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We are actively working on Sublime Text as I type here, and we've got a lot of good stuff coming! Sublime Merge and Sublime Text share a bunch of low-level cod

by wbond 6y ago

We are actively working on Sublime Text as I type here, and we've got a lot of good stuff coming! Sublime Merge and Sublime Text share a bunch of low-level code, various aspects like the syntax definitions and engine, the UI library, rendering backends, and a whole bunch more. The higher-level UI components and the exact way they are put together are different, but there is a lot shared. All of that is to say that we've been busy at work on Sublime Text and have a whole bunch of new features, improvements and bugs fixes that are working their way towards a release. Some of them are present in Sublime Merge since they are part of the shared code base, but a whole bunch aren't present in Merge since they are the sort of thing you deal with with editing and navigating source code, and not when dealing with version control. We now have six engineers working at Sublime HQ between the Sublime Text and Sublime Merge products. So we have been growing, and we are still very much dedicated to both Sublime Text, and Sublime Merge.

terpimost 6y ago
What do you use guys to build such an awesome cross platform app? it is native, right?
- signal11 6y ago
  According to this comment[1] by the author, he used cross-platform C++. See also [2] from Sublime’s other author. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312357
- wbond 6y ago
  It all depends on what you mean by "native." :-) Our products are implemented in C++, and we utilize platform-specific APIs to integrate with the OS in the ways that make the most sense. In terms of the UI, however, we have a custom library with our own controls, control structure, event handling, rendering, etc. We only use native UI for menus, file pickers and title bars. We do, however, use OS-provided font layout and rendering APIs so that text looks like other apps on your OS. By implementing only what we need, using a language with low overhead, and making a point of writing code that is efficient, we can generally accomplish excellent performance. This, combined with trying to following platform conventions and taking the time to integrate with the OS APIs, provides a UI that feels snappy and generally doesn't look out-of-place, such as most Java UIs.
nikolay 6y ago
With all due respect, most of us moved to VS Code. I paid for Sublime, I'm not paying for a git merge GUI $100. It's just way too expensive!
- kinjba11 6y ago
  You can use both Sublime Text and Sublime Merge without paying if you choose to (as I did when I was a broke student). Unlike VS Code, not all software can be open sourced and provided for free while many paid software engineers are employed to actively develop it by a trillion-dollar corporation. Software that is fast, native and cross platform without ads costs money to make. I support it with my dollars (I use SM and ST). Fortunately, there is a healthy market for GIT GUI clients as seen by Git Kraken, Source Tree, Fork, Sublime Merge, etc.
  - nikolay 6y ago
    Thank you for stating the obvious! My point was that there are cheaper and better git GUI tools - many of them free, some paid, yet, cheaper. $100 is way too much for something you get better and for free or less. For example, VS Code + plugins like Git Lens is better than Sublime Merge.
    - kinjba11 6y ago
      GitLens is great, if you like it use it. When I use VS Code I do, but VS Code is not the only tool I use in my work. You are free to your opinion of course, I am just not a fan of statements like "X is better than Y because Y costs money" with no evidence, as if it were obvious. The GitLens website asks for monetary support and sponsorship front and center. If that's the way you prefer, that is perfectly OK. That doesn't automatically make it a better product.
      - nikolay 6y ago
        All my dev tools are open-source... I don't want to break the rule and add a nagware to the stack.
slightwinder 6y ago
Will there be any significant improvements in Sublime Text? Reading through the changelog it seems ST4 is mostly polishing and playing fetchup with VS Code, but adding nothing revolutionary which could be sold as a killer-feature. For example, vim can offer modal editing, composable commands and a builtin commandline with ex-mode as it's killer-features. Emacs, well it's emacs, it always has much going, but lately it got some additional stuff like which-keys, hydra-mode and magits transient commands, which all innovate the editor-game quite strong. Compared to that, ST seems to be quite conservative and only competing on a very small area.
- wbond 6y ago
  From your comment it sounds like you are looking for Sublime Text to become something… different? From my perspective, Sublime Text isn't looking to become something different. Instead we are continuing to make a well-polished text editor that is fast and can be extended in many ways. As you've noted, we've added a lot of polish, but also added some pretty significant features, and continued to lay the ground work for more smart, out-of-the-box functionality. Some of the things may not jump out at you in terms of reading a changelog, but you'll feel them as you see how they can help you to navigate and write software. Many users want or need their edge cases more well handled. Package developers want to have access to more information and be able to influence more of the behavior of the application. We daily engage with active community members to better understand how they want to add features, and are regularly working on ways to make that possible. However, the biggest number of users are helped by the features provided in a default install and that require no configuration. We've continued to put work into those areas to make Sublime Text excellent and easy-to-use, from the moment you open it. I'm not particularly interested a feature by feature comparison, but I think upon a close look, you'll find that Sublime Text generally provides excellent, high-performance implementations of many features that get less attention in other products. Some people really appreciate the polish, the speed, the things that just work. Other people want more automation and deep language integration. Some people want a single interface that contains many different tools. Through a combination of default functionality and plugins, we can cover a fair bit of that. Clearly we aren't trying to be everything to everyone. Luckily for users there is a healthy market of tools to write software, and we'll continue to be a part of that and to build a product that we (and many, many others) love to use.

