Sublime Forum

**meorme** · March 8, 2020, 4:45pm

I find an interesting issue in github, which talk about Sublime Text 4 Alpha 4061.
Is this really?

**jfcherng** · March 8, 2020, 5:00pm

yes. if you have a ST3 license, it’s available for test purpose on the official discord server. https://discord.gg/HcmwdVK

or, if you know you can change the version number in a download link…

**ttn** · May 13, 2020, 8:02am

Hi, when was sublime text 4 release??

**nutjob2** · May 14, 2020, 2:20am

It hasn’t been released officially, but there is a development version.

**RiverLeaf** · May 17, 2020, 2:58pm

Wake up people! Entity deathaxe did mention microsoft and vscode, way back when - let’s entertain a little more BIG WIDE WORLD. This stream for example, is running through phase-one covid, with phase-two pending this flu-season fall. Anyone of you drop dead recently? AND what about ALL the rest of our human galaxy? Also related to text editing… EVEN!

Personally, I feel better about v3 today than i ever did about v2. Ditto v1 when v2 was the thing. IF alpha v4 ever happens, it will have to be feel good too, before I use it. Let me correct that… I will have to Learn to experience a new feel good, in respect of whatever newness and oldness we find in v4. What happiness is all about, hey.

Perhaps, that’s a way some may look at how people use things. Regardless, I am wondering about parts of functional streams. For example, Prose and Code Production, text margin thingy’s. With a simple (not narrow) focus, I wonder as I use ST, “What could they do with these indent things, to make them more fantastic than they are?” What can we say, when things always feel so optimal?

One thing is expected, gazing out from this feel good prospective share, of personality without timeline impact. If I am asked again by the ST Team for input of any kind, I have nothing to offer. I know how to feel good. So… Bring it on!

**TheSecEng** · May 17, 2020, 5:49pm

IF alpha v4 ever happens,

It is active and happening. There is not IF about it. If you want to know more, join the discord. It has been greatly improved.

**RiverLeaf** · May 17, 2020, 9:53pm

Indeed! Let’s respect our timelines, SecEng. Text to HTML, select-right-click and apply-chosen-tag, the missing one-click add-in. Why not built in?

**RiverLeaf** · May 18, 2020, 6:24am

You are happening, SecEng. Read your Colored Comments ((you and MilkMan)), truly gorgeous production. However, deployment description is intensely programmatic, yes? We are all waiting for the day when we can select a comment, and like CSS Format package, right click gives us a colors options. That could be applied to whatever is selected. Easily shared with other Sublime users. And just as easily undone, to restore whatever is underlying theme, on whatever desktop or device.

There is a mountain range of goods that could make v4 a great step forward. I must prepare the learning curve.

**thecrumb** · May 18, 2020, 3:12pm

This is the way Sublime development has always been. For whatever reason the team does themselves a disservice with their communication. We have a blog which is never updated, this forum, and now Discord. Why all the disparate channels?

That said I use Sublime every day and will look forward to the eventual arrival of v4

**wbond** · May 18, 2020, 3:24pm

Different channels are for different purposes.

Discord is being used to gather feedback and work through bugs and inconsistencies in a small, highly-engaged group. Releasing significant changes to the entire user base can lead to significant churn and rushing since you now have an immense number of users all submitting feedback at once. Discord is used because there is where a lot of active community members congregate. IRC was used some by the community, but never to the same extent, probably due to the fact that it isn’t as user friendly.

We use our blog as an announcement channel for big releases, and for some technical content related to Sublime Text.

The forum is used for general troubleshooting, questions, advice, suggestions, etc.

The issue tracker is for reporting bugs or explicitly request certain enhancements.

Each person is certainly entitled to their own opinion, and I presume from your comment that you are looking for different communication from the team. That said, engineers from Sublime HQ tend to post pretty regularly on the forum (official), issue tracker (now official) and Discord (community-led).

You’ll probably see the most activity on Discord since it is a chat program, and there is low friction in replying to questions about details. We try to make sure that info isn’t strictly siloed into Discord (except when we want it to be) since it is a walled garden. This tends to take the form of documentation, issue comments, etc.

**thecrumb** · June 3, 2020, 8:23pm

Yeah I know that but I’ve been using Sublime since day 1

Sorry if I came off negative - I’m just giving you the opinion from an outsiders view. I think people visiting the Sublime site for the first time see a blog with very infrequent posts (there were 2 in 2019).
I had no idea of the Discord server until I saw someone mention it here.

Maybe it would be useful to have a more prominent link to all these locations on the main site explaining what their purpose is, who / how to access them (forum = users, discord = beta testers, etc) and how frequently they are updated?

Jim

**darren** · December 3, 2020, 3:25pm

I’m new to Sublime, looked at the site, looked at the dates, and immediately searched to see if the project/company was dead. The last software update is from 16 months ago (at the time I’m writing this). Honestly, I thought it was abandoned, and I have not yet downloaded it to try it.

