7 ms·

That is exactly the reason why I haven't bought a license yet. I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future. Since I don't have to pay, buying a lic

by ndh2 10y ago

That is exactly the reason why I haven't bought a license yet. I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future. Since I don't have to pay, buying a license is more of a donation in order to show support. But the communication seems a bit too sparse/erratic for me to have much trust in this project. The time spans between updates, blog posts, or even tweets are simply way too long. I also consider the existence of http://docs.sublimetext.info http://docs.sublimetext.info a bad sign. The way I perceive this: At some point, an enthusiastic user was so fed up with the sub-par documentation that they decided to take matters into their own hands, and create a better documentation. But instead of working with the community, the Sublime project people/person just... did nothing? Was there any communication? I don't know. Why not provide the documentation on github and accept PRs? The Sublime project should push for docs.sublimetext.info to be merged into the official documentation. Same with https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues. Why is the bug tracker "community run"? What does that even mean, considering the "community" can't fix any bugs? I absolutely cannot understand why the author of the software doesn't seem to participate at all in the bug tracker. Here's a quote from https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/594 https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/594 (from 2014, so I don't know whether it is still true) > Unfortunately, the only thing I can say is it'll get fixed if Jon Skinner sees it as a big enough priority. Our intent in creating this unofficial Issues page was to have a curated place where known issues can be collected together and triaged, and he can use it as he sees fit to fix bugs in upcoming releases. Without a more direct feedback mechanism, this is the best we can do, at the moment. What I'd also like to see is a road map for the future with regular (2-4 weeks) status updates.

criddell 10y ago
> The time spans between updates, blog posts, or even tweets are simply way too long. Is there a lot that you think ST still needs? As long as bugs are fixed, I'm happy with the functionality of the software today. The software feels done to me.
- jhasse 10y ago
  Integrated debugger similar to VSCode.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Sublime Text is just my text editor. If I want an IDE, I use an IDE (Visual Studio and PyCharm). IMHO, Sublime Text should fight feature creep.
ballenf 10y ago
The community aspect of ST is a result of the product being somewhat unique in its positioning as commercial product, but also one that is 'free' for use as long as you can put up with the random nag window. The community aspect represents all the people who have never paid a cent for the product finding a different way to give back. Even paying for it costs a fraction of similar commercial software (although this is admittedly a harder argument to make). Sounds like you want to reward PR over progress and development work. Writing PR and responding to the same questions over and over sucks time away from actual work. If your point was that they don't respond to questions or are hard to reach, it would make more sense to me, but they seem very responsive. The trend in software is definitely towards a lot of tooting one's own horn over substance. I don't think that's a good thing that we should be rewarding.
gmiller123456 10y ago
> I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future. I'm exactly the opposite. I consider the license as compensation for work already done, I operate under the assumption that the vendor will have made enough to not care to work on it further.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Completely agree. What is there today is well worth the license fee even if there's never another update -- though this isn't one of my concerns as Sublime is so much more usable / lightweight / snappy vs Atom. [For it to be sunset, there would have to be a better alternative out there, and for the general case of multiple languages, I don't believe there is.] Also packages are well separated from the Sublime releases so even in the case that there isn't another update, the ecosystem is still active. That said, I do wish the internal Python for plugins would receive a version bump though.
hopeless 10y ago
To take the opposite position: I'd _happily_ pay $100/year to ensure Sublime continues as an ongoing business. I've already bought my ST2 and ST3 licences and honestly just looking for a way to pay more if it would ensure continuity.
tedmiston 10y ago
Are you aware that the unofficial docs site was created in 2014? There's an official docs site as well now that's actually pretty good. I haven't referenced the unofficial docs in some time. https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/ https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/
- ndh2 10y ago
  The official site says at the top > The following pages contain the official documentation for Sublime Text 3. The Sublime Text Unofficial Documentation is an excellent supplementary resource, with a huge amount of information not covered in the official documentation.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    Certainly true. My intent was to say that after a year or so of using Sublime the need to consult the unofficial docs was minimal. The unofficial docs are more like training wheels than a necessary reference in my experience.
ndh2 9y ago
I changed my mind and just bought a license. Bringing multi-cursor editing into the world is easily worth $70 (I think Sublime was the first?). And it's not just Sublime Users that benefited from this. I just exported a text file that looked like this: Col1 title|Col2 title|Col3 title|... 1||asdf|... With multi-cursor editing it almost trivial to transform it into this: Col1 title: 1 Col2 title: Col3 title: asdf ... That may be possible in VIM using macros, but would require way more fiddling.

by ndh2 10y ago

criddell 10y ago

> The time spans between updates, blog posts, or even tweets are simply way too long. Is there a lot that you think ST still needs? As long as bugs are fixed, I'm happy with the functionality of the software today. The software feels done to me.

jhasse 10y ago
Integrated debugger similar to VSCode.
- criddell 10y ago
  Sublime Text is just my text editor. If I want an IDE, I use an IDE (Visual Studio and PyCharm). IMHO, Sublime Text should fight feature creep.

ballenf 10y ago

The community aspect of ST is a result of the product being somewhat unique in its positioning as commercial product, but also one that is 'free' for use as long as you can put up with the random nag window. The community aspect represents all the people who have never paid a cent for the product finding a different way to give back. Even paying for it costs a fraction of similar commercial software (although this is admittedly a harder argument to make). Sounds like you want to reward PR over progress and development work. Writing PR and responding to the same questions over and over sucks time away from actual work. If your point was that they don't respond to questions or are hard to reach, it would make more sense to me, but they seem very responsive. The trend in software is definitely towards a lot of tooting one's own horn over substance. I don't think that's a good thing that we should be rewarding.

gmiller123456 10y ago

> I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future. I'm exactly the opposite. I consider the license as compensation for work already done, I operate under the assumption that the vendor will have made enough to not care to work on it further.

tedmiston 10y ago
Completely agree. What is there today is well worth the license fee even if there's never another update -- though this isn't one of my concerns as Sublime is so much more usable / lightweight / snappy vs Atom. [For it to be sunset, there would have to be a better alternative out there, and for the general case of multiple languages, I don't believe there is.] Also packages are well separated from the Sublime releases so even in the case that there isn't another update, the ecosystem is still active. That said, I do wish the internal Python for plugins would receive a version bump though.

hopeless 10y ago

To take the opposite position: I'd _happily_ pay $100/year to ensure Sublime continues as an ongoing business. I've already bought my ST2 and ST3 licences and honestly just looking for a way to pay more if it would ensure continuity.

tedmiston 10y ago

Are you aware that the unofficial docs site was created in 2014? There's an official docs site as well now that's actually pretty good. I haven't referenced the unofficial docs in some time. https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/ https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/

ndh2 10y ago
The official site says at the top > The following pages contain the official documentation for Sublime Text 3. The Sublime Text Unofficial Documentation is an excellent supplementary resource, with a huge amount of information not covered in the official documentation.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Certainly true. My intent was to say that after a year or so of using Sublime the need to consult the unofficial docs was minimal. The unofficial docs are more like training wheels than a necessary reference in my experience.

ndh2 9y ago

I changed my mind and just bought a license. Bringing multi-cursor editing into the world is easily worth $70 (I think Sublime was the first?). And it's not just Sublime Users that benefited from this. I just exported a text file that looked like this: Col1 title|Col2 title|Col3 title|... 1||asdf|... With multi-cursor editing it almost trivial to transform it into this: Col1 title: 1 Col2 title: Col3 title: asdf ... That may be possible in VIM using macros, but would require way more fiddling.