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We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

zed.dev

121–130 of 243 posts

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#121
I really love native apps, but I'm stuck using VS code for now. It just kills me to see how much power goes to blinking the cursor in VS code. I tried Zed for a bit but couldn't make it work. I loved that its so light weight and fast. Looking my all my VS code processes it 3GB vs Zeds 300MB. 1/10 the ram is a meaningful difference. However I really need the Jupyter Notebook support that VS code provides. I'm also too used to doing remote dev on a Ubuntu box from my mac and VS code works great for that. I hope they stick with it long enough to get to supporting my workflow.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#122

Their custom UI framework might be all fun and games for now, but that will probably change once they realize they need to implement accessibility. Doing this in a custom framework without sacrificing performance won't be easy and is going to require lots of messy, per-platform work. It's not like it's optional for them either. It would be for a simple editor that you can just decide not to use, but they're positioni…

Here's their only blurb on accessibility:

> Currently, many of Zed's themes are largely inaccessible. We are working on a new accessible theme system, which will launch with Zed 1.0

> A11y (accessibility) in Zed will be a long project. Likely lasting far beyond 1.0. Due to GPUI being written from the ground up we don't have access to the same a11y features that Swift, Web-based apps or [insert other language] does.

> Making Zed accessible will be a joint effort between things on the Zed side, and building out features in GPUI.

> For now, you can join this discussion to talk further about a11y in Zed: Accessibility (a11y) in Zed [links to: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/1297]

And that link is useless, it goes to a Github issue about back and forward buttons.

https://zed.dev/docs/themes

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/1297 - the link they use that's supposed to be for accessibility discussions. It appears it's supposed to be a link to this: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/6576

So they've thought about it, but they haven't actually done it yet.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#123

Their custom UI framework might be all fun and games for now, but that will probably change once they realize they need to implement accessibility. Doing this in a custom framework without sacrificing performance won't be easy and is going to require lots of messy, per-platform work. It's not like it's optional for them either. It would be for a simple editor that you can just decide not to use, but they're positioni…

[flagged]

From the current state of things, which to Voice Over is an empty window with no elements whatsoever, if they have thought about accessibility, they definitely don't consider it a priority. With such a monumental task, I'd be willing to excuse some slip-ups, but there was literally zero work put into this.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#124

Their custom UI framework might be all fun and games for now, but that will probably change once they realize they need to implement accessibility. Doing this in a custom framework without sacrificing performance won't be easy and is going to require lots of messy, per-platform work. It's not like it's optional for them either. It would be for a simple editor that you can just decide not to use, but they're positioni…

[flagged]

You would not believe the hubris of our profession in general around "how hard can writing a GUI toolkit be?" and also how little most engineers seem to think about accessibility when scheduling and estimating and architecting.

Backdrop: helped ship accessibility features onto the Google "Nest" Home Hub, somewhat last minute. And then watched it all get re-written for Fuchsia w/ Flutter (which of course had no accessibility story yet) and, yeah, last minute again.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think it's likely they have. But is there anything specific where they've written or spoken about Zed and accessibility?

I just posted a quote from this page: https://zed.dev/docs/themes

They've thought about it, and have a "follow this link to discuss" that links to the wrong thing so you can't actually follow the link to discuss it. Unless you're interested in a closed issue regarding back and forward buttons.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for saving my time. Topic hidden.

Cross-platform support is in development. You might miss the announcement that actually matters to you

Am I wrong in thinking that "topic hidden" means this specific post, and that future posts related to Zed (such as a cross platform announcement) would still show up for them...?

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#127

I really love native apps, but I'm stuck using VS code for now. It just kills me to see how much power goes to blinking the cursor in VS code. I tried Zed for a bit but couldn't make it work. I loved that its so light weight and fast. Looking my all my VS code processes it 3GB vs Zeds 300MB. 1/10 the ram is a meaningful difference. However I really need the Jupyter Notebook support that VS code provides. I'm also too…

Looks like the Notebook request has been open for over a year. https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5273 So according to the Lindy effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect, it'll be more than a year before we see anything.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You would not believe the hubris of our profession in general around "how hard can writing a GUI toolkit be?" and also how little most engineers seem to think about accessibility when scheduling and estimating and architecting. Backdrop: helped ship accessibility features onto the Google "Nest" Home Hub, somewhat last minute. And then watched it all get re-written for Fuchsia w/ Flutter (which of course had no access…

No, I’m aware of how people downplay the scope involved in building a GUI framework. I’ve written your comment no less than (I estimate) 10 times on this very site.

I give these devs the benefit of the doubt given their prior body of work.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#129

I tried out the editor because of this post: it looks very promising. Unfortunately I can't use it because it doesn't have support for remote hosts/devcontiners. That feature of VScode is critical to my workflow, as I don't actually want to program on a Mac host, but rather use my Mac as a portal to the VMs and containers I actually code on. It massively helps with segmentation of my projects and improves my security…

I use development virtual machines to segment projects and clients also although I just run my editor in each VM. What's the benefit of the vscode remote hosts/dev containers over a normal remote session?

I find that the experience doing this is essentially unbearable due to graphics problems on retina displays, input lag and the like. I also figure that the kind of person who wants an editor which is designed to paint as fast as possible probably wouldn’t want to have a whole VM and spice/similar client sitting between them and the editor.

Re: We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

#130

Their custom UI framework might be all fun and games for now, but that will probably change once they realize they need to implement accessibility. Doing this in a custom framework without sacrificing performance won't be easy and is going to require lots of messy, per-platform work. It's not like it's optional for them either. It would be for a simple editor that you can just decide not to use, but they're positioni…

Why bother with accessibility. If a disabled wants to use an IDE, use a different one??
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