What's the vision for Sublime Text?

[rckt]

there are many more editors that have been around for a very long time without worrying about adding shiny new bullets to release notes

As I mentioned earlier, for me as a consumer, it’s not only about the ST updates, but also the plugins that stop being maintained. I’ve just gone through my plugins list and more than half of them had their last update more than a year ago.

[facelessuser]

But is it a problem that a plugin hasn’t been updated in a year? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Some of mine haven’t been updated in a year because their is no reason to. But yes, for any editor, people may lose interest in supporting their plugin, because it is work. I say, support your plugin developers. Life is more complicated for me than when I first wrote some of mine. I still support them, but I do as I’m motivated and have time.

Volunteer time, money, or help answer questions. People always say they don’t want to support plugins they are interested in, but complain when a developer can’t find time to provide support themselves. There are many reasons why a developer may not have updated their plugin.

[addons_zz]

Can anyone tell me which direction is Sublime heading to?

It is going to keep a closed source project, and occasionally, new versions with new shiny little things, one at time are going to be released. And the more fanatic community users are going to keep maintaining their packages, helping users on the forums, and defending Sublime Text over anything else with their tooth and nails, even if they are not paid to do so.

Or maybe I just haven’t experienced the beauty of this editor?

The beauty of Sublime Text is, it is fast, has a very big API and thousands of legacy packages. Its ugliness is, it is closed source and the only way to change core things is asking them, and hoping they agree with you.

The beauty of other concurrent editors like VSCode is, it is open source and you can change core things without asking anyone else for it. Its ugliness is, it is slow and some people are ranting about security flaws of electron.

The beauty of other concurrent editors like PyCharm is that, they can may be offer user support promptly and help you figure things out more easily.

I really don’t want to switch but all those new features from other competitors are so luring to me now lol

You do not have to switch, why you cannot use both, Sublime Text and something else?

Some years back, I have been using at the same time Eclipse, Visual Studio Professional and NetBeans, both for the same project and files.

Nowadays I will be using both (Sublime Text and VSCode) because each one of them has their flaws. Today I use more Sublime Text other than VSCode because over the years I had built a lot of things for Sublime Text, and they really help me to work. But in the long term, i.e., several years from now, I will probably have developed more things for VSCode other than Sublime Text. Therefore, I will use more VSCode other than Sublime Text. I had recently rant quite a lot on this other thread:

Sublime Text versus Visual Studio Code in 2019

I am replying @cruzd in a new topic because things got messy and I may be wrote a little too much. So far, after a few years using several tools, I just never had found any tool which could adequate better for my customizations/improvements other than Sublime Text. But nowadays, I think Sublime Text reign/empire may be threatened by Visual Studio Code. For starting, use https://github.com/SublimeText/sublime_lib to interact with Sublime Text API, because it should improve accessing the Subli…

In the future, I may be find something else more shiny than Sublime Text and VSCode, then, I will be using both Sublime Text, VSCode and the New Other Shiny Thing I had found. Or I will just get rid of Sublime Text and VSCode and use only this New Other Shiny Thing I had found.

[zhongjis]

@addons_zz @facelessuser @rckt @FHTheron @hbar @braver @djspiewak @karolyi Thank you guys for replying! (sorry it only allows 10 mentions for each post) It is awesome to see your inspiring answers here;)

So…

I am also a type of person use Sublime just an editor and run everything on command lines. Like I mentioned before, I love sublime because of its lightning speed. However, I am also craving for those fancy looks and features of other editors.

Here’s what I am thinking after reading all the posts here:
For Sublime text, the editor itself is doing an awesome job as simple and fast editor. However, developers maybe can spend more time on connecting normal users and plug-in developers, such as having a comment section under plug-in info. The reason for this is that I believe not every one of us will go to the plug-in repo pages and check what’s on there. I know people can also come to the forum to talk about plug-ins but I believe there’s an issue with this approach.

Also, it will be awesome if we can just click one button to download the plug-in on Package Control site! @wbond

I guess it will also be awesome to add the last updated date or software compatibility/build status info in the app (under package description). Sometimes it is such a pain for me to guessing if my plugin is working instead of just seeing the build status somewhere …

Again, thank you for all the replies so! Let’s keep this topic going and happy coding

[flashios09]

I used ST for more than 3 or 4 years and i love it
recently i moved to VSCODE for two reasons:

1. Git integration, i think this is the most feature that ST users wish they have

2. Typescript with autocompletion, this is crucial for a frontend dev

i still use iTerm not the integrated Terminal inside the editor

[jfcherng]

I am not a frontend dev but I think the best autocompletion I could have is provided by a language server.

Disclaimer: For the following contents, I do not give it a try for Typescript (but I use a PHP language server indeed).

You may set up LSP + one of language servers for Typescript.

• https://github.com/sourcegraph/javascript-typescript-langserver
• https://github.com/theia-ide/typescript-language-server

[gorrie]

I left ST a couple years ago and find myself coming back to ST for small tasks that I know it will particularly do well. There are a few reasons that keep me from using ST as my main editor:

1. Its not open source. I know this is unlikely to change but as a plugin developer I like being able to see the source code affect my plugins and being able to make changes as required.
2. Subtle features missng such sidebar enhancements typically included by default into other editors
3. Improved UI and API to support the UI so the developer can add git integration etc. UI improvements I would like to see implemented are:

• Activity/Tool bar similar to that used in VSCode and will remain invisible until a plugin requires it.
• Panels similar to that used in Atom. Realistically this is just a variation of a window that provides visual changes that make it look like sidebars and a footer bar with toggle to collapse and expand. The example link uses panels for git intergration. https://goo.gl/images/unqQfg

4. Finally package control installation built in packagecontrol.io/installation

They may not seem like much but I think its these subtle features that make the difference and would attract developers back to ST.

[MeirG]

Why not having the users’ community lead the vision???
By this I mean to have a voting system on feature requests. In this voting system, each registered user could post a feature request. Such a user will also have ‘n’ votes (n between 3 and 5 I would suggest) for her/him to cast in favor of a given feature.
Another “voting” method could be by establishing a crowdfunding project for each feature request. Here anybody can “vote” and give a different weight or priority by pledging different sums of money. The capital raised will go to the ST HQ to actually implement the feature. The target sum for the crowdfunding will therefore be set by them.
Well folks, vote on this proposal by “likes”.
Edit:
Well, you might lookup Sublime HQ Pty. response to this idea of mine in this thread (towards the end) to my initiative to raise funds by crowdfunding for the implementation of BiDi support in ST3 (ST4?)

[schrodinger_cat]

Just linking my thoughts for Sublime Text going forward here as it seems relevant to this conversation: Sublime Text going forward