by wbond 6y ago

terpimost 6y ago

What do you use guys to build such an awesome cross platform app? it is native, right?

signal11 6y ago
According to this comment[1] by the author, he used cross-platform C++. See also [2] from Sublime’s other author. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312357
wbond 6y ago
It all depends on what you mean by "native." :-) Our products are implemented in C++, and we utilize platform-specific APIs to integrate with the OS in the ways that make the most sense. In terms of the UI, however, we have a custom library with our own controls, control structure, event handling, rendering, etc. We only use native UI for menus, file pickers and title bars. We do, however, use OS-provided font layout and rendering APIs so that text looks like other apps on your OS. By implementing only what we need, using a language with low overhead, and making a point of writing code that is efficient, we can generally accomplish excellent performance. This, combined with trying to following platform conventions and taking the time to integrate with the OS APIs, provides a UI that feels snappy and generally doesn't look out-of-place, such as most Java UIs.

nikolay 6y ago

With all due respect, most of us moved to VS Code. I paid for Sublime, I'm not paying for a git merge GUI $100. It's just way too expensive!

kinjba11 6y ago
You can use both Sublime Text and Sublime Merge without paying if you choose to (as I did when I was a broke student). Unlike VS Code, not all software can be open sourced and provided for free while many paid software engineers are employed to actively develop it by a trillion-dollar corporation. Software that is fast, native and cross platform without ads costs money to make. I support it with my dollars (I use SM and ST). Fortunately, there is a healthy market for GIT GUI clients as seen by Git Kraken, Source Tree, Fork, Sublime Merge, etc.
- nikolay 6y ago
  Thank you for stating the obvious! My point was that there are cheaper and better git GUI tools - many of them free, some paid, yet, cheaper. $100 is way too much for something you get better and for free or less. For example, VS Code + plugins like Git Lens is better than Sublime Merge.
  - kinjba11 6y ago
    GitLens is great, if you like it use it. When I use VS Code I do, but VS Code is not the only tool I use in my work. You are free to your opinion of course, I am just not a fan of statements like "X is better than Y because Y costs money" with no evidence, as if it were obvious. The GitLens website asks for monetary support and sponsorship front and center. If that's the way you prefer, that is perfectly OK. That doesn't automatically make it a better product.
    - nikolay 6y ago
      All my dev tools are open-source... I don't want to break the rule and add a nagware to the stack.

slightwinder 6y ago

Will there be any significant improvements in Sublime Text? Reading through the changelog it seems ST4 is mostly polishing and playing fetchup with VS Code, but adding nothing revolutionary which could be sold as a killer-feature. For example, vim can offer modal editing, composable commands and a builtin commandline with ex-mode as it's killer-features. Emacs, well it's emacs, it always has much going, but lately it got some additional stuff like which-keys, hydra-mode and magits transient commands, which all innovate the editor-game quite strong. Compared to that, ST seems to be quite conservative and only competing on a very small area.

wbond 6y ago
From your comment it sounds like you are looking for Sublime Text to become something… different? From my perspective, Sublime Text isn't looking to become something different. Instead we are continuing to make a well-polished text editor that is fast and can be extended in many ways. As you've noted, we've added a lot of polish, but also added some pretty significant features, and continued to lay the ground work for more smart, out-of-the-box functionality. Some of the things may not jump out at you in terms of reading a changelog, but you'll feel them as you see how they can help you to navigate and write software. Many users want or need their edge cases more well handled. Package developers want to have access to more information and be able to influence more of the behavior of the application. We daily engage with active community members to better understand how they want to add features, and are regularly working on ways to make that possible. However, the biggest number of users are helped by the features provided in a default install and that require no configuration. We've continued to put work into those areas to make Sublime Text excellent and easy-to-use, from the moment you open it. I'm not particularly interested a feature by feature comparison, but I think upon a close look, you'll find that Sublime Text generally provides excellent, high-performance implementations of many features that get less attention in other products. Some people really appreciate the polish, the speed, the things that just work. Other people want more automation and deep language integration. Some people want a single interface that contains many different tools. Through a combination of default functionality and plugins, we can cover a fair bit of that. Clearly we aren't trying to be everything to everyone. Luckily for users there is a healthy market of tools to write software, and we'll continue to be a part of that and to build a product that we (and many, many others) love to use.