Any Sublime Text Users here?
potatohead
Posts: 10,261
Oh man! I think I've fallen in love with this editor. Read about this one off and on, but just didn't take the plunge. While working on a non-Propeller related project involving lots of little files, I just ran out of oomph. Too much manipulation, scrolling, etc... Decided to go looking for a nice editor that could open multiple views into a single file as well as position them in various ways.
Just got done hacking together a quick build system with a batch file that triggers Pnut.exe for P2 stuff, and I've just had a great time using this software today.
So, anyone else here using Sublime? Has anyone made syntax definitions, etc... yet?
Just got done hacking together a quick build system with a batch file that triggers Pnut.exe for P2 stuff, and I've just had a great time using this software today.
So, anyone else here using Sublime? Has anyone made syntax definitions, etc... yet?
Comments
Just so happens I installed it a couple of weeks ago just to see what it was all about. I had heard it had some nice features for working with JavaScript a language I am using a lot now a days.
Well it just crashed all the time on my Debian Linux machine. Unusable.
Given that it's a closed source program there was no point in me pursuing it any further.
-Phil
Well, yes, obviously. What I meant was a link, not for someone motivated, but for the lazy -- like me.
-Phil
http://www.sublimetext.com/2
@Heater, it makes use of graphics hardware. That's likely your source of crashes. Of course, that same feature makes it excellent for large files and or viewing multiple views into the same file, simultaneous change of multiple text instances, etc... I can put a few megabytes of text in there, or I can have 20 files open, or 10 views into the same big file... Smooth as glass.
The feature that sold me is the graphical file representation along the side of the edit window. The user slides that up and down to work on a particular section of a file. There is some "greeking" done, so that the form of the file is shown, but not the full detail. Just enough for me to think, "yeah, I want to edit this font data", glance over, see that data, position, edit from there. Love it.
This one probably won't perform well on just a frame buffer or software GL supported graphics sub-system. It needs a few things to render, and it needs them solid. IMHO, that's a downside, depending on what people run. I'm good on my primary Prop machine, which has solid graphics in both Windows and Linux. Of course, it's smooth as glass on the Mac Book Pro, which I'm considering more development work on now that it's going to get freed up.
Closed source doesn't typically bother me, particularly when the tool works with open data as this one does. I'm free to leave the "beer garden" anytime I want to. So there is no trap typical of these kinds of things. It's lean getting in, lean getting out.
Probably, I'll buy a license. I like this program a lot. And when somebody adds nice value, I generally pay them for it. That is what closed software is all about. This guy earned it IMHO.
@Phil: I just wrote a little batch file that calls Pnut.exe with a single argument; namely, the file it's supposed to load. Now, I edit whatever it is in Sublime, hit ctrl-b for build, Sublime will quickly save the file if I've forgotten, then it just feeds it to Pnut, which is ready for the F10 to send off for running on a Prop. I just close the Pnut window as I'm too lazy to figure out how to actually track a process and kill it on a Windows machine... Besides, if I've not powered up the prop, Pnut is still there so I can just hit F10 again. Nice.
The thing I like the most is it has a basic concept of a project. Once I get folders and files in there, I'm presented with a very clean environment that's fast, clear, etc... Write a build script, plug in whatever I'm building with, and it's fast and easy, no icons, no clutter. Keyboard and menu only. Perfect. I can read everything I'm activating, and I can keyboard the stuff that needs it.
Ah, that might explain my crashes. I was trying out sublime on an old laptop with Nvidea graphics that is old enough to be barely functional under Debian. I does accelerate OpenGl from snails pace to slothful then crashes a lot.
I will try sublime on my PC with more modern facilities.
I'm not anti closed source, it's just that in that case what I had in my hand was a closed source program that did not work on my machine and hence there is little chance of it ever working there and so there is no point in continuing following it.
Then again we are talking a program editor here, of which there are many both open source and closed. It would have to have some very compelling feature to make it worth the switch from vim. That's before we even start to think about laying down money for it.
