52 ms·

Light Table is now open source

1256 points by endianswap 13y ago

michaelsbradley 13y ago
The EPL would have been far preferable to the GPL given that it's not hard to imagine derivative open source projects that would bundle and mix Light Table's source code (or parts of it) with other Clojure/Script projects' source code, the majority of which is published under the EPL. Unfortunately, the EPL and the GPL don't play nicely together.
- ibdknox 13y ago
  There was some discussion about going with the GPL on the mailing list: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/light-table-discussion/5YscXFxTLRE/Ruh5Rxs3jj4J https://groups.google.com/d/msg/light-table-discussion/5YscX... If you have different needs, shoot us an email and I'm sure we can work something out.
  - michaelsbradley 13y ago
    For what it's worth, the EPL is as amenable as the GPL is to the copyright holder's offering the option of a paid, non-reciprocal "commercial license". So, given that's the case, the real question comes down to how long you want or need the fangs of the license's reciprocal clauses to be. I personally have no problem with copyleft, and will be taking the EPL + commercial option route with one of my own projects in the near future. I realize that monetization strategies are a big deal if you're essentially trying to "pay the bills" with your open source project. I can't help thinking, though, that choosing the GPL when the vast majority of the Clojure ecosystem is under the EPL - and given that the two licenses are incompatible - is a misstep. I hope to be proved wrong. :-)
  - dkersten 13y ago
    I'm sure we can work something out Its been mentioned elsewhere here, but you should probably think about having copyright assignment before accepting third party (non-plugin) patches, so that you can continue to work something out with people in the future too.
    - ibdknox 13y ago
      We have a CA as well, adapted from Twitter's: https://docs.google.com/a/kodowa.com/forms/d/1ME_PT6qLKUcALUEz1h1yerLF7vP_Rnohpb9RvMLDALg/viewform https://docs.google.com/a/kodowa.com/forms/d/1ME_PT6qLKUcALU...
  - lemming 13y ago
    One question (from above in the mass of licensing argument) according to Wikipedia the EPL is incompatible with the GPL: The EPL 1.0 is not compatible with the GPL, and a work created by combining a work licensed under the GPL with a work licensed under the EPL cannot be lawfully distributed. ClojureScript itself is EPL, how does this work?
mbillie1 13y ago
Very cool! Hopefully this will lead to some more enthusiasts contributing and making this as full-featured and robust an IDE as it has the potential to be. Good job open sourcing this.
loceng 13y ago
I supported Light Table on Kickstarter, and happy to see updates like these.
joshdick 13y ago
This is great news. I love using Light Table for Clojure development, and it's exciting to know that it's open for contributions now.
burningion 13y ago
Awesome work, guys. I've got a quick question. I know there's a way to connect to a remote REPL for Clojure live eval, but is there currently a way to open up a remote Python session for eval? I'm working on an embedded device with a Python interpreter, and I'd love to be able to run that environment remotely, over ssh with a Python session. If it doesn't exist, can you steer me to a place to get started building this as a plugin? Thanks!
- ibdknox 13y ago
  Right now the python plugin works by running a little tcp client and connecting to LT's main tcp server. You'd just need to flip those. The Clojure nREPL stuff does this, though it might be a hair bit more complicated than what you'll need for the python one: https://github.com/LightTable/Clojure/blob/master/src/lt/plugins/clojure/nrepl.cljs https://github.com/LightTable/Clojure/blob/master/src/lt/plu... Past that, you'd just need to add something to the python plugin that runs a tcp server in your process and then hooks into the python running code that's already there. https://github.com/LightTable/Python/blob/master/py-src/ltmain.py https://github.com/LightTable/Python/blob/master/py-src/ltma...
  - burningion 13y ago
    Thanks Chris!
davexunit 13y ago
Not only is it open source, it's free software! I am very pleasantly surprised to see that the GNU GPLv3 license has been chosen. I've been harsh on Light Table because the source was nonfree and the promise to "open source" it eventually didn't look promising or community-friendly. I expected a permissive license or an open-core strategy to monetize proprietary components and not be friendly with the free software community, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I look forward to seeing where development goes. Happy hacking, Light Table devs.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  Yah I don't believe those claims on their face either, but... If I had known it would of actually gone this route, I would of being pitching in bigtime for the kickstarter.
- _stephan 13y ago
  I expected a permissive license or an open-core strategy to monetize proprietary components and not be friendly with the free software community, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. So you don't consider a permissive license to be friendly with the free software community, or is that a typo?
  - yuvadam 13y ago
    Well, yeah. In certain circles, the permissive licenses (MIT/BSD/etc.) are seen as detrimental to the free software movement.
    - misnome 13y ago
      Whereas, in other circles, the GPL is seen as detrimental to the free software movement.
      - davexunit 13y ago
        You will find that those circles are outside of the free software movement.
epenn 13y ago
I love Light Table. I just wish there was a text-only mode/version too (even if it's somewhat limited) that I could use when I'm doing development via ssh on other machines, which accounts for a large portion of what I do. If that pops up sometime it would likely become my primary editor pretty quickly.
- phren0logy 13y ago
  You could always mount the filesystem of the remote machine (via SSHFS) locally, and use whatever editor you want. Here's an (old) article about it: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8904 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8904
- klibertp 13y ago
