Sublime Forum

Laundry List

#1

I’ve been using ST2 for a few days now, and I’ve compiled a laundry list of questions and feature requests and maybe a few bugs. I don’t want this to become a big flaming mess of a discussion thread, but it’s too long to post each point separately. So at the risk of violating this forum’s etiquette rules… (gulp) here goes:

Markdown syntax coloring is broken in many color schemes. It works in Eiffel, but not Solarized.

Stop complaining about dangling commas when I save .sublime-settings – I know that technically JSON doesn’t support dangling commas, but all modern JS engines do, and it’s so frustrating that I can’t just cut and paste and delete and copy settings without checking and fiddling with the final character on the line.

How to change the Ruby executable? Better RVM integration, please. https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/building-ruby-and-using-rvm/2731/1

Please make the icon look less like Terminal. I use cmd-tab to switch apps often and this breaks my flow.

Rename command-line ‘subl’ to ‘sub’ (much easier to type, infinitely easier to pronounce).

Cmd-R should not mean “go to symbol” – it means “Run” in TextMate and other editors.

Please don’t use F keys in your standard key bindings. On most laptops, F4 means “do some bizarre thing unless the ‘fn’ key is down”, and some of those bizarre things are so important that they always need to be available immediately with only one hand free (e.g. mute). It’s best to let the OS and user have ownership of those keys, despite the temptation.

Need a visual column boundary indicator – at least so I know where to move my cursor so it will let me drag and resize the column.

HTML Preview? Markdown Preview? Maybe as a Build System? (I promised to look into this, since I think I know how to do it, but I’ve been working on Ruby, not Markdown, since I made that promise.)

How to use a different build system for .rb and _spec.rb and _test.rb? Looks like it just goes by extension, so it can’t distinguish between underscored types.

Triple click should highlight the entire line, from left to right margin, not just the text. Now it looks like it hasn’t selected the newline unless you look really carefully at the ragged edge.

Nested menus suck… need a quicker way to try out color schemes, maybe a window or a panel or something

Window title should contain project name, or project plus file name, not just file name - e.g. “myapp - lib/foo.rb”

Hitting up-arrow anywhere on top line should move to left margin; Hitting shift-up anywhere on top line should select to left margin; likewise for bottom line and down arrow.

Clicking in the other column should pass the click through and select where you clicked. It’s a panel, not a window, so doesn’t need focus semantics; or if so, it needs a visual cue to the modal state of active or inactive. E.g. when the cursor has scrolled off the screen, theres no way to tell at a glance if i have to click once or twice.

In fact ST2 really needs a (subtle but clear) indicator of which panel has focus. It’s very disorienting flipping between console, search, and two columns, to the point where I often have to hit ESC 3 or 4 times then click just so I know where my next keystroke will go.

Always Be Saving - I love the save_on_focus_lost setting, and I like how cmd-B saves the file first, but the RubyTest plugin doesn’t (can’t?) save before running. See my other thread about expanding the build system for a way to fix this.

How do I find out where the current file is in the project tree or filesystem?

Creating a new file from the project sidebar is quite clunky. It should ask me the file’s name and save it immediately, not leave me in an “untitled” window that I need to remember to save later.

A directory item in the sidebar should only expand/collapse when I click the triangle; clicking the name should select that item (like it does with files), not toggle it.

trim_trailing_white_space_on_save doesn’t seem to work.


Thanks for a great editor! And an active community, and a responsive developer.

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#2

trim_trailing_white_space_on_save doesn’t seem to work.

whoops, nevermind! It was on in one setting file and off in another. :blush:

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#3

Great list. I strongly agree with all of these!

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#4

While I agree with virtually all of the suggestions you have, this one I can answer:

Put this in your Preferences > Key Bindings - User:

{ "keys": "ctrl+super+r"], "command": "reveal_in_side_bar" },

(the shortcut is the same one TextMate uses).

Cheers,

Andy

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#5

Actually, on most laptops means „do some bizarre thing when fn key is down”. Your situation is true only on mac book & co. And with less than 10% market share for apple pc… please allow me to be in doubt that’s true for most laptops :smiley:

Triple click is selecting the entire line, from the column 0. It doesn’t highlight probably because would be hard to notice the selection.

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#6

The first hint at net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools … nd-tricks/ is very helpful. The only glitch is that I’m running the daily betas and it gets overwritten each time I upgrade.

Open your ~/.bashrc file. Add: alias sub=subl

Agreed. I usually leave those keys in the default “do system stuff unless fn is also pressed” mode, and they’re too far away from the home row for me to ever have gotten used to pressing them during normal typing.

Agreed. For example, Emacs has a “color-theme-select” function to let you cycle through your installed themes.

The daily beta does this. I see “foo.py – myproject” in the title bar.

That feels a little “magical” to me. Why would you make the first line have special keybindings?

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#7

[quote=“kstrauser”]

That feels a little “magical” to me. Why would you make the first line have special keybindings?[/quote]

Because every other text editor that I’ve used in OS X does this. And let’s be honest, Apple is all about making things extra-usable by adding “magic”. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#8

That’s not working for me. When I hit the keys it just beeps. Is there a menu option? Maybe I should try a nightly build.

Right. I’m saying it should highlight, i.e. make the whole line from left margin to right margin a different color. This is how every other editor works, including, say, web browsers (triple click on this line you’re reading and see what I mean). It’s hard to tell that the whole line is selected if it’s just a little empty smidge at the end of the line that represents the newline char.

Oh, I know how to do it, but I’m thinking of using ST2 to teach a class of newbies to program, and I’m not going to teach them how to edit their .bashrc or whatever. It’s just a cool, pronounceable word like “mate” and that just makes it a much better command-line interface.

The use case is, I start somewhere in the middle of the document and I want to reach the very first character, so I hit up and hold until I get there. Without this feature I have to switch over and hit “home” or “cmd-left” or whatever, breaking the flow. Apple’s not the only one to have realized this; use a text field in Chrome or Firefox in Windows and you’ll see the same behavior.

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#9

Yup, I’m now using build 2132 and *{ “keys”: “ctrl+super+r”], “command”: “reveal_in_side_bar” } *works as advertised. Yay!

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#10

OK, I see why you’d want the up-arrow behavior. If that were implemented, for the sake of not having to code special case behavior into macros and scripts I’d like to see that split into two separate functions. Have one like “previous_line” that implements the current behavior. Have another like “previous_line_or_beginning” that implements your behavior. If you wanted your up arrow to work that way, you could change your bindings on up-arrow.

For that matter, I wouldn’t even care if it was the default binding as long as scripts would keep using the current behavior.

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#11

While Up-arrow-to-BOF is the usual OS X behavior, I believe it’s worse from a functional POV. If you want to go to BOF, the best way to get there is Command+Up. If you want to go to the first line of the file, but keep the current column, then the current behavior allows you to do that.

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#12

The daily beta does this. I see “foo.py – myproject” in the title bar.
[/quote]

I’m on Build 2132 for Mac and I still see just the file name in the window title. It makes the “Window” menu almost useless since a lot of my projects have similar file names in them. Is there maybe a setting I’m missing?

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#13

The daily beta does this. I see “foo.py – myproject” in the title bar.
[/quote]

I’d actually like to see it reflected in the Side Bar in place of “FOLDERS”.
It would be nice if the Project Name.sublime-project allowed for the folder to have an attribute of title like below and that would show up instead of “FOLDERS”:

{
  "title": "PROJECT NAME",
  "folders":
  
    "path": "/C/webdev/workspace/sites/base",
    "name": "Base Folder"
  ]
}
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