a one-liner):

# Drag command set to handle: jpg,png,gif
# scoped to: text.html.basic source.css.embedded.html, source.css meta.scope.property-list.css

openssl base64 -in "$TM_DROPPED_FILE" | awk -v ext="${TM_DROPPED_FILE#*.}" '{ str1=str1 $0 }END{ print "background:url(data:image/"ext";base64,"str1");" }'

It uses the openssl command that’s on a Mac by default. It encodes the file and outputs it to STDOUT, which is passed to awk. The extension of the dropped file is grabbed via Bash parameter substitution (${TM_DROPPED_FILE#*.}) and passed to awk where it’s subbed in and all of the line breaks are removed. Presto.

Here’s the actual TextMate command if you want to try it out and aren’t sure how to create a new one. Assuming you’re running TextMate (kind of a prerequisite for a TextMate command), just unzip and double click the file.

Related posts:

1. A TextMate Command for fast abbr tags
2. TextMate as WriteRoom, for free
3. Placeholder image TextMate Snippet

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at TextMate drag command for Base64 encoding images

The service (and TextMate command) require the Hpricot gem for ruby. In most cases, this should be installable from the command line with sudo gem install hpricot. If you see errors, you may need to update some Ruby components. Once that’s set, just install the workflow in ~/Library/Services and it should immediately start showing up in your services menu. Add a shortcut for it in Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services. Next time you’re tweeting or writing an email about a song, why not send a Songza link to back up your point?

Download the service.

Related posts:

1. Updated: Songza Lucky Link Service
2. Auto-link text service updated
3. Automated search and link text Service

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Songza Lucky Link Service

This paragraph is just to see if I can get an XMLRPC image upload to float left without additional Markdown code.

Related posts:

1. AutoTag2: smarter tagging for TextMate and WordPress
2. WordPress, custom taxonomy, and XML-RPC
3. MultiMarkdown in MarsEdit

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Getting back into real TextMate blogging