  I'm 100% sure that somebody will port TRAMP to LT - and sooner rather than later :) LT looks like it's the only editor capable of pressuring Emacs in the future and to do this it has to have features like transparent handling of remote filesystems via a bazillion of protocols either in core or as a plugin. So I think it will get one eventually :) http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/ http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/
- freshhawk 13y ago
  I have to second the comment saying "just use SSHFS", I use it for everything and I would never go back. The non-console versions of editors are worth it, nevermind the rest of the conveniences.
robterrell 13y ago
Hey Chris: "auto-complete is not wickedly fast" -- either there's a typo in the middle, or that's an impressively honest self-assessment.
- ibdknox 13y ago
  Pushed a fix just a couple minutes ago, might have to hard refresh to get it though.
selmnoo 13y ago
Cool, cool. And it's -free- (GPL'd) too! So happy to hear this. Thank you so much, Chris. Your hard work is heartily appreciated.
filipedeschamps 13y ago
I'm dying to checkout the watch feature.
jalan 13y ago
The last time I heard about Light Table, the Ruby was not supported. Could someone please clarify which languages are supported, as of this release? BTW, awesome work Chris, really looking forward to use it.
- elwell 13y ago
  I think it's Clojure, Python, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. EDIT: added Python
  - airlocksoftware 13y ago
    And Python.
curtis 13y ago
For those of you wondering what exactly Light Table is, I found this video to be a good introduction: http://vimeo.com/40281991 http://vimeo.com/40281991
- Snoddas 13y ago
  Going to the site trying to get a TL;DR about what it is and then the information is a 4.5 minute video. That's not gonna happen.
  - idProQuo 13y ago
    TL;DR - It's an IDE with support for live coding. It's built with ClojureScript and has a number of unusual good properties. However, you really need to see the video to understand how viscerally awesome it is.
jessepollak 13y ago
I tried switching to LightTable from SublimeText 2 a couple months ago for javascript development, but was too confused and eventually gave up. That said, the feature set seems very intriguing and I'm tempted to give it another shot (especially with all this news). Does anyone have any thoughts on (or know of someone who's written about) making the transition to Light Table?
- joshdick 13y ago
  I think the key is to get used to hitting Ctrl+space to do everything. Pretty much everything that Light Table is capable of is through that interface.
  - quaunaut 13y ago
    Sure, similar to Sublime's Cmd+T choice. The problem I have though, is that in Sublime I really can use that for near everything- even opening new files. You don't have that same option with Light.
    - ibdknox 13y ago
      Why not? There's a `File: open file` command, and then there's the navigator to look through files that are in the workspace. You can also add files to the workspace from the command pane with `Workspace: add file` or `Workspace: add folder`.
      - quaunaut 13y ago
        Right, but none of those options are particularly fast. In Sublime, if I want to open my Gemfile(at root), I just go Cmd+T: Gem And it's selected. If I want to open my admin_controller, located inside of /app/controllers/, I use Cmd+T: adm And it's selected. If I wanna do my Admin Controller test(spec) file, at /spec/controllers/admin_controller_spec.rb? Cmd+T: adm sp This is all a ton faster than what I'm seeing currenltly in Light Space, where I'm essentially forced to use my mouse, or OSX's poor keyboard controllers for open menu navigation.
unethical_ban 13y ago
I assume it's an IDE, since there is no information about the product anywhere on the site.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  ... There's lots of stuff about it on the website http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/ http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/
  - unethical_ban 13y ago
    I expect a homepage to have a brief description of its product on the front page of the site. Barring that, I expect a similar brief description and feature set description on an "about" page. This has neither. I am eventually able to find out more, but only after assuming what it is and extrapolating what problems it's trying to solve.
    - Sandman 13y ago
      You were viewing Chris Granger's blog. This was a blog post about the new Light Table version. What you're looking for is at http://www.lighttable.com/ http://www.lighttable.com/
jbondeson 13y ago
As a backer I'm really happy that it's now open source. As a user I'm a bit concerned by this phrase '"plugin" is a bit of a misnomer - they are capable of fundamentally redefining in or adding anything to Light Table.' I understand that the dynamic nature of clojure makes this possible, but I'm reminded of all the issues monkey-patching causes. I would hate to spend hours diagnosing plug-in interactions.
- swannodette 13y ago
  This is pretty much how Emacs has worked for almost 40 years and it doesn't even have namespaces. As far as stability Emacs is definitely competitive with the many editors / IDEs I've tried in the past so I'd wager Light Table will do just fine with this model.
  - ibdknox 13y ago
    Another interesting part of this is the use of behavior diffs, which means the user can at any point easily remove a behavior that is causing a conflict. Unlike in most situations where multiple plugins may add functionality and you're stuck with whatever the mixture is, it's very easy to take just what you want with LT plugins. One of the key goals of BOT was to enable people to handle conflicts downstream without needing to touch the source.
    - jbondeson 13y ago
      That sounds great, and will definitely help alleviate headaches when the clashes occur. Have you started playing with strategies to proactively identify potential clashes?
  - jbondeson 13y ago
    As an avid Emacs user and having debugged unintended side-effects in minor-modes[1] I definitely know that this is possible there. At the same time though I would hope we learn from what works and doesn't work in Emacs and apply it to new tools. I think one of the big challenges will be establishing the best practices for plug-ins to avoid user-experience-ruining clashes. [1] - I help maintain the smooth-scrolling minor-mode and diagnosing and solving some of the interactions with evil-mode and macros has been... fun. Thankfully the Emacs community is populated by people who provide excellent bug reports!
storrgie 13y ago
Is anyone flocking to this over sublime?
