So yes, it’s true. I’ve been using Textmate lately. I’m still using Debian and the trusty Thinkpad (and eyeballing the sexy X300), but also have picked up a MacBook Air, and am dabbling in the world of Mate.

One thing that has bothered me about my typing in Mate (other than the lack of using modes) is that something I’m doing is leaving trailing whitespace. This, of course, is a problem. Eventually I’ll figure out what muscle memory reflex is causing this, but there are a few things I’ve found along the way to help identify these vile and unnecessary bytes in my documents.

Add Syntax Highlighting for Trailing Whitespaces

First we must at a rule to match trailing spaces in our language of choice.
{Q: Can we do this for all languages?}

Secondly, assign a color to this property in your theme of choice.

Keyboard Shortcut to Remove all Trailing Whitespaces

TextMate comes with a command to remove all trailing spaces from a document. Why not assign a keyboard shortcut to it?
{Q: I’d love to do this on-save of all documents.}