Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#71

Post by flukus » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:22 AM UTC

MildlySerious wrote: post #27

dilap wrote: post #21

As an emacs addict/user, what I really want is a credible alternative to that cockroach of editors. Price of admission: run in a terminal, run graphically, run on every possible system, be open source, be ridiculously, easily extensible. What a successor might add: Not be riddled with bugs. Not be ridiculously, terribly bad at actually displaying text (quickly, smoothly, large amounts). Not be extended in a language…

A possible (very early) start for this could be https://github.com/google/xi-editor UIs and actual functionality are completely separate implementations. Loading and displaying text are entirely decoupled, so the display doesn't have to care if the actual file is 10kb or 2gb in size.

Yet another with a client server architecture. It makes no sense in a desktop application to add the performance overhead of IPC and serialization to every user interaction.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#72

Post by usaphp » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:22 AM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #50

I'm a very happy Sublime Text user, but I wish it were open source. I don't mind paying, since I get so much value out of it. If it were open, others could make contributions, and I wouldn't have concerns of my favorite editor dying off. From the activity graphs, it looks like development on Lime Text has stalled a little. There's some updates in the wiki entries, but not much more. Hopefully things pick up! In relat…

Being open source has really small relation to project not dying off. In your own example Lime Text stalled even tho its open sourced, same with textmate which went open source.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#73

Post by dagw » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:22 AM UTC

hossbeast wrote: post #32

Am I the only one sick of projects declaring, "written in rust", "primarily developed in go", etc? Why do your users care about your implementation language? Do you have any features worth mentioning? If your main selling point is that you used the shiny new language, I'm already doubting the usefulness of the endeavor. Just the straw that finally broke the camel's back . . .

Why do your users care about your implementation language?

They don't, but they're not 'talking' to users with those statements. For Open Source projects getting contributors is just as important as getting users, and they care what language you're using. Especially on a site like this one there is a decent chance that you can reach people who also want to help out with the development.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#74

Post by KZeillmann » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:23 AM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #60

timehastoldme wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atom (hear me out): + runs graphically + runs linux, macos, windows (nothing else?) + open source + ridiculously, easily extensible + not riddled with bugs (slowness is not a bug) + for small files, comparably quick to Sublime on my machine + major dev community; already much better than 6 months ago - slow in some instances, esp. large files - doesn't run in terminal - doesn't run in less-popular OSes +/- moderate R…

Honestly I don't get the Atom hate. It's a great editor. I came to Atom from Sublime because the plugin ecosystem was growing much faster and the community felt more active. I haven't looked back since. And no, Atom not designed to open 30Mb files. Complaining about this is akin to stomping on a land mine and complaining that your Timberland boots didn't save your foot. Just use Atom for its intended purpose: editing…

I just want to be able to look at the first 10 lines of a 15MB JSON I downloaded of the internet without having the entire application crash. It doesn't seem like too much to ask. There's a big difference between asking for a 15MB file and a 500MB file. 15MB is a pretty reasonable size for a text editor to be able to open without crashing, IMO. Unfortunately, I have to peek at those in Vim instead. Nothing wrong with Vim, but I hate having to switch editors to look at one file.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#75

Post by timehastoldme » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:24 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #46

timehastoldme wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atom (hear me out): + runs graphically + runs linux, macos, windows (nothing else?) + open source + ridiculously, easily extensible + not riddled with bugs (slowness is not a bug) + for small files, comparably quick to Sublime on my machine + major dev community; already much better than 6 months ago - slow in some instances, esp. large files - doesn't run in terminal - doesn't run in less-popular OSes +/- moderate R…

Have you tried VS Code? It was noticeably faster than Atom when I tried it.

I have, and it's fine, even on my mbp. Perhaps I'll switch? Margins are low because I don't code all that much.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#76

Post by dilap » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:26 AM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #60

timehastoldme wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atom (hear me out): + runs graphically + runs linux, macos, windows (nothing else?) + open source + ridiculously, easily extensible + not riddled with bugs (slowness is not a bug) + for small files, comparably quick to Sublime on my machine + major dev community; already much better than 6 months ago - slow in some instances, esp. large files - doesn't run in terminal - doesn't run in less-popular OSes +/- moderate R…

Honestly I don't get the Atom hate. It's a great editor. I came to Atom from Sublime because the plugin ecosystem was growing much faster and the community felt more active. I haven't looked back since. And no, Atom not designed to open 30Mb files. Complaining about this is akin to stomping on a land mine and complaining that your Timberland boots didn't save your foot. Just use Atom for its intended purpose: editing…

even emacs can open 30mb files. that's like stomping on a popper and having it blow your foot off (1)

i mean we're talking about opening a file that is 1% of typical system memory.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_snaps

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#77

Post by flukus » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:28 AM UTC

chmike wrote: post #68

nitemice wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, this is more like [NeoVim]( https://github.com/neovim/neovim ), in the way it's structured and with its aim to rebuild its namesake in a modular fashion with swappable UIs.

