TextMate, Emacs and META indent-region

[cross-posted from the Desert Moon blog.]

I haven't used GNU Emacs very much since switching to TextMate in 2005. One Emacs feature which I really miss in TextMate is indent-region. It lets you take an entire region of code, whatever its language, whatever its mix of tabs and spaces and indentation widths, and re-format it using your preferred indentation style.

But wait! Emacs has a batch mode, and you can drive it from TextMate. Many thanks to Gragusa's Things for showing the way.

The post on Gragusa's Things is specific to R code, but I'm more interested in re-formatting C and C++ code. Here's my first cut at a general TextMate Bundle to re-format code regardless of the source language:

#!/usr/local/bin/python2.6
"""
Use Emacs to re-indent regions of the current buffer.
Inspired by 
http://gragusa.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/textmate-emacs-like-indentation-for-r-files/
"""
import tempfile
import os
import sys
import subprocess

# Use the same filename extension so Emacs will know which
# mode to use. 
ext = os.path.splitext(os.environ["TM_FILEPATH"])[-1]
outf = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix=ext, delete=False)
pathname = outf.name

outf.write(os.environ["TM_SELECTED_TEXT"])
outf.close()

args = [
    "emacs", "-batch", pathname, 
    # Assume no emacs-startup.el
    "--eval", "(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)",
    "--eval", '(c-set-style "java")',
    "--eval", "(setq c-basic-offset 4)",
    "--eval", "(indent-region (point-min) (point-max) nil)", 
    "-f", "save-buffer"]
p = subprocess.Popen(args, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = p.communicate()
if p.returncode:
    print(err)

inf = open(pathname, "r")
sys.stdout.write(inf.read())
inf.close()

os.remove(pathname)

NB:

1. Due to the use of the delete=False keyword argument to tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile, this command bundle requires Python 2.6+.
2. TextMate on OS X 10.5 won't, by default, have /usr/local/bin in its path; hence the pathetic shebang.

Anyway, install this as a new TextMate command bundle, assign a Key Equivalent such as ⌘-Shift-R, and enjoy.

VoodooPad and TextMate

VoodooPad's new HTML-savvy application-specific URLs are a great way to retrace your steps in TextMate.

I keep my worklog in VoodooPad. I do most of my code editing in TextMate. When I'm trying to understand a new chunk of code, I often need to jump around through the code base.

It's hard to keep track of where I've been, so I can back out of a code path once I understand what it does. Until now I've just jotted down pathnames and line numbers in my worklog, so I could manually retrace my steps.

Puzzle Pieces

• VoodooPad URLs. They let you inject HTML content — including hyperlinks — into an open VoodooPad document.
• TextMate URLs of the form txmt://open?url=file://pathname&line=lineNum;column=colNum. Open one of these URLs and TextMate will open a window showing the specified line (and column, if specified) of the specified file.
• Textmate commands and key equivalents.
  TextMate lets you define custom commands and trigger them with keyboard shortcuts that you specify.

Put these all together and what do you get?

Scenario

• Select some code of interest in TextMate
• Type your keyboard shortcut
• A hyperlink pointing to the selected code is inserted into your VoodooPad document

Later, when you want to get back to that chunk of code, just click on the hyperlink in VoodooPad. TextMate will open the document and jump to the line of code referenced by the hyperlink.

Granted, you're probably going to edit that code someday; and then your bookmarks will break. But this is a handy way to leave a trail of breadcrumbs while you're trying to decipher a new body of code.

Code

Here's a Python script which implements this "Bookmark in VoodooPad" capability in TextMate. You can use it by opening TextMate's Bundle Editor (Bundles -> Bundle Editor -> Show Bundle Editor), creating a New Command using the tool menu at the bottom left of the Bundle Editor window, and pasting it into the resulting Command(s) text area:

#!/usr/bin/env python2.6
import os, datetime, urllib, subprocess

escape = urllib.quote

# What Textmate location are we bookmarking?
path = os.environ["TM_FILEPATH"]
lineNum = os.environ["TM_LINE_NUMBER"]
_tmURLTemplate = """txmt://open?url=file://{path}&line={lineNum}"""
tmURL = _tmURLTemplate.format(path=path, lineNum=lineNum)