- filipedeschamps 13y ago
  Currently we are heavely using Brackets to develop Node.js apps and will give lightable at least a try.
  - aroman 13y ago
    Very curious about how this has been working for you. How has it improved your experience developing node apps? Any tips you have for setting it up?
daGrevis 13y ago
My comment from earlier today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023884 tl;dr It's happening!
- masukomi 13y ago
  it should be noted that if you find the vim support lacking in LightTable it's just a matter of adding what you need to CodeMirror (which is where LightTable gets its vim support) and then LT, and everything else that uses CodeMirror will get better, and all us vim users will be thankful.
  - pedalpete 13y ago
    Apparently CodeMirror already has vim bindings. http://codemirror.net/#features http://codemirror.net/#features
  - owaislone 13y ago
    How does one actually enable Vim mode in LT?
    - usr 13y ago
      First you have to install the plugin. In the menu at the top, go to View then click on Commands. The commands will appear on the right side (and note that you can just start typing the name of a command to filter it out). Click on this one "Plugins: Show plugin manager". Then on the Plugins, make sure you go to the Available section. Scroll down and find Vim and click on it. Now you have to enable it. Go back to Commands and find "Settings: User behaviors" . Then go to the :editor section between the square brackets. Type "vim" and it will show a popup with several items it can complete. Pick this one: "Vim: Activate Vim mode". It should then insert this: :lt.plugins.vim/activate-vim Save the file and it should now work!
- pedalpete 13y ago
  deGrevis, it will be happening TWICE! I asked the original question, as I've been spending a bit of time creating an IDE, I'll be continuing development and will also be open sourcing it.
elwell 13y ago
Good timing, right when Clojure is starting to take hold.
guiomie 13y ago
This looks interesting, and I always wanted to learn lisp/clojure, but the website doesn't say much on how to use the tool. Anyone with good blog posts about clojure with light table on windows ?
- jamii 13y ago
  Try http://docs.lighttable.com/tutorials/full/ http://docs.lighttable.com/tutorials/full/
elyase 13y ago
Is there going to be an Instarepl for Python?
- jbeja 13y ago
  There is already one
  - elyase 13y ago
    Is it documented anywhere? I know there is a REPL but haven't seen anything about an Instarepl like the one for Clojure.
    - jamii 13y ago
      There isn't an instarepl for python, only the normal eval-in-editor. For debugging, watches are a semi-substitute.
elwell 13y ago
Source is mostly ClojureScript. Interesting... was expecting jvm Clojure.
- dminor 13y ago
  Chris mentioned this at the end of a previous post: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/ ClojureScript on node-webkit is looking like a very interesting platform for desktop apps, especially with om/react.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    I would like to see ClojureScript as a server side language as well.
    - poweribo 13y ago
      Clojurescript is Clojure on the browser. Clojure runs on JVM / Server-side.
    - babby 13y ago
      It is if you run it on node.js, as it is when you run it on node.js -> node-webkit silly :).
josephagoss 13y ago
I always thought that the best license was the MIT one. Can someone enlighten me as to why choosing GPLv3 is a better choice?
- mateuszf 13y ago
  It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason. OTOH, another perspective is that the GPL is worse for the projects because the restrictions it imposes may make people less likely to touch it at all, and those who don't touch it aren't going to give anything back whether they have to or not, and commercial users demonstrably do give back to projects that are under licenses that don't require them to do so -- and even pay people to work directly on the projects.
    - chii 13y ago
      but having commercial users "altruistically" contribute back means having to trust in them. Had lightable not been GPL, commercial entities could easily have just taken it, make a nice derivative (e.g., make it into a game dev IDE), but never contribute that back at all. TLDR; they got a free lunch. With GPL , said commercial entity either have to provide their derivative's source (thus contributing back via more features/code), or pay the owners of lighttable a fee for not revealing the sources. Neither way allows them to get a free lunch. This is a good thing imho.
  - asdasf 13y ago
    That isn't actually the case, just the rational used to make the choice. Actual experience has shown that commercial users simply avoid restrictive licensed projects, and frequently give back contributions to liberally licensed projects. Ogre3d for example switched from LGPL to MIT and got more contributions from the commercial software world.
Touche 13y ago
Looks like the rest of my day is blown as I read through this source.
Touche 13y ago
The post is a little unclear, is Light Table going to continue to be developed in the open or is this a code dump?
- jamii 13y ago
  Future development will all be open-source.
  - Touche 13y ago
    Sorry, my question was unclear, I was asking whether they will be using GitHub (or another publicly visible place) for their daily development or is this just where released versions will be pushed?
    - jamii 13y ago
      No, my answer was unclear :) We will be doing all Light Table development in the open. We will be accepting pull requests (actually, I think we already have) although we require a CA (https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/blob/master/CONTRIB...).
      - acjohnson55 13y ago
        Incredible! Thanks and congratulations!
geertj 13y ago
Does it need a Java Runtime to run?
- jamii 13y ago
  You only need a jvm to use the clojure(script) language mode. You can use python/js/html/css modes without a jvm.
nilsimsa 13y ago
I look at some of the Kickstarter projects I sponsored (mostly hardware and software) and it seems most of them are a year behind schedule. It is nice to see that I'm not the only one bad at estimating project schedules. :)
rcarmo 13y ago
sigh no way to get an ARM build going, though, nor more pointers for doing so with node-webkit. See https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/703 https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/703 for more info. (Build instructions currently consist of dumping part of the current binaries and rebuilding the CLJS bits, which is straightforward but doesn't help much with porting to other archs)