**MichaelFoxExercise** · January 6, 2021, 4:48am

Hello. I used my stimulus money to purchase a license just now. I realize development is stagnant and I don’t see the word “Sublime” on my favorite I.T. jobs site. But I have always liked the look and feel of it, it seems Vim mode is fairly good, and I can sympathize with the one/few developers that are depending on purchases to keep going. Thanks for the comments and I fully expect that using Sublime steadily will cause me to want to obtain v.4 even if there is a cost.

**bschaaf** · January 6, 2021, 6:35am

You can already enjoy ST4 with your license purchase through the beta on discord.

**daniele.niero** · January 13, 2021, 8:48am

I think they are mostly working on Sublime Merge and Sublime Text 4.

Sublime merge was updated on 16 November 2020
Sublime Text 4 was update 30 November 2020

**kpitt** · February 24, 2021, 4:51pm

Wow, it’s hard to believe this discussion started way back in 2019! Now here it is 2021 and there still hasn’t been any public announcement about Sublime Text 4. I’ve been a Sublime Text license-holder for almost 10 years, but until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled across it completely by accident because I saw it mentioned in the comments of an open-source theme repo, I had no idea that ST 4 even existed.

I used the Sublime Text 2 Beta for a while in “free” mode, then purchased a license in May 2012 while it was still in beta. During the beta period there were regular updates, and I expected that to continue, but it unexpectedly reached official release just a few days later and has only received 2 minor bug-fix updates after that. When Sublime Text 3 was finally released, I wasn’t eligible for any upgrade discount because my ST 2 license was too old.

I stuck with ST 2 for quite a few years, but finally purchased a Sublime Text 3 license in April 2019 along with a license to Sublime Merge. In the year-and-a-half since, ST 3 has only received one minor bugfix update.

Now they’ve announced that ST 4 will be licensed based on the same 3-year maintenance period as Sublime Merge. I think it’s great that they are extending this to current ST 3 license holders, but it starts from the purchase date of your ST 3 license and 3 years in the Sublime Text world doesn’t get you much. It was over 4 years between the last bugfix update for ST 2 and the official release of ST 3, and it has now been almost 2 years since the last feature update to ST 3. If you purchased ST 3 when it was first released, or worse, during its 4.5 year beta period, your 3 years expired a long time ago. There is still no indication that ST 4 will be released anytime soon, and if it stays in beta for as long as ST 3 did then even my year-and-a-half-old license might not be enough to cover the ST 4 upgrade.

I understand that someone who just purchased a license would be extremely upset if a new version was released a week later and they had to pay to update, but they made a purchase decision based on the currently-available features just like the rest of us. So, it’s a little frustrating that the people who purchased licenses months or years ago are the ones that helped fund these extended development cycles, but are also the ones least likely to get any special consideration when an upgrade is finally released. If someone purchased ST 3 a year ago then they bought the exact same piece of software as someone who purchases it today, literally the same bits, with the same features and the same bugs and the same rights to use it for as long as they want. I don’t see how you could say that that person has already received more value-add over their original purchase than the recent buyer.

**mlf** · February 25, 2021, 10:57am

Well, you would have been using the product for over a year, vs. that recent buyer who would have been using the product for only one day. If using a product does not bring you any value, what’s the point of using it?
(BTW, when you purchase a product, you also pay for its past development, you don’t pay just for future developments.)

**facelessuser** · February 25, 2021, 2:38pm

I really like this statement. I wanted to do more than just give it a like .

**Sublimeboy** · February 25, 2021, 3:16pm

Sublime Text is starting to lose a lot of its userbase and more YouTubers are using the Modern VSCode or the Antique Vim, Sublime Text got its idea from Vim as we can tell because sublime uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts as well as vim. If sublime can’t beat an editor from 1988! It seems that a lot of editors can’t even beat vim that well even if they have GUI’s or look the same (Stevie, Elvis, etc) then sublime will fall victim to vim’s popularity.

**facelessuser** · February 25, 2021, 4:09pm

I think this is a large leap. It uses a lot of shortcuts because devs like to keep their hands on the keyboard, regardless of what Vim does. Vim’s user base is not huge, but they do have a fairly dedicated user base. I don’t know of droves of people leaving GUIs because of vim. Vim has a specific user base, and a specific type of dev that likes to use it, and generally they are pretty loyal. I know a guy who’s been using vim so long that he’ll die at this point before trying anything else.

As far as VSCode is concerned, yes I do see a number of people using VSCode because it is free, dev cycles are shorter, and a lot of web developers like it because they can write plugins for it in a language they are familiar with (the browser language).

Do people come back to sublime due to performance in VSCode, yup. Do they all come back? Nope.

Will making Sublime free bring more users? Sure. Will making it free cause the Sublime team to starve? Yup.

Sublime is working to shorten up their dev cycle with the release of ST4 (which will just be known as Sublime Text, no more version per se). Do I think they should get a public beta out sooner rather than later? Yup, and from the conversations I’ve seen with them, they are aware of this and trying to get it out.

Sublime v4