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I completely agree that it should be an as you type feature. It should respond to all things that close [] () '' "" <> etc. Of course this should be configurable in the syn files. Having to press buttons to do things (Ctrl M)is 'old school' in my book.

Sure thats how everything used to work but programs now need to enable me to do my job without searching through manuals or help files. If the bandwidth is available a subtle glow on the closing/opening element should be pretty easy to do...

While on the topic of things glowing, another thing that would be nice is the Read/Ovr/Block/SyncRec/Caps items in the status bar should glow and fade when activated (subtly). Tool tips should also be enabled on these items so you can fly over the block status and get a message that says "Double click to enable block mode". Obviously had I read the entire help file I would have figured that out, but once I start seeing what elements of the UI are discoverable I think I will look harder.

Its late.

TP Rules!

Chuck

This would be very good check out the implementation in eclipse for a very nice way of doing this.

I would just like to express my strong desire for this feature/option (real-time bracket matching/highlighting). This is literally the only thing that makes me consider any editor than TextPad.

I'll definitely second this very suggestion: like omega_drh, it's probably the only fonctionnality that TP cruely lacks 8)

Most of the other free text editors for Java code have this feature (JEdit, etc). This is a major selling point to programs trying desperately to debug code.

Sorry, have to just have a dig at Itwalt. If your code's that difficult to debug, you should consider changing your programming style. [Sorry!]

However, thanks for the tips everyone, didn't know about ctrl-m finding matching brackets. Be nice to see it on the right-click context menu though - or even be able to configure what appears on the context menu 'cos admittedly it could get unwieldy with too many things on it.

Regarding webmasta's point about assigning to keys - surely once you've done all that you can assign it to a macro and stick it on a toolbar?

As far as 'glowing' matching brackets goes, seems most simple and obvious just to have some function that selects all the text from one bracket to the next, maybe with an extension to the func to collapse/extend the selection to inner-/outer-nested brackets.

Two things. The first is a big problem I've had with textpad (and maybe I'm just doing it wrong). It's very difficult to find a truly missing bracket when textpad finds matching brackets even if they're commented out. This means I may have commented out the closing bracket, but not the opening. Textpad matches the bracket with control-M and I don't notice the comment symbol... but a debugger doesn't see that second bracket. Ack! So is there a way to make textpad stop recognizing those brackets once they're in comments?

The other is a suggestion for showing the matching brackets. I forget where I've seen this, but here's an example (there can be matching colored backgrounds as well as the lines). This would of course be a feature you could turn on and off.

procedure Blah ()
{
| if (lalala)
| {
| | while (something)
| | {
| | | other thing;
| | }
| }
|
}

This helps for those times when it runs longer than a page, or just to see what bracket matches which easier.

Just a thought... but I'd REALLY like to have it not see brackets in comments.

Hi!

I use Textpad for developing in C, Java, Matlab, VB as well as my employer's internal scripting language.

I find it to be (generally) one of the most stable and well-written programs I have ever experienced. Well done guys! (What is your
secret?)

Having the ability to treat "begin" and "end" pairs as brackets would be extremely useful for me.

(It would also be good to be able to make code in blocks "fold" up and disappear.)

I absolutely agree with the original suggestion in Part 1 of this post. I was all ready to pay my money when I realized that this important feature was missing. I won't pay for it until it's there. It's a critical tool for programmers, and it's available on many free text editors, such as

http://www.flos-freeware.ch/zip/notepad2.zip

But of course the freeware stuff isn't nearly as powerful as TextPad in other ways, so here I am making a post to this forum in the hopes that someone will hear my plea. Glowing matched brackets are important!

Although CTRL-M is useful (I never knew about this until now!) glowing brackets in addition would definitely be nice. I've been trying PHP-designer 2005 which has this, and I've found it very useful.
A keystroke to go to the next bracket along might also be nice (whether that be the next close or next open bracket).

Please have a try and inspect the possibility to implement this. It would seriously speed up code syntax verification.

As to the question what would need to happen when the matching bracket is off screen: that's what the Ctrl-M is for already, so no need to highlight it when it's off screen.

I agree, this is a very useful feature to have when working on multi dimensional arrays with complex loops.

I was using Kate on Linux on my work system and came to love bracket highlighting. I installed Wine and Textpad though because it works well enough (Textpad is all I use in Windows) and am utterly happy except for the missing bracklet highlight feature.

To the powers that be -
After 5 years of posts, is there going to be a glowing bracket enhancement? The freebie Notebook2 works great.