methehack 13y ago
Is anyone aware of a particular reason that making a ruby plugin would be difficult? Seems like it would be a lot like the python plugin.
- methehack 13y ago
  Also -- for those interested in ruby -- basic syntax highlighting appears to be there already (I just downloaded the release and looked)...
  - jamii 13y ago
    The code highlighting comes from CodeMirror. Adding ruby support should be fairly simple. The python plugin (https://github.com/LightTable/Python https://github.com/LightTable/Python) is only ~300 lines of cljs and ~750 lines of python and the cljs side shouldn't need too many changes.
    - existentialmutt 13y ago
      That's exactly what I'm doing here: https://github.com/existentialmutt/lt-ruby.git https://github.com/existentialmutt/lt-ruby.git
wbond 13y ago
I understand the reason for picking GPL for the editor. The, rather large, downside I see to this is that effectively all plugins are now GPL, correct? I run a small side business sell packages for Sublime Text and considered the concept of something similar for Light Table. While you certainly can sell GPL software, you can not prevent redistribution, so you effectively get into the business of providing support. I can't foresee being able to run a small support business without catering only to the enterprise. And even then "small" would be a relative term.
- ibdknox 13y ago
  If you're interested in this, get ahold of us and I'm sure we can work something out. The plan was always to do a dual licensing scheme to enable exactly what you're talking about.
- carterschonwald 13y ago
  I very much appreciate your work enabling sublime text to have a package ecosystem. I and the world thank you.
sandover 13y ago
Well Chris, the legal eagles here on the Lawyer News site are giving you a good response so far. I'd suggest you also submit this piece to Hacker News, and see what they make of it. I mean in terms of the actual, you know, software that you wrote.
- ludston 13y ago
  Above me is a beautifully sarcastic and eloquently crafted comment.
belluchan 13y ago
Cool, but how is this yc-backed company going to make money now? Was this a non-profit investment?
- scott_karana 13y ago
  Just because it's GPLv3 doesn't mean they can't sell commercial licenses for it. So I imagine they're considering support and integration and sources of revenue. (Totally speculative of course!)
neon_electro 13y ago
Will Light Table get OS-specific keyboard shortcuts (Command-based shortcuts on a Mac instead of Ctrl-based ones) in the future? They're probably the biggest reason I'm a fan of Sublime Text.
pdknsk 13y ago
I had no clue what Light Table is, so I went to the website and found out it's an IDE, but couldn't easily find out what makes it different from editors such as Sublime. Also on the main website, the background image has a height of just 762px, but stretches to the full height of the browser window. In my case, to 1920px (pivot). Needless to say it makes for an amateurish appearance. PS. Just from the name, I expected it to be a Lightroom clone.
- jamii 13y ago
  Where most IDEs rely on static analysis to give you information about your code, Light Table is based around live interaction with your code. You can eg attach to a running browser and inject new js or css code into the page from you editor without refreshing. Check out some of the demos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXpOD6jFls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXpOD6jFls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-b6QEN-rk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-b6QEN-rk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2rOTrnqqtg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2rOTrnqqtg Light Table is also designed to be easily extensible, in the same way that emacs is. There is a small core which mostly defines interfaces and the rest of the features are implemented as plugins.
cabbeer 13y ago
This is great, Light Table is starting to look like the spiritual successor to emacs.
- jbeja 13y ago
  Or his little sister.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    Much sexier little sister.
  - willismichael 13y ago
    Little sisters have a way of growing up.
    - nickik 13y ago
      And when the grow up you switch from your girlfriend to her little sister, because she is the same but better.
agumonkey 13y ago
I remember a little while ago people being very suspicious about LightTable being open sourced, quoting the fundraising page, doubting about extensibility. Kudos to ibdknox for his creation!
frik 13y ago
So technically LightTable is a web app coded in ClojureScript, HTML and CSS running in Chromium Embedded Framework (C++ application) [1] with a child Node.js background process. [1] Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF): http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/ http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/ Edit: the main author explained his decision to use Chromium here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/light-table-discussion/Y0XBCOUZ7cA https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/light-table-discussi... He is using node-webkit: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit apparently, it doesn't use CEF anymore: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/1406 https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/1406 Valve's Steam and Adobe continue to use CEF for their web based desktop apps: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/CEF3-vs.-Chromium-Content-Shell https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/CEF3-vs.-Chromium-Con...
- rch 13y ago
  Also, from your link to the issue indicating why CEF isn't used: "The wrapper for embedding Chromium in C++ apps from CEF is useless to node-webkit, and it adds complexity and costs. Regarding the statement Content API and is not intended to be a starting point for a robust application, I don't think that's true -- Chrome is based on Content API and it's clearly a robust application. Maybe it just want to say Content API is not as easy to use as CEF API."
- tbassetto 13y ago
  Spotify is also using CEF (3).
madlag 13y ago
This is really exciting news, I am really glad I backed them on KickStarter ! Maybe even a good reason to try to learn Clojure ;-)
