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Sublime has, I think, a relatively loyal user base that have gotten comfortable there and don’t really have much of a reason to leave unless for a big IDE for s

by maegul 4y ago

Sublime has, I think, a relatively loyal user base that have gotten comfortable there and don’t really have much of a reason to leave unless for a big IDE for specific projects. The plug-in ecosystem, while clearly aged, still has activity and new developments including adapting the new LSP stuff pretty well, and has some damn committed authors/maintainers. I’ve been a comfortable user for a while now and enjoy knowing how to use my tool well enough to casually customise it. That being said, I think you’re right. I’ve got my eyes on trying out the new developments in open source editors. This one is new to me It seems like with LSP and tree-sitter, a critical mass of foundational infrastructure is now just available for everyone so that new development and innovation can focus on the interface and design. Not sure how much space that leaves for sublime. Tree sitter came up in the sublime community forum recently and there was a hard “not gonna happen” from the developer team on the suggestion of any form of integration. From what I can tell, the sublime syntax engine is either lacking or the applications of it aren’t taking full advantage of it compared to tree sitter. And syntax awareness seems like an increasingly valuable tool in my hacking of my text editor. So yea, interesting time for text editors… who woulda thought for 2023.

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giancarlostoro 4y ago
What Sublime is missing for me is more of what VS Code kind of has, a little bit more UI for some of its existing features, like installing plugins or if you get the ColorSublime plugin it would be nice if that had its own tab. Sublime is coded in C++ unlike VS Code which is TypeScript and can be iterated through in an afternoon and expanded. So iterating the UI is insanely easier, even building custom things. I think Electron proved we need an open spec for UIs and it needs to be designed to be a fully native UI that anyone from any language can pick up the library and have a powerful near native UI stack and if you switch languages you can keep your UI specification, I think of things like GLADE with Gnome (or was it GTK?) and such, but much more lightweight and specific to just UI.
the_onion_hater 4y ago
The main pain point of Sublime has always been it's extensibility, or lack thereof. The program is very rigid, and the plugins can't do much. Mainly when creating user interfaces, you can't have buttons (for example a "run" button), the only official UI components are the command palette where you search commands, and a "panel", which is basically a single separate text view. Plugins such as the terminal plugin [1] uses this panel to show an interactive terminal, but anything you do, such as call another plugin, or simply search text, will remove your panel and replace it with another. The only ways to create real UIs are with very ingenious workarounds, notable mentions being: - The color picker plugin [2], which literally bundles a small native executable for each platform it runs, containing a color wheel, which the plugin will call, the user will select a color, and the program will close, returning the color code in its exit code, which the plugin is listening to. - The debugger plugin [3] which has the most complex workaround I have seen using sublime's html capabilities. It uses the panel to show html elements, buttons with images, texts, lists, tabs, everything thorough this workaround. But again, try to search text and you loose it. That's mainly where VSCode "won", although I still daily drive Sublime when I am not on a "full blown IDE". [1]: https://github.com/randy3k/Terminus https://github.com/randy3k/Terminus [2]: https://github.com/weslly/ColorPicker https://github.com/weslly/ColorPicker [3]: https://github.com/daveleroy/sublime_debugger https://github.com/daveleroy/sublime_debugger
- maegul 4y ago
  So I think the ColorHelper plug-in[1] is a better example of the modern gui hack in sublime. Basically goes all in on the HTML engine (for popup windows) that ships with sublime. I haven’t used it myself (HTML), but as far as I understand, buttons can effectively have callback functionality through “links” to commands. Or something like that. Which doesn’t seem too bad to be honest. The author of that plug-in has also written a markdown to HTML extension for the purposes of making it easier to use the HTML engine, and is what is used by the LSP ecosystem for popup windows. But yea, honestly it’s a little strange to me that they don’t ship a basic GUI api that’s moderately flexible for things like buttons text and windows but uses their own GUI engine. [1] https://packagecontrol.io/packages/ColorHelper https://packagecontrol.io/packages/ColorHelper

by maegul 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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giancarlostoro 4y ago

What Sublime is missing for me is more of what VS Code kind of has, a little bit more UI for some of its existing features, like installing plugins or if you get the ColorSublime plugin it would be nice if that had its own tab. Sublime is coded in C++ unlike VS Code which is TypeScript and can be iterated through in an afternoon and expanded. So iterating the UI is insanely easier, even building custom things. I think Electron proved we need an open spec for UIs and it needs to be designed to be a fully native UI that anyone from any language can pick up the library and have a powerful near native UI stack and if you switch languages you can keep your UI specification, I think of things like GLADE with Gnome (or was it GTK?) and such, but much more lightweight and specific to just UI.

the_onion_hater 4y ago

The main pain point of Sublime has always been it's extensibility, or lack thereof. The program is very rigid, and the plugins can't do much. Mainly when creating user interfaces, you can't have buttons (for example a "run" button), the only official UI components are the command palette where you search commands, and a "panel", which is basically a single separate text view. Plugins such as the terminal plugin [1] uses this panel to show an interactive terminal, but anything you do, such as call another plugin, or simply search text, will remove your panel and replace it with another. The only ways to create real UIs are with very ingenious workarounds, notable mentions being: - The color picker plugin [2], which literally bundles a small native executable for each platform it runs, containing a color wheel, which the plugin will call, the user will select a color, and the program will close, returning the color code in its exit code, which the plugin is listening to. - The debugger plugin [3] which has the most complex workaround I have seen using sublime's html capabilities. It uses the panel to show html elements, buttons with images, texts, lists, tabs, everything thorough this workaround. But again, try to search text and you loose it. That's mainly where VSCode "won", although I still daily drive Sublime when I am not on a "full blown IDE". [1]: https://github.com/randy3k/Terminus https://github.com/randy3k/Terminus [2]: https://github.com/weslly/ColorPicker https://github.com/weslly/ColorPicker [3]: https://github.com/daveleroy/sublime_debugger https://github.com/daveleroy/sublime_debugger

maegul 4y ago
So I think the ColorHelper plug-in[1] is a better example of the modern gui hack in sublime. Basically goes all in on the HTML engine (for popup windows) that ships with sublime. I haven’t used it myself (HTML), but as far as I understand, buttons can effectively have callback functionality through “links” to commands. Or something like that. Which doesn’t seem too bad to be honest. The author of that plug-in has also written a markdown to HTML extension for the purposes of making it easier to use the HTML engine, and is what is used by the LSP ecosystem for popup windows. But yea, honestly it’s a little strange to me that they don’t ship a basic GUI api that’s moderately flexible for things like buttons text and windows but uses their own GUI engine. [1] https://packagecontrol.io/packages/ColorHelper https://packagecontrol.io/packages/ColorHelper