I completely agree with the OP, and would go further to say that Sublime Text 2 on iPad and Android is a natural fit and could easily be the number 1 editor on tablets. With growing transition to these kinds of devices, developers should not be shrugging them off. $9.99 seems reasonable when jumping across the PC/Tablet boundary, especially given that this is about average for advanced editors on iPad. I imagine apps in the Android marketplace are similarly priced. I am not impressed with the current text editing offerings in the app store, but the advantage for the ST2 team is that they have an established product out on desktop platforms that is already well known and obviously liked, and could easily pull-in customers at the same price point as other editors on the tablet app markets who don’t offer free lite (or paid/demo Win/Mac/Linux) versions, and for which their potential customers must make a purchase based on screen captures, reviews, and faith alone. I am definitely willing to pay for Sublime Text 2 on the iPad. I already know what a great product it is.
iPad version any time soon?
It’s just Jon. The fact that he supports three OS’s is already impressive. It’s no small task to port an application to iPad/Android, and I’d prefer Jon spend his time working on the desktop version. Because,well, there’s a keyboard.
That is very impressive indeed! Well, there is always a bluetooth keyboard if necessary though… 
Yeah, I bought a really nice ICS tablet - for my mother. The growing trend is grandmas and grandpas and compute illiterate people who generally hate OS’s window managers.
Even if there was someone out there that designed a real nice keyboard that wasn’t a rubbery mess and was easy to type in, you would still need to develop off of your device either through ssh of ftp to even test your code.
You can’t run a LAMP stack or any interpreter that isn’t severely hacked and gutted. The fact is the system software for these devices are plain crippled.
Anyone that suggests that they want to code on their tablet is really being naive. And they just don’t understand that these tablets will always be marketed and designed exclusively for consumers.
Sure Joe Blow developer down the street might add his own stripped down interpreter that might just work enough to write a cute script or two. But a tablet is not a developer tool it is a consumer device.
If I catch a developer writing code on a tablet I will publicly laugh. I will literally point at you and have a hearty and genuine laugh at your expense.
And If I’m going to be spending significant time being mobile I’d rather take a UX31 or similar ultrabook with me.
There were many statements of this kind through the history of computing. “I estimate that there exists a world market for about five computers.” or “I see no need for anyone to have more than 4 kilobytes of RAM.”, just to (inaccurately) quote two of the most famous. I’m sure that the #1 reason people don’t do coding on tablets is because there are no good apps to code on tablets. I’d definitely like to see one. And because of that, I’d gladly pay MORE than for the desktop version.
Have you ever used your tablet to connect via ssh to a remote server? Well, I did, and found that possibility pretty useful.
As for the keyboard thing, well - notice that desktop computers also don’t have keyboards unless you buy one 
Oh I’m not saying that server management isn’t something that can’t be done on a tablet (I even mention ssh). I’m a big fan of screen, bash, irssi, top and even use nano from time to time. Even some light editing on the server side for small incremental updates to code might be something you could do on the couch or in bed with your tablet. As a hardware device a tablet has potential to be very useful.
What I am saying is that the software for these devices, iOS and Android, are not designed for developing. And neither is the form factor. The system software I’ll say again is severely crippled. They are appliances not workstations. Microsoft so far has been the only software developer that I know of that is interested in creating a full stack operating system that could be used on tablets. It might be a worthy bet that this type of hybrid system software will create a market for applications that allow creatives to develop enterprise projects on tablets.
But you are kidding yourself if you think using Android or iOS as they are today is going to provide a comparable environment to desktop software for developing. I don’t propose to know what the future holds. If Windows 8 with metro turns out to be the direction both Android and iOS move to with respect to hybrid desktop/mobile software this current situation may change.
With this in mind, anyone thinking of porting Sublime Text with all of it’s dependencies to crippled mobile devices as they are now is being idealistic to say the least. It’s a bit like asking Jon to port Sublime Text to your new internet tv with keyboard. So yeah, I stand by my statement, if I catch someone using a tablet as a development platform I will have a hearty laugh at them.