Tehnix 13y ago
Would really like to see Haskell integration (via a plugin?) support for this!
izietto 13y ago
Great news! Can't wait to replace SublimeText with this :P
- jbeja 13y ago
  I already replace it with Emacs
  - izietto 13y ago
    I can't get used to Emacs (or Vim neither), they require too much keyboard interaction and they are aesthetically ugly
    - jbeja 13y ago
      Once you get use to the keys and put a nice color scheme the efficiency that you gain is something out of pray, but i think that efficiency is no everyones call.
    - mkartic 13y ago
      why are they 'aesthetically ugly'? do you mean they don't have windows with glossed borders?
      - izietto 13y ago
        I mean they lack in harmony IMHO, like KDE, which has ugly icons and button with not harmonious paddings
yawz 13y ago
So what do Kickstarter backers think about this? Was open-sourcing Light Table always the plan?
- liyanage 13y ago
  I backed this on Kickstarter and I'm very disappointed that it's now GPL and not BSD/MIT-licensed.
john2x 13y ago
Would a terminal interface (maybe as a plugin) be feasible in the future? I'm cursed with Vim, and I'd love to use this as a REPL for development.
- joshuafcole 13y ago
  Definitely a possibility -- LT is very flexible. Even if you choose to more or less ignore the plugin interface, you can interact directly with the DOM. I imagine the path of least resistance for a terminal plugin is just to open a new named tab via the API and then inject an existing HTML terminal emulator into it with access to the local machine.
  - john2x 13y ago
    I'm trying to picture this. So I have LT open, and then I interact with it via a 3rd party terminal application? Maybe the terminal app can "pull" output from LT (or LT "pushes" output to the terminal app?
    - joshuafcole 13y ago
      You could certainly set up a bridge over sockets or ajax, but I think the true beauty of LT is that you can actually embed an extant web-based terminal directly into LT's dom and interact with its native events. LT runs in node-webkit, which is essentially chromium. The only barrier to entry I can think of is that it might be difficult to set up the terminal emulator to interact with the local FS, but its definitely a solvable problem. My current plugins both interact directly with the DOM and the local FS for various purposes using node and jQuery. The jQuery is honestly unnecessary thanks to only needing to support webkit, but it was a simple expedient and its luxurious not worrying about byte count since everything is running off the local machine.
GhostHardware 13y ago
This is the first time I read about lighttable and I'm glad I did. It looks really sweet. Now all I need is good vim plugin and I think I'm finally set.
- e12e 13y ago
  Apparently there are already vim keybindings: https://github.com/LightTable/Vim https://github.com/LightTable/Vim Not sure how complete they are, though (or rather: if they make lt work "like vim", or just add some short cuts).
joshuafcole 13y ago
I've been working with LT for a bit over a month now by picking at it through the dev inspector and grepping over the compiled cljs source. I've used that to build two plugins in JS [1][2] to help LT meet my needs as a day to day editor. The biggest takeaway I had is that an editor built on the DOM is a _very_ natural experience to work with. I come from a heavily emacs background and was always fond of its extensibility, but I found it fairly imposing to try and create or update nontrivial UI functionality. The usage of HTML and CSS greatly streamlines that process and makes it feel much more accessible. Perhaps more importantly, not trying to restrict plugins to using a particular API has opened LT to integration with the tons of projects already built for the web -- from terminal emulators to emmet.io, integration is very nearly as simple as including the project's source and embedding it's root element into a tab. There's a lot of low hanging fruit at this stage in the game, so I look forward to seeing rapid plugin development in the coming weeks. [1] Claire - Fuzzy File Finder inspired by ido-mode in emacs (https://github.com/joshuafcole/claire https://github.com/joshuafcole/claire). [2] Recall - Workspace Persistence Plugin to keep your tabs and tabsets loaded between sessions (https://github.com/joshuafcole/recall https://github.com/joshuafcole/recall).
- jsilence 13y ago
  Wondering whether someone is working on a org-mode plugin.
  - joshuafcole 13y ago
    Not at the moment, but it sounds like an excellent project. At the moment my plate is a bit full with: 1. A SASS-based theme framework for LT that modularizes all of the widgets and plugins into partials. It's pretty difficult to just dive into the existing CSS and figure out what to change to achieve a particular effect. You're basically required to poke around in the dev inspector. 2. A proper C++ language mode via clang. Once those are up in several weeks if nobody else has tackled an org-mode implementation I'll probably investigate it. If you have any free time and a desire to learn or use clojure I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot though. The community would definitely appreciate it.
  - 13y ago
muyuu 13y ago
Now that it's GPLv3 I'd like to donate but I haven't found a way. Any way to donate?
dangayle 13y ago
Anyone else not want to read any of this comment thread because the first thing you see is how it descends into a discussion of the GPL? Please, it's like politics and religion. Is it possible to just talk about the software itself? I'm sure there are some great comments hidden in there, but I'm not willing to slog through the mess to find them. In other news, I downloaded Light Table and I'm willing to give it a shot.
- deevus 13y ago
  I share your exact sentiment. It would be good if HN had thread collapse.
  - weavie 13y ago
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hn-utility-suite/?src=api https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hn-utility-su... does the trick if you are on Firefox.
  - ideaoverload 13y ago
    Chrome extension to collapse HN threads: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collapsible-c/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap...
  - rayshan 13y ago
    Hacker News Enhancement Suite [1] is pretty great with collapsible comments, even shows you new comment count after you revisit home page. Styling may be a personal taste thing though. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