# Which VoodooPad worklog page should we add it to?
vpPageName = escape(datetime.date.today().strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))

# What text should Voodoopad show for the link?
currLine = os.environ.get("TM_SELECTED_TEXT", os.environ["TM_CURRENT_LINE"])

# How should the HTML be formatted?
_vpHTMLTemplate = '''<a style="font:12px helvetica" href="{tmURL}">{currLine}</a>'''
vpMarkup = _vpHTMLTemplate.format(tmURL=tmURL, currLine=currLine)

# What URL do we open to inject the HTML into VoodooPad?
_vpURLTemplate = """voodoopad:html={vpMarkup}&page={vpPageName}"""
vpURL = _vpURLTemplate.format(vpMarkup=escape(vpMarkup), vpPageName=escape(vpPageName))

subprocess.check_call(["open", vpURL])

Specify a key equivalent such as ⌘-T (Command-T) and you're off to the races.

Django snippets: DebugFooter middleware with textmate links

Django snippets: DebugFooter middleware with textmate links:

"This version adds TextMate links : if you are working on your local machine and using TextMate you can click on the template paths and they will be opened in TextMate. This speeds up development time considerably!

also, this works with django 1.0"

Very useful.

ack -- better than grep, a power search tool for programmers

I've been using "Ack in Project" in TextMate for awhile. It works so well, I'd like to start using it from the command line.

Luckily it's easy. Paraphrasing from the author's website:

ack -- better than grep, a power search tool for programmers:

curl http://ack.googlecode.com/svn/tags/latest/ack-standalone > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 ~/bin/ack

TextMate CamelCase

Because I keep forgetting: In TextMate, you can toggle the selected text from lowercase_with_underscores to camelCase by typing Control-Shift-Minus (^_).

New TextMate bundles

These aren't really new. I just wasn't aware of them.

JavaScript Tools

The JavaScript Tools bundle helps you lint, format and compress your JavaScript code, and convert code to and from JavaScript bookmarklets.

My favorite feature: whenever you save a JavaScript file via Command-S, the bundle automatically runs it through jslint. If any errors or warnings are found, a tooltip appears which shows the number of warnings/errors.

If you run a full validation using Control-Shift-V, you'll get a popup window showing "compilation" results -- complete with syntax errors and clickable links to take you to the offending source code.

Installation

I installed under ~/Library/Application Support/. It may be better to use /Library/Application Support/.

$ cd ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles
$ svn export http://bundles.bundleforge.com/trunk/bundles/JavaScript%20Tools.tmbundle/

BTW I'm not sure why export is preferred over checkout.

If TextMate is already running, you can load the bundle by selecting Bundles->Bundle Editor->Reload Bundles.

Sproutcore

I haven't done much with Sproutcore yet, but it does already have its own TextMate bundle which provides a few tab-completion snippets.

Installation

$ cd ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles
$ curl --location --get http://github.com/sproutit/sproutcore-tmbundle/tarball/master -o sproutcore-tmbundle.tar
$ tar xf sproutcore-tmbundle.tar

The curl --location option is required, since github will issue a redirect.

The extracted tarfile will have a root directory name of the form sproutit-sproutcore-tmbundle-.*, so a directory rename is needed.

$ mv sproutit-sproutcore-tmbundle-blah-blah.../ Sproutcore.tmbundle

CDK, Jython and chemical structure format conversion

These days I'm learning how to work with some new (to me) Java cheminformatics toolkits. Google, Jython 2.2.1, and VoodooPad are helping me get up to speed:

• Google to find the documentation for the Java APIs


• Jython to learn API nuances without an edit/compile/test cycle


• VoodooPad as a scratchpad for sample scripts -- it's easy to save them in pages that sit alongside my worklog

During initial exploration I just bang up the script in VoodooPad, then repeatedly select all (Cmd-A), copy (Cmd-C), switch to a Terminal session running Jython (Cmd-Tab), and paste (Cmd-V).

The "learnings" are going into proper Jython scripts maintained with TextMate.