EDIT: For the record, although the possibility for change exists, I still strongly believe both Google and Apple will not follow Microsoft in developing hybrid tablet/desktop software as generally speaking tablet consumers do not in fact care about coding or developing on their tablets.
I know you’re trying to be clever but just a quick Google search turned up
code.google.com/p/python-for-android/
pythonforios.com/
Of course these are crippled and not the only dependencies Sublime has.
But, that was the point I made.
As for Jon not having time, I don’t know what his schedule is like so I won’t comment on that.
I’m sure if he decided to delve into the mobile market he definitely could.
And I’d bet it would be a pretty neat little niche editor.
But not something I and probably most serious developers would actually use to program.
I looked at the market (and my wallet) a few months ago, and after some soul-searching decided to buy the cheapest netbook with the longest battery life I could find. My netbook is fairly portable (about twice the weight of an iPad, but it does come with a keyboard) and runs Sublime perfectly — which is what I got it for.
For me, Sublime is the killer app. I will not use a platform that doesn’t support it, because otherwise I’d spend my days writing wistful threads about tablet support. 
It’s no sublime but I recently found this:
play.google.com/store/apps/deta … idedit.pro
Works pretty well when I’m out of town with the wife and the boss calls with a “urgent site breaking bug” that turns out to be a typo.
I believe Sublime will likely run on Microsofts new Surface tablet since it runs Windows 8 but I’m just speculating of course.
I also believe IOS actually runs on x86 just fine but for some reason Apple hasn’t decided to combine code bases but maybe this new Surface will incentivize Apple to allow desktop applications on Ipads. I don’t know again, i’m just guessing here, so we’ll see what happens in the coming months.
Windows 8 isn’t going to be a sure-fire solution to handling Sublime Text, as the ARM version will not support the “classic” environment that allows you to run desktop applications that weren’t written with Microsoft’s new fancy crap.
When it comes to running Sublime Text on other OSes aside from the current ones, that IS quite the undertaking. The fact that it runs on OS X, Windows, and Linux is pretty fantastic, especially with how fast it performs on all of those platforms. The high performance indicates that Sublime Text must be coded in a very fast, modular manner that allows for efficient porting between operating systems.
This is why some open source projects bring on people to maintain a specific platform version of the software (like VLC), but this also poses a problem of consistent support across such platforms (again, VLC ran into this problem when they lost some OS X developers and couldn’t quickly build the x86_64 versions of VLC for a small time).
This isn’t open source, but it would be interesting if a completely torn-apart version of Sublime Text could be released in source code to see if people could make good ports to iOS, Android, etc. And evaluate the possibility of its existence on those platforms.
I’m not really asking for this, just proposing an interesting idea. I find it hard to ask for more when Sublime Text is already kicking a good amount of ass.
Actually I would get tons of use out of an iPad version of Sublime Text. It would be an absolute must that it was capable of operating via a remote connection to my development folder. All of my current projects relate to coding web-based applications for tablets. If I were able to remotely edit a Javascript file located on my development server, and for my edits to save back to the server, this would be a huge convenience for me. While I do my heavy coding on the PC, there’s always this phase of switching over to the iPad to test and tweak–and frankly, any opportunity to step away from the PC and kick back with the iPad (by the pool, maybe out in the garage) really helps get the creative juices flowing. It would be nice to turn that inspiration in to code! I’m sure there’s a way to instantiate such a connection from the iPad to a desktop PC.
Anyway, seeing how the future is shaping up, multi-device development environments are going to represent a significant market. With the platform I’m working on at the moment, I have the ability to read consolidated debug messages on my iPad coming from a range of distributed applications and devices on a network–it’s very cool. With the rise of distributed applications, it is not uncommon to both test and develop simultaneously on a PC, one or more tablets, smartphones, etc… I’m in dire need of a more fluid mechanism for distributed application development. A tablet-based editor with connectedness to a networked server location would be clutch.