    - mercer 13y ago
      Not only does it show new comment count, it highlights the unread comments in the thread itself. I've become so reliant on HNES that I avoid accessing hacker news on other devices (and when I have to, I use hn.premii.com).
nilved 13y ago
This is pretty cool. Does Light Table have plain text configuration that can be stored in git? I would consider an editor that isn't configured that way to be a regression.
atmosx 13y ago
I give it a shot under macosx. The CPU goes a little bit crazy on my Air, but since it's an Alpha version might be improved in the future. Good work though, I like the look and feel.
chetanahuja 13y ago
I'd never heard of light table before this. Came here to see what other devs thought of it. Found furious discussion about open source licenses instead. Feels like usenet in 1995.
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  http://diovo.com/2010/11/collapsible-comments-for-hacker-news/ http://diovo.com/2010/11/collapsible-comments-for-hacker-new...
  - werner34 13y ago
    This is great, thanks! I unminified it first to look at the code, but it looks like its not doing anything nasty.
politician 13y ago
I am both happy and kind of annoyed by this announcement. As a backer, I felt that I "paid" for some extra licenses by backing this project based on the reward levels. I did get a T-shirt though. Anyway, it's better for the community that it's free(ish) though I wish Kickstarter would exercise some control over its reward system, but lesson learned.
- notimetorelax 13y ago
  I always thought that kickstarter was a way to subsidize development and is in no way a form of investment.
  - chii 13y ago
    and you're right. Kickstarter is not an investment platform. Which is why i don't ever contribute to a kickstarter, unless i know i m getting some return on investment back (either in the form of payment, or an appropriate amount of discount for the product). I wish there is a true crowd funding platform where you could "own" and partake in the profits generated from the funding.
    - nickik 13y ago
      Thats not gone happen because of goverment regulations.
- Derbasti 13y ago
  Why are you annoyed? You now have all the licenses you'll ever need!
  - noir_lord 13y ago
    ....but so will the people who didn't pay. How can I be the elite when everyone gets a castle. (note: this is how is post appeared to me, I've no idea if it's accurate.)
    - 13y ago
_pmf_ 13y ago
I'm impressed by the performance and start-up time of their JS-based environment; it's ridiculous that it's that fast while a heavily modularized OSGi-bnased Eclipse environment takes an order of magnitude more time to start, in spite of lazy loading of modules. The font rendering is shitty, tough, but that's probably expected when using OpenGL.
- efnx 13y ago
  Wait, I thought they were using Chromium for rendering. Are you saying that chromium uses OpenGL or that they aren't using chromium? And why would OpenGL be the cause of shitty font rendering? OpenGL handles points and shaders, not fonts - that's the job of something like freetype.
- azoapes 13y ago
  If you're talking about Windows, then maybe it will improve once this issue is fixed: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692
  - babby 13y ago
    So, okay then, it's about 12 weeks away from hitting stable. Took em a while but I'm glad it's finally being fixed.
deevus 13y ago
How does "Editor: build file or project" work? Can I create my own build targets?
ciol 13y ago
The Windows install instructions listed on the repo didn't work right out of the box for me - the app would just stay the "light table" welcome screen and nothing would happen. Figured out through the nw console that bootstrap.js was missing in core/node_modules/lighttable, and adding that seemed to do the trick. Maybe I did something wrong, though.
aigarius 13y ago
Nice announcement, but where is the actual source? The github repo "build instructions" currently tell you to run a script that downloads a binary release from CloudFront, unpacks that and runs whatever was in in it. Sorry, that is not source. Well, at least not complete source. Where is the source for the binaries that are being downloaded and build instructions for them?
- msmithstubbs 13y ago
  The source is at https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable The binary from CloudFront looks to be a convenience to avoid building node-webkit. From the readme: Then we have to do some juggling (unless you fancy building node-webkit from source). You can get the source for node-webkit and build it yourself[1] but it looks to be time consuming and requires a significant amount of disk space. [1]: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/Building-node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/Building-node-...
  - vinodkd 13y ago
    i can attest to this. if you dont need to, please dont go down the path of building node-webkit. Actually, its not so much node-webkit as chrome/webkit inside it. that took a few days to download correctly and then a few nights to build. i did it when i was still on snow leopard and needed nw.
  - aigarius 13y ago
    Thanks, that helps a bit. So the ltbin binary blob is actually just a renamed nw binary from https://s3.amazonaws.com/node-webkit/v0.8.4/node-webkit-v0.8.4-linux-x64.tar.gz https://s3.amazonaws.com/node-webkit/v0.8.4/node-webkit-v0.8... release. I was unable to find out where the libffmpegsumo.so binary came from (I know it is part of FFMpeg and also integrated into Chromium, but what exact version is compiled there and with what options? They differ a lot, even in the legal context). And then there is the whole plugins folder which contains more sources that are not in git for some reason. There is no real point for LightTable to be providing some bunch of binaries. A pointer to node-webkit would be enough, they have binaries (and build instructions) on their github front page.
philliphaydon 13y ago
I just downloaded it. Besides creating a file, typing some stuff. I don't understand how it works or what it's meant to do... Quick google search, I can't figure it out... Am I missing something? The video on the website, I can't even... So confused :(
phireph0x 13y ago
I backed them on Kickstarter; glad to see they're open sourcing the code.
jopython 13y ago
Will there be a Ubuntu package for Light Table which ensures all dependencies are met.

