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Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

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Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#71

Post by krisroadruck »

braderhart wrote: post #59
regnerba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason you haven't tried visual studio code?

Can't speak for op of comment, but everyone suggests this... yes I've tried it and no I really don't want it no matter how many times it is mentioned. I am happy with Vim for myself now, and am glad that I moved beyond the bloated IDE way of thinking, including Visual Studio Code. Yes, Atom had its shortcomings in that arena, but I'd still prefer to use Atom over Visual Studio, due mostly in fact that the project has…

Im probably super out of the loop but I always wonder about these kind of comments. Even if electron uses say 500% more resources than vim, why in the world would that matter beyond personal irritation for anyone making 6 figs doing software development? I get the impression from these arguments that people are trying to do serious software development on 5 year old budget hardware. In any profession, investing in your tools is par for the course. Most of the geeks I know have far more machine than they could ever use as a matter of pride. Why would a few hundred extra megs of ram or a few more clock cycles matter if you have gigs of ram at your disposal and many cores? If the tool is good and doesn't touch your limits why does it matter if it's as slim as a demoscene release or as hungry as a browser tab? No judgement, genuinely curious.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#72

Post by JeremyBanks »

braderhart wrote: post #59
regnerba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reason you haven't tried visual studio code?

Can't speak for op of comment, but everyone suggests this... yes I've tried it and no I really don't want it no matter how many times it is mentioned. I am happy with Vim for myself now, and am glad that I moved beyond the bloated IDE way of thinking, including Visual Studio Code. Yes, Atom had its shortcomings in that arena, but I'd still prefer to use Atom over Visual Studio, due mostly in fact that the project has…

This reads like you haven't paid attention to anything Microsoft has done for the last five or so years, including VS Code. The strategy around VS Code is entirely consistent with the more open-source-supportive angle the company has been taking, and the editor is very performant and well-engineered compared with Atom.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#73

Post by fletchowns »

meric wrote: post #66
s4vi0r wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...why not sublime? I don't understand why these electron editors are popular at all. With all due respect to the people working on them (because it really isn't their fault for the most part), they're bloated slow pieces of shit. I don't like electron in general, but its an especially bad choice for a text editor intended for developers. If you don't like vim or emacs, sublime does what the electron editors do but b…

Sublime Text 3 is a commercial text editor. Atom is free; but I don't want to pay for Sublime Text 3, I had already paid for 2, and I don't like not using the latest...

Two things I feel compelled to mention: You can evaluate it for free, forever, just dismiss the nag screen. The other is, it's easily worth the $80 in my opinion.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#74

Post by codedokode »

ioquatix wrote: post #12
tomc1985 wrote: post #6

How disappointing that text editors require such... abstraction. Overengineering at its finest?

If you edit files once in a blue moon, `notepad.exe` is more than sufficient. If you work with hundreds of files per day as part of your profession, you are going to want something a bit better. I wouldn't call it over engineering if it solves a real problem.

By the way, Notepad cannot display files with unix-style line ending, it doesn't keep indentation and it inserts BOM when saving file as utf-8.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#75

Post by codedokode »

AlexMax wrote: post #31
codedokode wrote: post #30

Also, I noticed that it requires WebGL so without modern and supported by WebKit graphic card it won't work. Why is OpenGL necessary for a text editor? I don't understand.

> Why is OpenGL necessary for a text editor? Why not? Modern desktops are all hardware-accelerated anyway.

Not all graphics hardware is supported by WebKit. For example, Intel 965 chipset doesn't support WebGL.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#76

Post by codedokode »

stouset wrote: post #34
codedokode wrote: post #30

Also, I noticed that it requires WebGL so without modern and supported by WebKit graphic card it won't work. Why is OpenGL necessary for a text editor? I don't understand.

Hardware acceleration of rendering is more energy-efficient and less resource intensive than CPU-based software rendering.

Is it really so? Can OpenGL update only a small part of a framebuffer (for example, when a single letter is typed) or will it rerender the whole text?

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#77

Post by vvanders »

switchbak wrote: post #10
toomanybeersies wrote: post #5

I've always felt like the inevitable conclusion of Atom and other electron based apps is the reversion to using low level compiled languages. I'm starting to get tired of how much of a resource hog Atom is.

If it weren't for the oddness of the language, Lua would be a perfect fit. Near-C speeds, super flexible, no recompiles. You'd lose type safety compared to Rust, but they don't have that with JS now anyway. I don't think the majority of the memory consumption is from JS though, moreso the embedded browser+DOM approach. Edit: Blaming electron for bloat more than JS.

I love Lua but VSCode is mostly written in TypeScript so you get a fair number type checks.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#78

Post by WalterGR »

codedokode wrote: post #74
ioquatix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you edit files once in a blue moon, `notepad.exe` is more than sufficient. If you work with hundreds of files per day as part of your profession, you are going to want something a bit better. I wouldn't call it over engineering if it solves a real problem.

By the way, Notepad cannot display files with unix-style line ending, it doesn't keep indentation and it inserts BOM when saving file as utf-8.

It also has 1 level of undo.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#79

Post by skybrian »

jachee wrote: post #60
lpghatguy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Editing large pieces of text efficiently is a Hard Problem, especially collaboratively without conflicts. In the case of editors like Xi and XRay, they use CRDTs, which doesn't look anything like how Notepad would represent text. There's real work here that's actually useful, it's not just "another extensible text editor".

I have never, even once, in my nearly-20-year career had the desire to collaboratively edit a single, specific text file. Isn't collaboration without conflicts what version control systems are made to do?

Proof by personal experience isn't all that convincing. Maybe you've never done pair programming, but other people have.

Re: Xray – An experimental next-generation Electron-based text editor

#80

Post by zzzcpan »

s4vi0r wrote: post #63
amingilani wrote: post #43

I always felt like the Atom team should scrap their work and start afresh. I love Atom, and have used it as my primary editor since its inception, but it's been the worse performing text editor I've ever encountered. I almost switched to Vim a few months ago, but the impact to my performance was too high for me to keep it up for long enough. I'm definitely going to be using Xray the moment it becomes stablish.

...why not sublime? I don't understand why these electron editors are popular at all. With all due respect to the people working on them (because it really isn't their fault for the most part), they're bloated slow pieces of shit. I don't like electron in general, but its an especially bad choice for a text editor intended for developers. If you don't like vim or emacs, sublime does what the electron editors do but b…

> I don't understand why these electron editors are popular at all.

I would like to understand this better too. I'm guessing vim and emacs take too much time to learn, since they drag the whole unix ecosystem with them. Sublime might be a decent easier to learn editor, but it's a non-free product that could disappear one day, you have to go through the hassle of buying it and it's expensive one too. So sublime is not even a choice for most people. This leaves us with electron based editors as an acceptable choice. But obviously bloat, performance still matter and people will choose something better if available.

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