6 ms·

Review: Textadept

38 points by amarsahinovic 14y ago

voidr 14y ago
No, it has no chance of replacing Vim because it doesn't run in the terminal and it doesn't come out of the box on most *nix systems. Initially I don't like the title, because it is too vague.
- sj4nz 14y ago
  > The version of Textadept for the terminal requires only ncurses. For a while, you could only get ed on most *nix systems. Doesn't mean this couldn't become a new "standard." Vague title? In what way? It's someone's review of why they're using Textadept. (or is this a case where HN changed the title after the fact?)
  - showerst 14y ago
    The title was edited, originally it was something to the effect of "Finding a replacement for Vim".
  - ics 14y ago
    The original title was "I've finally found an editor to replace Vim" or something close.
- schabernakk 14y ago
  If his workflow doesn't require him to edit files remotely, it's a valid statement to say that he has replaced vim with textadept (and it works).
- munchor 14y ago
  It runs on the terminal.
btipling 14y ago
Anyone still willing to change editors has not yet put much of a worthwhile investment of time in a good one. Choosing an editor is probably a lot like finding a soulmate.
- grayrest 14y ago
  Vim is my primary text editor and I'll never switch to an editor that doesn't have a command grammar but there's most definitely room for improvement: * It's difficult to add new motions to vim. EasyMotion and Surround.vim are the only two real attempts I know of. EasyMotion gets by on marks while surround.vim is baroque. * There's little/no context awareness built into the syntax highlighting/grammar files. Textmate's scope stuff is really the best feature of the editor. If the vim maintainers/community could decide on syntax groupings and a query system was added it'd be doable but I'm not really expecting it. * There's limited context awareness built into the mapping system. ST's system is quite nice here. * No support for multiple cursors. The support that's built into ST is fairly primitive compared to the multicusor whitepapers from MIT (I believe around 2000) which did generic editing stuff. * No repl. This goes against the philosophy of the editor but having a repl is really convenient when doing lisps. Foreplay is sufficient but doesn't fill me with joy. * I've wanted to set up what I call 'regions' in the file where one part of the file is a computed version of another. The obvious use case is xml tags where editing one tag name in the pair updates the other but I think it could be generic. I had more use cases when I was thinking about it but they're not coming to mind at the moment. I think there is potential for interesting display/visualization stuff for the HTML based editors and integration into the runtime like Smalltalk environments. I'd also like to see some sort of AST manipulation server pop up and to provide IDE-like services in a cross-editor manner. Finally, I spent time with LEO in the early 2000s and while I hated the editing, the text node organization was interesting and I haven't seen a similar attempt elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, there ARE new things in Vim that are unique/cool like conceal and I can do fun/weird stuff with UltiSnips which I haven't been able to do with other snippet systems. I doubt I'll move off any time soon but it's far from inconceivable.
  - btipling 14y ago
    'regions' sounds like you want software generated code...which sounds more like maybe you need to think about your architecture/process a little more. You can generate code with a build step.
DrinkWater 14y ago
nothing, i repeat, NOTHING can replace vim. Learn to use it, and you feel so superior to everybody and everything around you, you might even kick walls and shopping-carts for using something different! I am just kidding, but seriously, every time i read such "i found a vim replacement"-articles, it turns out the author was not really a vim power user. It's strange, i know.
- criley 14y ago
  The old "No True Vim User", eh? As in: "No TRUE vim user would think any other program was better!"
  - agscala 14y ago
    Well in this case, the author of the article was praising (as an advantage) a TA feature that was also available in Vim (albeit via a plugin). I would like to see articles like this demonstrate things that simply aren't possible in Vim (or something implemented with relative ease in comparison)
DeepDuh 14y ago
Tl;dr: An editor with lua patterns instead of regex find/replace. Thanks, I stick with (and pay for) my ST.
rustc 14y ago
I may have missed it, but what features exactly does this have over Vim?
- grapjas 14y ago
  Nothing plugins can't fix
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    This might be a matter of packaging, then. Maybe someone should do a "distro" of vim for populations of users?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kayoone 14y ago
oh well, another round of editor wars :/
goldfeld 14y ago
The author gave out his naivete here: "Textadept is easily on par with Vim, Emacs and ST." I'm sorry, I know nothing about Textadept, but if Sublime Text is on par with Vim and Emacs then I'm a hipster in love with Coldplay.
- swah 14y ago
  Sublime is better than Emacs and Vim!!1... in some ways. (Fast, flawless rendering, not relying on regexps for syntax highlighting, proper fullscreen, graphical UI instead of text-based, nicest extension language...)
bsg75 14y ago
The Sublime Text review linked in this one was actually more interesting.
mich41 14y ago
It doesn't even let me move without reaching to mouse or arrow keys. Hardly a vim replacement.
mjs 14y ago
This is very superficial of me but ... are there any screenshots of Textadept anywhere?
- amarsahinovic 14y ago
  You can find some screenshots here: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/02/try-textadept-fast-cross-platform-text.html http://www.webupd8.org/2013/02/try-textadept-fast-cross-plat...
alttab 14y ago
Nothing says "I've replaced VIM" like needing an X-11 server to edit a text file.
- eyko 14y ago
  There's also an ncurses backend, and the OSX app does not really need X11, does it?
- allerratio 14y ago
  How often do you sit in front of a computer without X11 or another graphical interface? Many people don't edit any remote files. And when you do, you don't need to run the editor on the machine where the file lies. What's missing is a nice integration of ssh into the editors.
  - account_taken 14y ago
    I know several people that use terminal only, including myself, who use thin client devices like tablets ssh'd into a VPS.
Narretz 14y ago
I wish jps (ST developer) was more responsive. There are many small bugs and inconsistencies that are dragged through the versions, even the new beta. A centralized bug tracker would be a great first step. Submit a bug, have it acknowleged by jps, track its status. At the moment, you have no idea if jps even knows of a bug. Docs are also generally poor. apart from that, I really love ST, and I cannot see anything Textadept has that would make me switch.
- leeoniya 14y ago
  http://sublimetext.userecho.com/ http://sublimetext.userecho.com/ seems to be the feature request and bug tracker, which would work well if any of these features/bugs actually got fixed (some are really old and highly requested). Usually I see minor stuff get fixed between updates, but worse is that the new features that appear in minor updates are nowhere to be seen in the top votes. One of these is preventing me from buying/using it. NP++ till then.
jibsen 14y ago
I don't know if I am missing a setting, but here on Windows, it feels a bit like TextAdept is fighting a loosing battle with ClearType (as in, I almost feel I should be wearing 3D glasses). On the wiki there was only one other theme available for the latest 6.3 release, so I tried an older Solarized theme, but TA crashes when I try to load it. I feel having to press a keyboard shortcut to bring up the auto-complete menu is a step back in productivity compared to ST, but the built-in API help is a nice idea.
hyperbovine 14y ago
I see some incarnation of this story pop up every few weeks here on HN. Why do people have it in for Vim? Fast, stable, free, ubiquitous, crazy efficient -- I don't get why some people are on this mission to replace it. Hell, should you really decide to pay money for Vim you be supporting orphans in Uganda.
patrickg 14y ago
Great! I will try it out. It uses lpeg based lexers and a Lua api. Now my daily (coding) work is 99% Lua coding, so I feel rather comfortable with it. I also like the file chooser (I am on Mac OS X), much faster for me than the system wide. That's my "first 4 minutes" impression.

