I'm a pc guy, but I have a programming student who's got a mac. We have been using TextMate, but there are a few features missing that I either can't find, or that are not available in TextMate.
In my beloved Notepad++ I have the following features:
- vertical gridlines, that help you see how far indented you are
- when putting your cursor next to a pair of brackets or inside an html tag, the matching bracket or tag will be highlighted, in the case of curly braces the aforementioned gridlines will even be highlighted (so if you have consistently indented code, you'll just have to scan down the highlighted, dotted line, and you'll find the matching bracket)
- when highlighting a word (which is quick by double clicking on it) all other instances of that same word will be highlighted (where else did i use that function/variable? did i name it consistently?)
- Commenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[k]
- Un-Commenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[shift]+[k]
- Indenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[tab]
- Un-Indenting multiple lines of text by highlighting and hitting [strg]+[shift]+[tab]
- the ability to chose how to interpret the file (what language) textmate's interpretation is quite buggy... somethimes you'll open a file and it'll be all white even though it's clearly a .css file or so.
- function completion, such as parameter hints, closing html tags automatically, and completing brackets, would also be helpful. I love hot notepad++ shows you when you type a variable what variable names you have already used in the document.
Textmate's handling of brackets and quotations rocks: it adds the matching pair for you, but wont advance the cursor, so if it's in your muscle memory to do them at the same time, it won't waste your time. and you can highlight a word and hit quotes or brackets, and it'll wrap the word in brackets. So those would be a bonus, but it's nothing I miss when using Notepad++, however the combination of lacking the above is frustrating.
Does anybody know a free program for Mac with these features?
And while you are at it, could you please point out how to activate and use these features? For example I know TextMate has a way to indent, but the key combination it gives you makes no sense to me...
Thanks for any suggestions!