I use my iPad for web development all the time. Like editing XML, HTML, CSS and my Python files for Django apps. Very often I’m out between meetings, and I get a lot done using my iPad. There’s a whole lot going on in Sublime Text, so I don’t imagine that would be an easy port at all, and getting all the dependencies in place, eek! But it sure would be a good fit for iPad. You can already do quite a bit using CodeAnywhere, Koder and Markup. Being able to use the familiar and pleasant Sublime Text interface on iPad would be a dream come true. A home away from home. I think for now it could work great for web developers on iPad. Desktop development… That’s a tough one. Besides the software dependencies, these tablets need more oomf. But I really do think it would be a feasible product for Jon to make now already. It’s a big market. Even if it started out just supporting the most popular web technologies and some of the plugins that won’t make the tablet explode. That would cover a sizable market. I’d buy it for sure. Just a thought.
There was an interesting blog post from this developer who was using his iPad for development:
yieldthought.com/post/1223928203 … or-an-ipad
yieldthought.com/post/3185705069 … year-later
My impression is that this ( an iPad version ) won’t happen any time soon – if at all
In the meantime, have you had a look at http://omz-software.com/pythonista/? Looks like it is the “best” you can get for the time being.
Just my 0.02.
[quote=“Stefano.Rausch”]My impression is that this ( an iPad version ) won’t happen any time soon – if at all
In the meantime, have you had a look at http://omz-software.com/pythonista/? Looks like it is the “best” you can get for the time being.
Just my 0.02.[/quote]
Holy crap that’s a cool looking app. (Now there’s a pullquote.)
[quote=“C0D312”]Hmmm… that has been stressful. I can’t decide which sarcastic comment to leave on this thread. So I’ll just leave them all.
- Yeah, Jon! Why don’t you just press that “build iPad app” button to launch a free iPad app?
- I don’t know…Make-my-iPad-app-for-me-omatics are pretty expensive this time of the year.
- Like totally, this should totally happen. And it HAS to be free, or it’s a deal-breaker.
- Oh please! Also, can you make it $-10 so that when I buy it, you actually pay ME?
- Pshhh! No one uses iPads anymore. Wave your wand and make me a free android tablet app.
P.S. Feel free to vote. Categories: more creative, most sarcastic, and most likable.[/quote]
As much amusement as I found from your post - there has to be a compromise to pricing on mobile platforms - as many software titles that cross from the desktop to mobile devices do in fact come with a price cut - primarily due to the limitation of features that devs can add to them relative to the desktop counterparts.
Coda runs $75-$100 for the desktop version. Diet Coda runs $20 for the iPad version.
There are significant differences between what the full featured desktop version and the iPad version can do. I would suspect there to be limitations for Sublime compared to the desktop version if it were ported to the iPad as well.
If the dev(s) here could in fact migrate Sublime 100% (as is) to iOS then I would by all means pay the price they set to get a copy of it. But if they begin porting it and find limitations that Apple has set in place that restrict various functionality that the desktop User expects - then I would expect the price point to be lower relative to what has been eliminated for each platform.
One more arguement - not sure to which side of the coin this caters to - but the lower cost of downlaodable software also lends itself to the fact that there is zero overhead for distribution. Including Sublime. They are not having to burn CDs/DVDs - package them and ship them. So when I walked into an electronics store in the 1980s and 1990s to buy some software for $50-$100 per copy - I was paying for all the effort going into development - but I was also paying for the box - the graphics on the box - the instruction manual printing cost - the plastic - the employee to put the box on the shelf - the cost of distribution (the gas for the truck to haul it to the store) and on and on.
I maintain a couple of Websites - traffic is much lower than here - so my cost is rather cheap - but even semi-higher volume Sites like this aren’t much more expensive. After the development is done - a final copy is uploaded to a server and sits there. When someone downloads (or purchases) Sublime - the server feeds a copy of the file sitting on the server to the User - Zero overhead of products. Half of a percent of a penny for bandwidth to download the file.
Point is that we can sit here and argue both sides of this all day long - but pricing for “mobile” apps is significantly cheaper on average for a many reasons. Not simply beacause you can load it onto an iPad.
Sorry that I’m late to the party.
I would definitely use an ipad sublime text. I can envision a neat setup with the pad on an arm over my bed, bluetooth keyboard in lap, ssh into my desktop running my server and edit the code from the tablet. My debug interface runs in the browser, so that still works fine.