1256 points by endianswap 13y ago

The EPL would have been far preferable to the GPL given that it's not hard to imagine derivative open source projects that would bundle and mix Light Table's source code (or parts of it) with other Clojure/Script projects' source code, the majority of which is published under the EPL. Unfortunately, the EPL and the GPL don't play nicely together.

ibdknox 13y ago
There was some discussion about going with the GPL on the mailing list: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/light-table-discussion/5YscXFxTLRE/Ruh5Rxs3jj4J https://groups.google.com/d/msg/light-table-discussion/5YscX... If you have different needs, shoot us an email and I'm sure we can work something out.
- michaelsbradley 13y ago
  For what it's worth, the EPL is as amenable as the GPL is to the copyright holder's offering the option of a paid, non-reciprocal "commercial license". So, given that's the case, the real question comes down to how long you want or need the fangs of the license's reciprocal clauses to be. I personally have no problem with copyleft, and will be taking the EPL + commercial option route with one of my own projects in the near future. I realize that monetization strategies are a big deal if you're essentially trying to "pay the bills" with your open source project. I can't help thinking, though, that choosing the GPL when the vast majority of the Clojure ecosystem is under the EPL - and given that the two licenses are incompatible - is a misstep. I hope to be proved wrong. :-)
- dkersten 13y ago
  I'm sure we can work something out Its been mentioned elsewhere here, but you should probably think about having copyright assignment before accepting third party (non-plugin) patches, so that you can continue to work something out with people in the future too.
  - ibdknox 13y ago
    We have a CA as well, adapted from Twitter's: https://docs.google.com/a/kodowa.com/forms/d/1ME_PT6qLKUcALUEz1h1yerLF7vP_Rnohpb9RvMLDALg/viewform https://docs.google.com/a/kodowa.com/forms/d/1ME_PT6qLKUcALU...
- lemming 13y ago
  One question (from above in the mass of licensing argument) according to Wikipedia the EPL is incompatible with the GPL: The EPL 1.0 is not compatible with the GPL, and a work created by combining a work licensed under the GPL with a work licensed under the EPL cannot be lawfully distributed. ClojureScript itself is EPL, how does this work?

mbillie1 13y ago

Very cool! Hopefully this will lead to some more enthusiasts contributing and making this as full-featured and robust an IDE as it has the potential to be. Good job open sourcing this.

loceng 13y ago

I supported Light Table on Kickstarter, and happy to see updates like these.

joshdick 13y ago

This is great news. I love using Light Table for Clojure development, and it's exciting to know that it's open for contributions now.

burningion 13y ago

Awesome work, guys. I've got a quick question. I know there's a way to connect to a remote REPL for Clojure live eval, but is there currently a way to open up a remote Python session for eval? I'm working on an embedded device with a Python interpreter, and I'd love to be able to run that environment remotely, over ssh with a Python session. If it doesn't exist, can you steer me to a place to get started building this as a plugin? Thanks!

ibdknox 13y ago
Right now the python plugin works by running a little tcp client and connecting to LT's main tcp server. You'd just need to flip those. The Clojure nREPL stuff does this, though it might be a hair bit more complicated than what you'll need for the python one: https://github.com/LightTable/Clojure/blob/master/src/lt/plugins/clojure/nrepl.cljs https://github.com/LightTable/Clojure/blob/master/src/lt/plu... Past that, you'd just need to add something to the python plugin that runs a tcp server in your process and then hooks into the python running code that's already there. https://github.com/LightTable/Python/blob/master/py-src/ltmain.py https://github.com/LightTable/Python/blob/master/py-src/ltma...
- burningion 13y ago
  Thanks Chris!

davexunit 13y ago

Not only is it open source, it's free software! I am very pleasantly surprised to see that the GNU GPLv3 license has been chosen. I've been harsh on Light Table because the source was nonfree and the promise to "open source" it eventually didn't look promising or community-friendly. I expected a permissive license or an open-core strategy to monetize proprietary components and not be friendly with the free software community, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I look forward to seeing where development goes. Happy hacking, Light Table devs.

