Atom - GitHub Editor

[rosstex]

Atom appears it won’t be free when it is complete, so you will have to pay for it just like Sublime.

I hope Atom will “cost” as much as Sublime

[dcominottim]

[quote=“awant”]

Atom appears it won’t be free when it is complete, so you will have to pay for it just like Sublime.

I hope Atom will “cost” as much as Sublime

It’s going to be open sourced, according to Github.[/quote]

It isn’t, according to GitHub’s co-founder Tom Preston-Werner:

Atom won’t be closed source, but it won’t be open source either. It will be somewhere in-between, making it easy for us to charge for Atom while still making the source available under a restrictive license so you can see how everything works. We haven’t finalized exactly how this will work yet. We will have full details ready for the official launch.

discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/4

[KonTrax]

There has been a lot of Sublime inspired projects published on the web lately. My main concern is that they all seem to be browser/node based utilizing javascript. Based on my experience with js and further supported by tests of some of those projects, I don’t expect speed to come even close to that of ST. But as ST’s speed is so extreme, even a relatively big reduction in speed would still make a quite fast program.

As speed is one of my main reasons for using ST and as those other projects currently being quite a long way from the plausible “quite fast” state I will at least stay with ST. I would also have to agree with Facelessuser on his points.

[FichteFoll]

I haven’t been actively browsing the forum lately so I kinda missed this topic, but it was brought up in IRC and I’ve kept an eye on Atom since the first minute.

I’ll try and sum up my impressions and thoughts of Atom as of now (because it’s been out for a while now). I never used it because I don’t have an OSX machine, but I am eagerly waiting. However, I must say that I mostly use ST to write plugins for ST because it really is a lot of fun, so I’m mainly going to focus on how I use it.

• They use Discourse. Finally a forumdiscussion platform that does email notifications and it’s even open source! (and you can influence it really easily because the developers are VERY vocal)
• It’s “hackable to the core”. Well, maybe not in the core, but to the core is a pretty accurate statement because many features that are built into Sublime are actually packages for Atom (e.g. Find in Files). And the most exciting thing about it: You can modify the UI almost in any way you want! This is the advantage from technically rendering a website - it’s incredibly easy to modify the UI and since the web is really central in our every day life and use (of the internet) almost every developer knows at least something about HTML/CSS/JS. This is the real advantage from using web technology for “everything”, such as a code editor, and I’m really excited about that. Have you seen what is possible?
• Shared Source (?) of the core and Open Source for many packages. Yes, Sublime Plugins are also open source mostly, but Atom packages go way deeper than in ST. You can actually modify stuff in Atom that is implemented as a package that you would never be able to in ST.
• Package Development. Creating and publishing a package is incredibly easy. There is even a test environment to run tests on them. Also since it uses node.js as its base you basically have access to the whole node.js package library and because of dependency management you can import whatever you want. I’ve always wanted to do similar for ST and Package Control, but it’s quite a task and I never got down to it. And package settings are handled better by far. Publishing a new version is basically running a single command. It takes care of committing, pushing and creating a tag and I really want to have that for PC as well in some way.
• Support is very vocal as well. Developers are even on the IRC channel sometimes and some of my requests regarding the website have been implemented less than a day (such as an RSS feed for blog posts).

• Javascript. Yeah, I hate it for several reasons that I’m not gonna discuss here. I will use it if I must and sadly this happens quite often because apparently there is no alternative for client-side DOM-modification in browsers (yet). I can fully understand the decicion behind using JS for a web technology-based editor, but I will never like Javascript. Coffeescript does help somewhat, but it introduces another problem that is optional parenthesis. If I were to switch at some point I will certainly miss Python a lot.
• Speed. No need to iterate on this again. Custumization has its prize and that is most likely performance.
• Package ecosystem and “sublime.wbond.net”. Hands down, Will’s site is just plain better than theirs in showing information and being easy to use. Well, their site kind of focusses more on the readme of the packages which is a good thing, but everything else is inferior.
• Cross-platform support. Yes, it will eventually be at some point but currently it’s not and unusable for me.
• No YAML for configuration sadly. Converting syntax definitions form plist to cson (basically coffeescript syntax for serialized data) is an improvement but not good enough. I don’t really feel like re-writing AAAPackageDev in CS/JS, but maybe I will. Considering the possibilities it might even be possible to write a package that interprets YAML settings files directly from the source without conversion to json/cson and you can specify it as a dependency if your package uses it. (Maybe a Python plugin interface as package too?)

So yeah, I really have to try it in order to find out how it really is and I will likely not switch quickly, but I am damn excited. Also, there might be some very interesting news regarding the future of Sublime Text in the next week or so.

[oldwarhorse]

Excellent write-up. Thanks, man.

[quote=“FichteFoll”]

• Javascript. Yeah, I hate it for several reasons [/quote]

Same here. But since I now bleed CS, no problem.

Also, there might be some very interesting news regarding the future of Sublime Text in the next week or so.

Well, now, that would be welcome indeed. And how is it you are able to come by such news?

