Hi everyone! I'm the lead developer of Zas Editor. I wanted to share some details about the editor you might be interested in. The text-storage data structure, syntax highlighting and search features are written in Rust, and the UI is written in Swift since we wanted to create a native macOS experience. The Swift and Rust code talk to each other using C FFI, and no, that doesn’t take away the safety features of both…
You mentioned elsewhere that VIM bindings are upcoming. I think this product will be an insta-buy for me once there're (reasonably proper) vim bindings. Is there a newsletter or something to know once this feature has landed? Also as a hint, before you try to re-implement 30 years of VIM bindings and end up with something where everybody misses something, there's a great C library that could be of help: https://githu…
Zas Editor
161–170 of 362 posts
Re: Zas Editor
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two language development stack, with the complexity it entails, when the product is mac only.
Cross platform future aside, they want to use all the good libs Rust has for ropes and the like. The code is based on another editor earlier work, and that's in Rust. They also know Rust so if they want to use Rust, what's the problem in using it? They don't seem to have any problem with building a UI on top, it's built and looks/works fine.
Re: Zas Editor
#163Re: Zas Editor
#164Hi everyone! I'm the lead developer of Zas Editor. I wanted to share some details about the editor you might be interested in. The text-storage data structure, syntax highlighting and search features are written in Rust, and the UI is written in Swift since we wanted to create a native macOS experience. The Swift and Rust code talk to each other using C FFI, and no, that doesn’t take away the safety features of both…
Re: Zas Editor
#165Hi everyone! I'm the lead developer of Zas Editor. I wanted to share some details about the editor you might be interested in. The text-storage data structure, syntax highlighting and search features are written in Rust, and the UI is written in Swift since we wanted to create a native macOS experience. The Swift and Rust code talk to each other using C FFI, and no, that doesn’t take away the safety features of both…
Re: Zas Editor
#166Hi everyone! I'm the lead developer of Zas Editor. I wanted to share some details about the editor you might be interested in. The text-storage data structure, syntax highlighting and search features are written in Rust, and the UI is written in Swift since we wanted to create a native macOS experience. The Swift and Rust code talk to each other using C FFI, and no, that doesn’t take away the safety features of both…
Any changes it will support more languages? I would love to use this for Kotlin.
Re: Zas Editor
#167There is IntelliJ and Visual Studio. IntelliJ is successful, yes, but they have a long history, and the editor is really good. Visual Studio is maybe also successful but I'm not sure how profitable it really was or is.
But otherwise? Sublime Text and others were maybe successful at some point but not sure how profitable they really were. If you count the amount of development which went into it vs the revenue.
For me as a user, I'm extremely hesitant to use any non-open source editor. An editor is a long-term investment. I would not touch this Zas editor unless maybe in 5 to 10 years when it is widely used by many people or when it has become open source but otherwise not. Yes, it looks nice from a first glance but that is by far not enough.
My personal only exception is IntelliJ because it is so good. PyCharm specifically, although I have used other IntelliJ products in the past, starting with the original Java editor, 15 years ago or so, which was heavily praised by some friends.
But otherwise, I want to be able to extend the editor easily, also its core itself. I want to be able to support it when the original developer stopped working on it. Or port it to other systems the developer does not care about. Or do some changes the developer disagrees with. Etc. I want to be sure that it is in principle possible to run this in the next 10-20 years. Or not only me. The nice thing with open source is that many people think likewise, and then there will also be others doing such effort, like supporting it on recent systems, adding features, fixing bugs, etc. So then it is a community effort.
Re: Zas Editor
#168Looks slick and well built. I would really like to try. However, there is no info about the team, company, etc. Even social accounts are brand new. To install a closed source binary with no provenance info is a bit harsh, the only way I could test would be on an offline spare Mac. Is any data collected? Given that it started out as a fork of xi-editor, I think you should consider switching to an open source + subscri…
They seem to be dodging the telemetry questions on HN. No open source and completely anonymous developers behind it. Not having a clear decision made about how their DRM is supposed to work, and ask people to delete their posts regarding it... Huge red flags here.
We’re going to add a privacy policy in the website. We haven’t already done that because we didn’t really expect this much attention within hours of releasing. We were expecting few downloads and more technical feedback.
Re: Zas Editor
#169I wonder if it really still make sense to develop an editor as a commercial product. This is probably a massive effort, and the revenue is maybe not so large. There is IntelliJ and Visual Studio. IntelliJ is successful, yes, but they have a long history, and the editor is really good. Visual Studio is maybe also successful but I'm not sure how profitable it really was or is. But otherwise? Sublime Text and others wer…
Edit: As a sibling comment pointed out it does actually do paid upgrades after a year so ignore my comment.
Re: Zas Editor
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
They seem to be dodging the telemetry questions on HN. No open source and completely anonymous developers behind it. Not having a clear decision made about how their DRM is supposed to work, and ask people to delete their posts regarding it... Huge red flags here.
No data is collected other than the serial number of your Mac for making sure you can only use your license on one computer, which we realized was a bad idea, and made changes. We’re going to add a privacy policy in the website. We haven’t already done that because we didn’t really expect this much attention within hours of releasing. We were expecting few downloads and more technical feedback.