It's nice to be able to deploy using Jython instead of pure Java. Since almost all of the heavy lifting is being done inside the cheminformatics jars, I don't need to worry about the overhead of running a Python interpreter inside a JVM...

Here's a simple example using CDK, to transform an SD string into a SMILES string.

#! /usr/bin/env jython
# You must have set your CLASSPATH to pick up the CDK jar.
# encoding: utf-8

import java.io
from org.openscience import cdk

def getCDKMol(sdf):
reader = cdk.io.MDLReader(java.io.StringReader(sdf))
result = cdk.Molecule()
result = reader.read(result)
return result

def getSmiles(cdkMol):
result = java.io.StringWriter()
writer = cdk.io.SMILESWriter(result)
writer.write(cdkMol)
return str(result)

def sdfToSmiles(sdf):
return getSmiles(getCDKMol(sdf))

# Example:
print sdfToSmiles("""1-7


42 44 0 0 0 0 999 V2000
-0.8349 0.9908 0.0000 N 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.0502 1.2457 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.0502 2.0707 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.8349 2.3257 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.3198 1.6582 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0.6172 0.7608 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.0898 0.2062 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0.5310 -0.0597 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1.1984 -0.5446 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1.9521 -0.2090 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.0383 0.6114 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1.3709 1.0964 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.8968 0.0346 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.1517 -0.7500 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.5997 -1.3631 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.7927 -1.1915 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.5378 -0.4069 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.1448 1.6582 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.6195 -0.6940 0.0000 S 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3.1044 -0.0265 0.0000 O 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.1346 -1.3614 0.0000 O 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3.2869 -1.1789 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.8546 -2.1477 0.0000 C 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0.6172 2.5557 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.0898 3.1103 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.2227 -0.3952 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1.1122 -1.3651 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.7920 0.9470 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1.4571 1.9168 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.4488 0.6477 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.9587 -0.9215 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.2407 -1.8046 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-0.1632 -1.1420 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.1448 0.8332 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.1448 2.4832 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.9698 1.6582 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3.7719 -0.5114 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2.8020 -1.8463 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3.9544 -1.6638 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-1.0700 -2.4026 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.6392 -1.8928 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
-2.1096 -2.9323 0.0000 H 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 2 1 0 0 0 0
1 5 1 0 0 0 0
1 7 1 0 0 0 0
2 3 2 0 0 0 0
2 6 1 0 0 0 0
3 4 1 0 0 0 0
3 24 1 0 0 0 0
4 5 2 0 0 0 0
4 25 1 0 0 0 0
5 18 1 0 0 0 0
6 8 2 0 0 0 0
6 12 1 0 0 0 0
7 13 2 0 0 0 0
7 17 1 0 0 0 0
8 9 1 0 0 0 0
8 26 1 0 0 0 0
9 10 2 0 0 0 0
9 27 1 0 0 0 0
10 11 1 0 0 0 0
10 19 1 0 0 0 0
11 12 2 0 0 0 0
11 28 1 0 0 0 0
12 29 1 0 0 0 0
13 14 1 0 0 0 0
13 30 1 0 0 0 0
14 15 2 0 0 0 0
14 31 1 0 0 0 0
15 16 1 0 0 0 0
15 23 1 0 0 0 0
16 17 2 0 0 0 0
16 32 1 0 0 0 0
17 33 1 0 0 0 0
18 34 1 0 0 0 0
18 35 1 0 0 0 0
18 36 1 0 0 0 0
19 20 2 0 0 0 0
19 21 2 0 0 0 0
19 22 1 0 0 0 0
22 37 1 0 0 0 0
22 38 1 0 0 0 0
22 39 1 0 0 0 0
23 40 1 0 0 0 0
23 41 1 0 0 0 0
23 42 1 0 0 0 0
M END
$$$$
""")

Textmate: "Snippet Commands" and Placeholders

Draft

Textmate snippets are chunks of templated text, sprinkled with placeholders of the form

${1:default value}

When you invoke a snippet, it injects text into the current document, and it lets you tab through all of the placeholder fields and edit their values.

Sometimes you need to generate a lot of stubbed-out files in one go, e.g. when creating a Firefox extension. Snippets aren't so useful here, but Textmate commands are. At their simplest these are just scripts (pick a language; I like Python) which you invoke from within Textmate.