38 points by amarsahinovic 14y ago

voidr 14y ago

No, it has no chance of replacing Vim because it doesn't run in the terminal and it doesn't come out of the box on most *nix systems. Initially I don't like the title, because it is too vague.

sj4nz 14y ago
> The version of Textadept for the terminal requires only ncurses. For a while, you could only get ed on most *nix systems. Doesn't mean this couldn't become a new "standard." Vague title? In what way? It's someone's review of why they're using Textadept. (or is this a case where HN changed the title after the fact?)
- showerst 14y ago
  The title was edited, originally it was something to the effect of "Finding a replacement for Vim".
- ics 14y ago
  The original title was "I've finally found an editor to replace Vim" or something close.
schabernakk 14y ago
If his workflow doesn't require him to edit files remotely, it's a valid statement to say that he has replaced vim with textadept (and it works).
munchor 14y ago
It runs on the terminal.

btipling 14y ago

Anyone still willing to change editors has not yet put much of a worthwhile investment of time in a good one. Choosing an editor is probably a lot like finding a soulmate.

grayrest 14y ago
Vim is my primary text editor and I'll never switch to an editor that doesn't have a command grammar but there's most definitely room for improvement: * It's difficult to add new motions to vim. EasyMotion and Surround.vim are the only two real attempts I know of. EasyMotion gets by on marks while surround.vim is baroque. * There's little/no context awareness built into the syntax highlighting/grammar files. Textmate's scope stuff is really the best feature of the editor. If the vim maintainers/community could decide on syntax groupings and a query system was added it'd be doable but I'm not really expecting it. * There's limited context awareness built into the mapping system. ST's system is quite nice here. * No support for multiple cursors. The support that's built into ST is fairly primitive compared to the multicusor whitepapers from MIT (I believe around 2000) which did generic editing stuff. * No repl. This goes against the philosophy of the editor but having a repl is really convenient when doing lisps. Foreplay is sufficient but doesn't fill me with joy. * I've wanted to set up what I call 'regions' in the file where one part of the file is a computed version of another. The obvious use case is xml tags where editing one tag name in the pair updates the other but I think it could be generic. I had more use cases when I was thinking about it but they're not coming to mind at the moment. I think there is potential for interesting display/visualization stuff for the HTML based editors and integration into the runtime like Smalltalk environments. I'd also like to see some sort of AST manipulation server pop up and to provide IDE-like services in a cross-editor manner. Finally, I spent time with LEO in the early 2000s and while I hated the editing, the text node organization was interesting and I haven't seen a similar attempt elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, there ARE new things in Vim that are unique/cool like conceal and I can do fun/weird stuff with UltiSnips which I haven't been able to do with other snippet systems. I doubt I'll move off any time soon but it's far from inconceivable.
- btipling 14y ago
  'regions' sounds like you want software generated code...which sounds more like maybe you need to think about your architecture/process a little more. You can generate code with a build step.

