Nova by Panic • Hacker News Board

Re: Nova by Panic

#381

Post by threentaway » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #345

ddevault wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't imagine the world of hurt, discomfort and frustration of developing against a lib set I can't read source code of or improve. Thank you . It boggles the mind that anyone who can write code would ever use a closed source operating system.

Do the Windows based laptops have a similar touchpad like the Mac which just works, last time I checked they did not.

Can you explain why this is such an important feature? How often are you writing code where you're not at your desk with a real keyboard and mouse?

Re: Nova by Panic

#382

Post by statictype » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

mooman219 wrote: post #205

Brendinooo wrote: post #2

> Here's a little editor story for fun. During beta we found some bugs in Apple's text layout engine that we just could not fix. Our solution? Writing our own text layout manager… from scratch. Not only did this fix the bugs, but it also boosted our editor's performance. We're not messing around! Seems like there's nobody better than Panic at doing this sort of thing. They're willing to push Apple's UI forward, but t…

"Writing our own text layout manager… from scratch". I would be pessimistic of the magnitude of this statement. I do a significant amount of text engine work and I'm skeptical what they implied by this. The likely case is they glued together other solutions (Like HarfBuzz/FreeType/etc) and expose their own API on top of that. This is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged for accessibility reasons. It may be that C…

I don't think its that big a deal. Its a lot of work, for sure, but I think it's table stakes for writing a good text editor.

I'm not sure how many good native text editors don't have their own text editing engine.

Re: Nova by Panic

#383

Post by fmoronzirfas » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

Hm. Looks quite nice but does not work out of the box with fish shell and or Node installed using nvm only. It gives me a hint like this:

> Prettier couldn't be found because npm isn't available. Please make sure you have Node installed. If you've only installed Node through NVM, you'll need to change your shell configuration to work with Nova. See https://library.panic.com/nova/environment-variables/

Unfortunately the documentation is for zsh and bash only. Has anyone an idea how to get this up and running with any other shell?

Re: Nova by Panic

#384

Post by planb » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

I tried to open a 300MB file and it gave me the spinning wheel. If there's one thing I would expect of a new editor (and they even wrote their own text layout engine), then that it's designed for large files and incremental loading from the ground up.

Re: Nova by Panic

#385

Post by scott_w » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:01 AM UTC

threentaway wrote: post #381

sumedh wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the Windows based laptops have a similar touchpad like the Mac which just works, last time I checked they did not.

Can you explain why this is such an important feature? How often are you writing code where you're not at your desk with a real keyboard and mouse?

100% of the time for me. I prefer the trackpad over the mouse.

Re: Nova by Panic

#386

Post by ajavascriptdude » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

Keeps crashing on a large project. Extensions have a lot of bugs.

Re: Nova by Panic

#387

Post by sixstringtheory » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #338

sjwright wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, how? I've got a Kaleidoscope merge open right now and I can't edit text. Is there a mode I need to toggle or a button I need to press? I've looked through all the menu items, preferences, all of the toggle switches in the UI, and searched the documentation. I'm running version 2.3.2.

Pressed on by your certitude, I tried googling it again and yep, you definitely can't. https://twitter.com/kaleidoscopeapp/status/34193087090041651... (But you can when dealing with merge conflicts? Wow. Quite remarkable for a seemingly basic bit of core functionality to stay humming on the to-do list for seven years, despite the very same feature already implemented in a nearly identical context!)

Ah, I’m so sorry. I said it was the exact thing you were describing, but I misunderstood you. I indeed meant conflict resolution, and it is surprising they left it out elsewhere.

Re: Nova by Panic

#388

Post by sneak » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #345

ddevault wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't imagine the world of hurt, discomfort and frustration of developing against a lib set I can't read source code of or improve. Thank you . It boggles the mind that anyone who can write code would ever use a closed source operating system.

Do the Windows based laptops have a similar touchpad like the Mac which just works, last time I checked they did not.

Macs, with their amazing touchpads, are (at least for the moment and the last ten years or so) general purpose computers that can run pretty much every widely available open source operating system. This is a false dichotomy.

From GP:

> use a closed source operating system

That's not "Windows".

Re: Nova by Panic

#389

Post by statictype » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

It looks great.

Very Panic-y.

I'm surprised that they didn't use Cmd-P, using Cmd-Shift-O instead.

What's the precedent for it? I thought Cmd-P was now universally used to locate files. Do Mac apps like Xcode use Cmd-Shift-O instead?

Re: Nova by Panic

#390

Post by sneak » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

I love Panic and I love hacking, and I started hacking on the Mac and will always have a soft spot for the macOS. I'm glad they built this and their other cool (but proprietary) software, despite the fact that software freedom is really important.

That said, I'll never use a toolchain that isn't free software. These are my work tools, into which I invest decades of muscle memory and configuration. Between Apple's lack of emphasis on long term application BC, and their increasingly locked down hardware (and I type this on an iMac Pro with T2 and firmware security on), I just can't invest my time and energy into the most critical of my development tools (an editor) that isn't going to come with me to any platform or device that I ever end up using, or, more importantly, be hackable.

It's sort of like fire insurance. I hope to never, ever need to use it (recompile my editor with a change), but the idea of having some of my most valuable resources/investments at risk, with no recourse should the worst happen, is insane to me.