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Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

foicica.com

31–40 of 83 posts

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#31

> Unparalleled extensibility. A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs. Is there some kind of feature comparison somewhere? Or any particular highlights? The feature list is a nice start, but basically what I would expect of any decent editor anyway (except for code completion).

> A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs. The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking.

> The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking.

When I say extensibility, that's not what I mean. Code is available and it's small and mostly written in Lua - that's all good. But I don't want to mess with core because then syncing upstream is a huge pain. The only interface I want to deal with the extension interface. I haven't looked at the api yet, but I am skeptic about the claims. Vim has vimscript, Emacs has elisp, sublime has python...Editors has been providing extension interface for a long time.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#32

Suggestion about the website: Please include a separate section called "Screenshots". A lot of people directly click there to get a feel of the software before they download.

Screenshot with dark theme: http://i.imgur.com/oqByS.png

Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest.

If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I would regain interest. Screenshots are important especially to people like me who may or may not care. They're the fastest way for a potential user to answer the question: is this worth caring about at all.

Some questions you can answer with screenshots:

- Does it run on my platform?

- Are there any glaringly ugly things about it that will be a dealbreaker?

- Is it more beautiful/cool than what I'm already using?

- To what extent can it be customized?

- What kind of people are using it (if you have user screenshots)?

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#33
post #24
post #22

What does this do that Vim doesn't? I'm just not sure I see any selling points. You can extend Vim with Lua, vim has multiple viewports, support for hundreds of languages, and all the other features like code complete, etc... What itch is this supposed to scratch, that something like Vim, a proven project, cannot? I understand that every developer wants to carve his name out and be king of his own sandcastle. But as…

> What does this do that Vim doesn't? It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#34
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this has a small core of C and Lua, according to the website, is a much better selling point than "unparalleled extensibility". I don't think even most Vim fans would claim vim is "as extensible" as Emacs -- while maybe on paper -- not really. I prefer Vim, but it's hard to argue with the sentiment that "Emacs is a nice operating system". Still with proper support for Lua, I suspect it might be forced t…

Textadept uses Lua as scripting language. Sublime Text uses Python as scripting language. Any hipster working on a text editor that uses Javascript as scripting language?

there are editors fully written in js c9.io Brackets lightTable

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs. The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking.

> The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking. When I say extensibility, that's not what I mean. Code is available and it's small and mostly written in Lua - that's all good. But I don't want to mess with core because then syncing upstream is a huge pain. The only interface I want to deal with the extension interface. I haven't looked…

Understood. I think it is still useful to have a small core base that you can read and understand and adapt if you want to. Don't like the GUI open file dialogs? Someone did a text based interface:

http://nilnor.github.com/textredux/tour.html

No need to sync back upstream.

I agree with you that 'Unparalleled extensibility.' might be a bold and difficult to actually prove claim.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Screenshot with dark theme: http://i.imgur.com/oqByS.png

Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest. If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I would regain interest. Screenshots are important especially to people like me who may or may not care. They're the fastest way for a potential user to answer the question: is this worth caring about at all. Some questions you can answer with screenshots: - Does it run on my platform? - Are there…

I can't point you to a screenshot, but scrollbars are easy to hide:

buffer.v_scroll_bar = false

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#37
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does this do that Vim doesn't? It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

>> It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

> I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

I am a long time vim user. Where do I get in line for obtaining my free-with-vim pretentiousness and douchbagginess? Or it doesn't come with Vim and it's just you?

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#38
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking. When I say extensibility, that's not what I mean. Code is available and it's small and mostly written in Lua - that's all good. But I don't want to mess with core because then syncing upstream is a huge pain. The only interface I want to deal with the extension interface. I haven't looked…

Understood. I think it is still useful to have a small core base that you can read and understand and adapt if you want to. Don't like the GUI open file dialogs? Someone did a text based interface: http://nilnor.github.com/textredux/tour.html No need to sync back upstream. I agree with you that 'Unparalleled extensibility.' might be a bold and difficult to actually prove claim.

> No need to sync back upstream.

The canon doesn't need my changes but I need the canon changes. If I change the core, I will have to selectively merge whenever updates happen. It's great that core is small and can directly be changed, but I think that should be advertised as the last resort.

Re: Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

#40
Does the "toggle block comment" option actually work (Ctrl+/)? Tried it with python (file saved with .py ext and syntax highlighting even showed up), but couldn't comment with that keybinding...

edit: block commenting didn't even work when selecting it from the Edit menu.

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