On a similar note, I happened across this the other day:
campaignbrief.com/2014/02/12 … ector.html

Anyone know if it’s the same “Jon Skinner”? Just curious…

Cheers

[FichteFoll]

[quote=“oldwarhorse”]
Well, now, that would be welcome indeed. And how is it you are able to come by such news?

On a similar note, I happened across this the other day:
campaignbrief.com/2014/02/12 … ector.html

Anyone know if it’s the same “Jon Skinner”? Just curious…

Cheers[/quote]

Well, somebody posted a reply from kari, one of the “newer” employees, on IRC which mentions that. I don’t know about the validity of the statement, but I will make sure to check the forum and the blog every day for the next few days. I’m not sure if I should tell the actual sayings because it will create a mess if it turns out to be false and I’m not sure if he intended it to get handed off so easily, so I’m not gonna do it just now.

Might be true, I know at least he’s from Australia.

[oldwarhorse]

@FichteFoll:

Fair enough. And right you are, my man. Keep us posted.

Be well. Have good.

[bizoo]

[quote=“oldwarhorse”]
On a similar note, I happened across this the other day:
campaignbrief.com/2014/02/12 … ector.html

Anyone know if it’s the same “Jon Skinner”? Just curious…

Cheers[/quote]

Don’t think so:
http://au.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Jon/Skinner

[oldwarhorse]

[quote=“bizoo”]
Don’t think so:
http://au.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Jon/Skinner[/quote]

Ahh. I see. Hmm. Must be a popular name in that area. OK, thanks.

[gadone]

[quote=“FichteFoll”]

[quote=“oldwarhorse”]
Well, now, that would be welcome indeed. And how is it you are able to come by such news?
Cheers[/quote]

Well, somebody posted a reply from kari …] I’m not sure if he intended it to get handed off so easily, so I’m not gonna do it just now.[/quote]

FichteFoll: The community is dying for news, and IRC is no less public than this forum, so I don’t see the problem of posting it. Can you at least repost on IRC if I join (where is the channel?) ?

Please.

[FichteFoll]

[quote=“gadone”]
FichteFoll: The community is dying for news, and IRC is no less public than this forum, so I don’t see the problem of posting it. Can you at least repost on IRC if I join (where is the channel?) ?[/quote]

I’m sure you can wait a week for the official announcement, if it was to happen at all. There were 100 users in the IRC channel at the time and a total of 2 users reacting to it, including myself. It is much more visible here.
I can re-paste it if you ping/highlight me on IRC if you really need to know it that badly. ##sublimetext on freenode.

[gadone]

There were 100 users in the IRC channel at the time and a total of 2 users reacting to it, including myself. It is much more visible here.

So what was the point of refering to the IRC post at all, if you’re not going to share it?

[bizoo]

[quote=“gadone”]

There were 100 users in the IRC channel at the time and a total of 2 users reacting to it, including myself. It is much more visible here.

So what was the point of refering to the IRC post at all, if you’re not going to share it?[/quote]

I agree, please stop to be an Arjan^-1

And I find difficult to believe that some trusted news will come from an unofficial IRC channel when there is an official forum, blog and twitter account.
The only information that I’ve found on the web that look somewhat official is there:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7360512

[pete340]

The community is dying for news …

I suspect that many people, like me, are indifferent. There will be news when there’s something to announce. In the meantime, Sublime works just fine. If it stops working in the future, that will be the time to change editors.

[FichteFoll]

[quote=“bizoo”]
And I find difficult to believe that some trusted news will come from an unofficial IRC channel when there is an official forum, blog and twitter account. [/quote]

Exactly this.

The source is someone who probably received an answer to a support request or ticket. The message said he would prepare a public forum or blog post with details in the next week so I will wait for that. If that doesn’t happen, he either forgot it or it wasn’t true/final. I decided to not share it here (I will not change that decision) and I realize that the teaser was a mistake. Just wait patiently.

Edit: wrong quote.

[pete340]

[quote=“FichteFoll”]

[quote=“pete340”]
I suspect that many people, like me, are indifferent. There will be news when there’s something to announce. In the meantime, Sublime works just fine. If it stops working in the future, that will be the time to change editors.[/quote]

Exactly this.

The source is someone who probably received an answer to a support request or ticket. He said he would prepare a public forum or blog post with details in the next week so I will wait for that. If that doesn’t happen, he either forgot it or it wasn’t true/final. I decided to not share it here (I will not change that decision) and I realize that the teaser was a mistake. Just wait patiently.[/quote]

#completelyMissingThePoint

[Anomareh]

The announcement is obviously for the Sublime Text 4 Alpha.

[gadone]

The announcement is obviously for the Sublime Text 4 Alpha.

No.

While I applaud the open source effort that’s apparently in the pipeline, the “some time this year” qualifier makes me dubious about what’s going on.

[Anomareh]

woosh

[ButchAnton]

Does anyone happen to have an extra invite? Mine has been a long time coming . . .

Thanks!