Kids these days!! I thought Google was the lazy way to search! Now it's for the "motivated"!
Sublime looks like it's worth try but isn't paying for an editor these days like paying for ***?
They do have that, and I'm a slow evaluator.
The truth is there are an awful lot of text editors that are available and many are free. A new one is just another learning task.
If you have Linux, just have Synaptic search the keyword 'editor' and you will get a long list of oldies, but goodies that have been around forever (since the dinosuars were using Unix).
You see JavaScript is a brilliant language offering features that even C++ and Java can't match but it is sloppy. Sloppy in it's type checking and sloppy in syntax. However there are tools to help like jslint and jshint that will checkover your code and point out potential traps you have fallen into.
Sublime offers to run those tools over your code as you edit highlighting problems as you go. Much like syntax highlighting features for other editors. That removes a lot of save-check-re-edit from your development loop.
And no. I'm not mad. JS is actually very cool and runs damn fast under the V8 JS engine on my servers. Outperforming C++ code compiled to native in some cases. Quite amazing.
And yes, the interactivity Sublime offers is attractive. The authors goal was to create an editor that didn't get in the way. One primary way basic editors get in the way is how things get displayed. It's often coarse, and it takes considerable skill in some to manipulate text and or view the file in various ways.
Re: Paying for an editor is like... well, we all know right? Honestly, there are tons of editors. The only reason to pay for one is because it adds some value the others do not. Sublime is a highly differentiated editor. There will be plenty of people who pay for it's ongoing development. The eval period is interesting. Once in a while, Sublime will ask you whether or not you want to buy a license. One click later, and you are either into getting a license, or starting your next eval period. This is reasonable and well executed IMHO.
I kind of want a nice macro-assembler for PASM now, LMM capable, linked to Sublime with syntax highlighting done, etc... My favorite feature is the lack of icons and clutter. Despite all the innovation surrounding icons, I still prefer text as the primary communication mode. If it's well thought out text, the whole thing self-documents to a degree icons largely fail on.
Yeah, it's like paying for beer. The ingredients are very cheap and it's easy to make at home. But no, we go to bars and spend 50 times as much on it. Why do we do that?
Oh, you meant something else. Same anyway.
I agree, icons are for the illiterate. Did you notice how since they invented icons they had to invent tool tips to tell you what clicking the icon might do? Well why not just have frikken textual menus anyway? Would be much quicker to suss out.
Well heck, I'll just say this. I've been involved in UX testing, some design and a fair amount of support and when the icons really took the stage front and center, communicating how to do things to people got a lot more difficult! It has remained so. Now we've moved to gestures and all sorts of quasi-undiscoverable things, and what is the product of that? Well, one product is some efficiency increase for some use cases, but the other product of that is a heck of a lot more documentation, and demand for training classes that often feature sessions that remind me of teaching people how to play video games... (Yes, there is that much overlap when it's done badly.)
Gestures, I had not thought of that, a whole class full of chimps waving at computers trying to get them to save a file properly.
@PhiPi: Don't knock Heater's link. There is actually some decent stuff on that obscure "Google" site, well worth a peek if you haven't seen it. You may have to dig a little, but you'll be surprised at what you find.
Tell me about it
My wife recently got a Nexus tablet.
We charged it up and spent two days trying to figure out how to get past the padlock on the power up screen!
No instructions....
And that was just the start....
Oh the pain.....
Then we had a screen full of......ICONS
what do they mean my wife asked?
Better ask one of the kids next door ...
Dave
The fee ($70) isn't an obstacle; that seems reasonable for a good editor with IDE-like features. I used to pony up for SlickEdit, arguably the best programmer's editor available, but that got to be a bit too pricey, considering the quality of the many free alternatives (in particular VIM and Emacs). I also keep EditPlus around, my favorite lightweight, general-purpose editor -- well worth the money ($35).