Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

lite-xl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 151 posts

Re: Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

#101

Post by alwillis »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #60
tmtvl wrote: post #25

Uses SDL for rendering the UI. While it makes it work cross-platform it unfortunately means it won't look like a native application. Then again, I don't think there's a C library which provides cross-platform native UI, only the Lazarus toolkit for Free Pascal and WxWidgets for C++.

"Native" means compiled code (likely C/C++/Rust/Zig) for some. And it means using platform-specific UI widget for others. I don't care too much about the UI widget style as long as the implementation is good and responsive. I tend to use app in fullscreen (F11) with minimal chrome and to be honest I kind of like when each app has its own UI style, especially if it can be user-configured with themes. Apple/macOS users…

> following the Apple guidance, where all apps should look like they were made by the same company

Mac users don't want all GUI apps to look alike; however, they should follow macOS UI/UX guidelines regarding copy/paste, drag and drop, keyboard conventions, etc. The whole point is to not have users having to relearn these basics for every new application.

Developers generally get these conventions "for free" by using the frameworks built-in to macOS. That doesn't prevent developers from creating custom, stylized interfaces if that's what's needed.

Even Apple's pro apps (Final Cut, Logic, etc.) look quite different from those that are bundled with macOS such as iMovie and Garageband.

Re: Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

#102

Post by master-12 »

aniforprez wrote: post #97
benatkin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't enjoy vscode (any more) and don't enjoy IntelliJ, so I'd hope to be able to use this for IDE things. I'd like to see an alternative to LSP created for editors like this, now that Visual Studio Code has shown not to be open. I think it could be built upon Jupyter Kernels, which really pioneered the client server architecture of LSP. My ideal IDE would be something I would also want to use for one-off editing o…

You're conflating LSP and VSCode. LSP is a completely open spec for things like autocomplete, syntax highlighting, symbol searching and so on. Any editor can use any LSP server and jetbrains is using it for new languages in their editors and fleet VSCode is also completely open source. The only thing not "open" about it is the keys they use to make the final distributable. Even the VSCodium docs say as much. They lit…

On a surface level, this is true. Vast majority of the code that makes VS Code is MIT licensed.

But the configuration of what marketplace is used and what extensions have access to the privileged "proposed API" makes huge difference in what Microsoft/GitHub can provide as user experience and what other developers can do.

See this great post for detailed explanation how Microsoft created a closed ecosystem around VS Code https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32657709

Re: Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

#103

Post by p-e-w »

Lite XL is a small miracle. I can only echo other comments calling it an "open source Sublime Text". It is at least as responsive as Sublime in my tests, and feels even more lightweight. The executable is only 385 kilobytes on Linux, with just a handful of extremely basic system dependencies (SDL, Lua, FreeType, PCRE).

Sublime Text is now getting squeezed from "above" (by VSCode) and from "below" (by Lite XL), while also having serious competition from TUI editors like Helix which are rapidly approaching it in features and performance. I'm not sure how Sublime can hope to survive long term against all of those, considering that Sublime's development pace appears to be by far the slowest of the bunch.

Re: Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

#105

Post by xrayarx »

vbezhenar wrote: post #26

Can someone suggest an editor for macOS with smart text algorithms to allow work on unlimited file size or line length? I need to view unlimited text, switch between encodings (including hex) and I want editor with proper algorithms, so it'll work instantly and without loading entire file in the memory. Should support search with fast regex engine. Editing would be nice too. I imagine editing as a sequence of actions…

I‘d use vim. It’s already preinstalled. For this usecase you should also consider the various command line utilities like sed, awk, grep

Re: Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

#106

Post by p-e-w »

xrayarx wrote: post #104

For an Exhaustive list of editors point your browsers to: https://www.texteditors.org/

That "exhaustive" list doesn't include Helix[1], an editor with more than 400 contributors and 17k GitHub stars, which has been in development for close to three years, and which is probably more widely used already than 95% of the editors on that list ever were.

[1] https://github.com/helix-editor/helix

Re: Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua

#110

Post by maegul »

p-e-w wrote: post #103

Lite XL is a small miracle. I can only echo other comments calling it an "open source Sublime Text". It is at least as responsive as Sublime in my tests, and feels even more lightweight. The executable is only 385 kilobytes on Linux, with just a handful of extremely basic system dependencies (SDL, Lua, FreeType, PCRE). Sublime Text is now getting squeezed from "above" (by VSCode) and from "below" (by Lite XL), while…

Sublime has, I think, a relatively loyal user base that have gotten comfortable there and don’t really have much of a reason to leave unless for a big IDE for specific projects. The plug-in ecosystem, while clearly aged, still has activity and new developments including adapting the new LSP stuff pretty well, and has some damn committed authors/maintainers.

I’ve been a comfortable user for a while now and enjoy knowing how to use my tool well enough to casually customise it.

That being said, I think you’re right. I’ve got my eyes on trying out the new developments in open source editors. This one is new to me

It seems like with LSP and tree-sitter, a critical mass of foundational infrastructure is now just available for everyone so that new development and innovation can focus on the interface and design. Not sure how much space that leaves for sublime.

Tree sitter came up in the sublime community forum recently and there was a hard “not gonna happen” from the developer team on the suggestion of any form of integration. From what I can tell, the sublime syntax engine is either lacking or the applications of it aren’t taking full advantage of it compared to tree sitter. And syntax awareness seems like an increasingly valuable tool in my hacking of my text editor. So yea, interesting time for text editors… who woulda thought for 2023.

Post reply on HN