DrinkWater 14y ago

nothing, i repeat, NOTHING can replace vim. Learn to use it, and you feel so superior to everybody and everything around you, you might even kick walls and shopping-carts for using something different! I am just kidding, but seriously, every time i read such "i found a vim replacement"-articles, it turns out the author was not really a vim power user. It's strange, i know.

criley 14y ago
The old "No True Vim User", eh? As in: "No TRUE vim user would think any other program was better!"
- agscala 14y ago
  Well in this case, the author of the article was praising (as an advantage) a TA feature that was also available in Vim (albeit via a plugin). I would like to see articles like this demonstrate things that simply aren't possible in Vim (or something implemented with relative ease in comparison)

DeepDuh 14y ago

Tl;dr: An editor with lua patterns instead of regex find/replace. Thanks, I stick with (and pay for) my ST.

rustc 14y ago

I may have missed it, but what features exactly does this have over Vim?

grapjas 14y ago
Nothing plugins can't fix
- stcredzero 14y ago
  This might be a matter of packaging, then. Maybe someone should do a "distro" of vim for populations of users?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kayoone 14y ago

oh well, another round of editor wars :/

goldfeld 14y ago

The author gave out his naivete here: "Textadept is easily on par with Vim, Emacs and ST." I'm sorry, I know nothing about Textadept, but if Sublime Text is on par with Vim and Emacs then I'm a hipster in love with Coldplay.

swah 14y ago
Sublime is better than Emacs and Vim!!1... in some ways. (Fast, flawless rendering, not relying on regexps for syntax highlighting, proper fullscreen, graphical UI instead of text-based, nicest extension language...)

bsg75 14y ago

The Sublime Text review linked in this one was actually more interesting.

mich41 14y ago

It doesn't even let me move without reaching to mouse or arrow keys. Hardly a vim replacement.

mjs 14y ago

This is very superficial of me but ... are there any screenshots of Textadept anywhere?

amarsahinovic 14y ago
You can find some screenshots here: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/02/try-textadept-fast-cross-platform-text.html http://www.webupd8.org/2013/02/try-textadept-fast-cross-plat...

alttab 14y ago

Nothing says "I've replaced VIM" like needing an X-11 server to edit a text file.

eyko 14y ago
There's also an ncurses backend, and the OSX app does not really need X11, does it?
allerratio 14y ago
How often do you sit in front of a computer without X11 or another graphical interface? Many people don't edit any remote files. And when you do, you don't need to run the editor on the machine where the file lies. What's missing is a nice integration of ssh into the editors.
- account_taken 14y ago
  I know several people that use terminal only, including myself, who use thin client devices like tablets ssh'd into a VPS.

Narretz 14y ago

I wish jps (ST developer) was more responsive. There are many small bugs and inconsistencies that are dragged through the versions, even the new beta. A centralized bug tracker would be a great first step. Submit a bug, have it acknowleged by jps, track its status. At the moment, you have no idea if jps even knows of a bug. Docs are also generally poor. apart from that, I really love ST, and I cannot see anything Textadept has that would make me switch.

leeoniya 14y ago
http://sublimetext.userecho.com/ http://sublimetext.userecho.com/ seems to be the feature request and bug tracker, which would work well if any of these features/bugs actually got fixed (some are really old and highly requested). Usually I see minor stuff get fixed between updates, but worse is that the new features that appear in minor updates are nowhere to be seen in the top votes. One of these is preventing me from buying/using it. NP++ till then.

jibsen 14y ago

I don't know if I am missing a setting, but here on Windows, it feels a bit like TextAdept is fighting a loosing battle with ClearType (as in, I almost feel I should be wearing 3D glasses). On the wiki there was only one other theme available for the latest 6.3 release, so I tried an older Solarized theme, but TA crashes when I try to load it. I feel having to press a keyboard shortcut to bring up the auto-complete menu is a step back in productivity compared to ST, but the built-in API help is a nice idea.

hyperbovine 14y ago

I see some incarnation of this story pop up every few weeks here on HN. Why do people have it in for Vim? Fast, stable, free, ubiquitous, crazy efficient -- I don't get why some people are on this mission to replace it. Hell, should you really decide to pay money for Vim you be supporting orphans in Uganda.

patrickg 14y ago

Great! I will try it out. It uses lpeg based lexers and a Lua api. Now my daily (coding) work is 99% Lua coding, so I feel rather comfortable with it. I also like the file chooser (I am on Mac OS X), much faster for me than the system wide. That's my "first 4 minutes" impression.