It sure would be nice to be able to use placeholders in those stubbed-out files, and to use Textmate as a sort of form editor. For example, the install.rdf file in a Firefox extension bundle has about eight fields which you might want to edit. You can generate default values for these fields when stubbing out the bundle, but several of them (e.g. the bundle ID, or your real-world name) might require customization.

There's a really simple way to create a Textmate command that lets you do placeholder editing on any file.

Open Textmate's bundle editor. Create a new bundle. Name it Fill in the blanks. In the command editor pane, set Save: to Current File. Put this text into the Command(s): text area:

cat "$TM_FILEPATH"

Set Input: to Selected Text or Document. Set Output: to Insert as Snippet.

Save your changes by selecting a different bundle in the bundle editor.

Now imagine you have written a script which generates a stub file. Wherever the file contains a value that you might want to change manually, put that value inside a placeholder, e.g.

${1:default value}

Run the script to generate your stub file. Open the stub in Textmate. Select all of the text, then invoke your "Fill in the blanks" bundle.

Voila! The contents of your stub file have not changed, but now you can tab from one placeholder field to the next, editing the values which your stub generator provided.

*sigh*

So many words for a simple procedure. I should put up a screencast on the Om OS X blog...

TextMate, Parallels, and Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition

I've been using TextMate for the past two years, and like it so well that I have a hard time adjusting to most other text editors. Even my old favorite, XEmacs, is now painful to use.

I recently started work on my first ASP.NET project. The customer wants the whole thing to be done with VB.NET -- another first for me.

Lots of bundles are available for TextMate, and among them is an "ASP vb.NET" bundle. Yippee! Since my Windows XP "machine" is a VM hosted under Parallels, I can develop my project in a shared folder. [Edit 2007/03/06] On the Mac side I can use the Finder's "Network" sidebar entry to connect to my VM and mount the shared folder. TextMate sees it just fine. I get to use all of the toys at once.

Almost... I think it's because of filename limitations in NTFS, but I can't check out a working copy of my subversion repository into such a shared folder -- not from the Mac side. Trying to do so fails when subversion tries to check out a file whose name contains more than one period (".").

The simplest solution seems to be to to install the excellent TortoiseSVN under XP, and to check out the working copy from Windows. In order to avoid entering my ssh password 400 times, I've also installed PuTTY and used it to generate a private/public key pair for use with the subversion server.

Parallels really makes for some head-twisting fun. Recently I attended a web meeting using GoToMeeting, running in a Parallels VM. Instead of scrambling madly to keep notes on paper, I recorded the whole thing as a QuickTime movie using iShowU, running natively on Mac OS X. Let's see, that's a screencast recorded on a Mac, of a web conference running in a Win XP virtual machine hosted on the Mac.

Copying Syntax-Highlighted Text from TextMate

TextMate has great syntax highlighting skills. Sometimes I'd like to copy code snippets from TextMate to VoodooPad, and I'd like to bring along the text highlighting. A simple copy-and-paste from the TextMate edit window doesn't do the job -- after all, it's a text editor.

Fortunately it is possible to copy with syntax highlighting. The procedure is pretty simple, if a bit obscure.

1. Select the text of interest in TextMate.
   
2. Select Bundles->Experimental->View Document as HTML
3. A new "View Document as HTML" window should appear.
   
4. Select the text in the window and copy it to the clipboard (Command-C).
5. Switch to Voodoopad and paste (Command-V).

What About MarsEdit?

With a little more work you can paste syntax-highlighted snippets into MarsEdit.

Start out as above. Once the "View Document as HTML" window appears, select View->View Source. Another new window should appear which contains raw HTML.

Select it all (Command-A), copy it (Command-C), switch to your MarsEdit window and paste (Command-V). But first you'll need to re-work the content a bit, since it includes a <style> section which applies to your entire post.

Be sure to collapse the entire style section onto a single line, lest Blogger should insert a bunch of <br/> tags.


Here's an existence proof:

def geoMean(x, y):
"""Get the geometric mean of x and y."""
return math.sqrt(abs(x * y))