As an old prgrammer feeling the limit of neuron counts and possible premise of alzheimer, I avoid tools where you have to know by hart all the commands or have to read a long help text to find what you need. I use vim as editor for system files, but I only use the 1% of its capabilities I really need. All these shortcuts make me sick because I can't remember them and can't easily find them. That's also why I don't li…

Vim is a language, not a bunch of commands to remember. A sufficient vim user would probably be unable to tell you how exactly they accomplished something.

I gave QtCreator a try just a couple of weeks ago actually. I wanted to give qml a go and expected this to be where it shined. But the create project dialog wouldn't fit on the screen and the create button wouldn't enable for some reason (possible something off screen).

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#78

Post by preek » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:31 AM UTC

hossbeast wrote: post #32

Am I the only one sick of projects declaring, "written in rust", "primarily developed in go", etc? Why do your users care about your implementation language? Do you have any features worth mentioning? If your main selling point is that you used the shiny new language, I'm already doubting the usefulness of the endeavor. Just the straw that finally broke the camel's back . . .

The headline on the Landing Page says "Elegant Free Open-Source". I for one applaud these great selling propositions. And I'm speaking after using Emacs and VIM for 15 years.

Sublime Text was horrible in that it offered an easy refuge to many young and inexperienced people. But ultimately it was a closed source prison that they got pulled into. And yes, I'm a professional developer having founded multiple companies. I'm a capitalist, nothing wrong with selling software. However, having great tools that last a lifetime available is one of the most important point I learned and like to teach to my students (I'm a lecturer, too). Why lock yourself in? Just because it looks more shiny and is easier in the first week? That's a good reason to use many things, but not your primary driver as a professional software engineer.

Hooray for these new editors that look shiny and are open source. And then when the students ask how I did those crazy things in Emacs, they still get those huge eyes and want to gobble all the information in. This kind of curiousness happens rarely with people locked into proprietary systems.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#79

Post by flukus » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:33 AM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #69

flukus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just use Atom for its intended purpose: editing source files written by reasonably reasonable people. Let me know when they start advertising atom as a source code editor instead of a text editor.

Let me know when this distinction is anything other than pedantry. It takes all of 200ms and a wee bit of inference to figure out that their usage of "text editor" is different from yours. From the tone of some of these posts, you'd think downloading Atom and subsequently realizing it doesn't suit one's needs caused lasting psychological harm. Semantics aside, Atom is good at what it does. For 99% of projects it's an…

> From the tone of some of these posts, you'd think downloading Atom and subsequently realizing it doesn't suit one's needs caused lasting psychological harm.

No lasting harm, but I did invest quite a bit of time to discover that it doesn't suite my needs.

> It takes all of 200ms and a wee bit of inference to figure out that their usage of "text editor" is different from yours.

No it doesn't, it takes experience with the editor. 200ms of googling shows there are some log and tail plugins, which would lead me ot believe it was good at handling large files.

Re: Lime Text – Open Source Sublime Text alternative (2014)

#80

Post by preek » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:33 AM UTC

The headline on the Landing Page says "Elegant Free Open-Source". I for one applaud these great selling propositions.

And I'm speaking after using Emacs and VIM for 15 years having not seen one other editor concept that was ultimately superior.

Sublime Text was horrible in that it offered an easy refuge so many young and inexperienced people. But ultimately it was a closed source prison that they got pulled into. And yes, I'm a professional developer having founded multiple companies. I'm a capitalist, nothing wrong with selling software. However, having great tools that last a lifetime available is one of the most important point I learned and like to teach to my students (I'm a lecturer, too).

Why lock yourself in? Just because it looks more shiny and is easier in the first week? That's a good reason to use many things, but not your primary driver as a professional software engineer.

Hooray for these new editors that look shiny and are open source. And then, when the students ask how I did those crazy things in Emacs, they still get those huge eyes and want to gobble all the information in. This kind of curiousness happens rarely with people locked into proprietary systems.