GhotiFish 13y ago
Yah I don't believe those claims on their face either, but... If I had known it would of actually gone this route, I would of being pitching in bigtime for the kickstarter.
_stephan 13y ago
I expected a permissive license or an open-core strategy to monetize proprietary components and not be friendly with the free software community, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. So you don't consider a permissive license to be friendly with the free software community, or is that a typo?
- yuvadam 13y ago
  Well, yeah. In certain circles, the permissive licenses (MIT/BSD/etc.) are seen as detrimental to the free software movement.
  - misnome 13y ago
    Whereas, in other circles, the GPL is seen as detrimental to the free software movement.
    - davexunit 13y ago
      You will find that those circles are outside of the free software movement.

epenn 13y ago

I love Light Table. I just wish there was a text-only mode/version too (even if it's somewhat limited) that I could use when I'm doing development via ssh on other machines, which accounts for a large portion of what I do. If that pops up sometime it would likely become my primary editor pretty quickly.

phren0logy 13y ago
You could always mount the filesystem of the remote machine (via SSHFS) locally, and use whatever editor you want. Here's an (old) article about it: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8904 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8904
klibertp 13y ago
I'm 100% sure that somebody will port TRAMP to LT - and sooner rather than later :) LT looks like it's the only editor capable of pressuring Emacs in the future and to do this it has to have features like transparent handling of remote filesystems via a bazillion of protocols either in core or as a plugin. So I think it will get one eventually :) http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/ http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/
freshhawk 13y ago
I have to second the comment saying "just use SSHFS", I use it for everything and I would never go back. The non-console versions of editors are worth it, nevermind the rest of the conveniences.

robterrell 13y ago

Hey Chris: "auto-complete is not wickedly fast" -- either there's a typo in the middle, or that's an impressively honest self-assessment.

ibdknox 13y ago
Pushed a fix just a couple minutes ago, might have to hard refresh to get it though.

selmnoo 13y ago

Cool, cool. And it's -free- (GPL'd) too! So happy to hear this. Thank you so much, Chris. Your hard work is heartily appreciated.

filipedeschamps 13y ago

I'm dying to checkout the watch feature.

jalan 13y ago

The last time I heard about Light Table, the Ruby was not supported. Could someone please clarify which languages are supported, as of this release? BTW, awesome work Chris, really looking forward to use it.

elwell 13y ago
I think it's Clojure, Python, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. EDIT: added Python
- airlocksoftware 13y ago
  And Python.

curtis 13y ago

For those of you wondering what exactly Light Table is, I found this video to be a good introduction: http://vimeo.com/40281991 http://vimeo.com/40281991

Snoddas 13y ago
Going to the site trying to get a TL;DR about what it is and then the information is a 4.5 minute video. That's not gonna happen.
- idProQuo 13y ago
  TL;DR - It's an IDE with support for live coding. It's built with ClojureScript and has a number of unusual good properties. However, you really need to see the video to understand how viscerally awesome it is.

jessepollak 13y ago

I tried switching to LightTable from SublimeText 2 a couple months ago for javascript development, but was too confused and eventually gave up. That said, the feature set seems very intriguing and I'm tempted to give it another shot (especially with all this news). Does anyone have any thoughts on (or know of someone who's written about) making the transition to Light Table?

joshdick 13y ago
I think the key is to get used to hitting Ctrl+space to do everything. Pretty much everything that Light Table is capable of is through that interface.
- quaunaut 13y ago
  Sure, similar to Sublime's Cmd+T choice. The problem I have though, is that in Sublime I really can use that for near everything- even opening new files. You don't have that same option with Light.
  - ibdknox 13y ago
    Why not? There's a `File: open file` command, and then there's the navigator to look through files that are in the workspace. You can also add files to the workspace from the command pane with `Workspace: add file` or `Workspace: add folder`.
    - quaunaut 13y ago
      Right, but none of those options are particularly fast. In Sublime, if I want to open my Gemfile(at root), I just go Cmd+T: Gem And it's selected. If I want to open my admin_controller, located inside of /app/controllers/, I use Cmd+T: adm And it's selected. If I wanna do my Admin Controller test(spec) file, at /spec/controllers/admin_controller_spec.rb? Cmd+T: adm sp This is all a ton faster than what I'm seeing currenltly in Light Space, where I'm essentially forced to use my mouse, or OSX's poor keyboard controllers for open menu navigation.

unethical_ban 13y ago

I assume it's an IDE, since there is no information about the product anywhere on the site.

6d0debc071 13y ago
... There's lots of stuff about it on the website http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/ http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/
- unethical_ban 13y ago
  I expect a homepage to have a brief description of its product on the front page of the site. Barring that, I expect a similar brief description and feature set description on an "about" page. This has neither. I am eventually able to find out more, but only after assuming what it is and extrapolating what problems it's trying to solve.
  - Sandman 13y ago
    You were viewing Chris Granger's blog. This was a blog post about the new Light Table version. What you're looking for is at http://www.lighttable.com/ http://www.lighttable.com/

jbondeson 13y ago

As a backer I'm really happy that it's now open source. As a user I'm a bit concerned by this phrase '"plugin" is a bit of a misnomer - they are capable of fundamentally redefining in or adding anything to Light Table.' I understand that the dynamic nature of clojure makes this possible, but I'm reminded of all the issues monkey-patching causes. I would hate to spend hours diagnosing plug-in interactions.

swannodette 13y ago
This is pretty much how Emacs has worked for almost 40 years and it doesn't even have namespaces. As far as stability Emacs is definitely competitive with the many editors / IDEs I've tried in the past so I'd wager Light Table will do just fine with this model.
- ibdknox 13y ago
  Another interesting part of this is the use of behavior diffs, which means the user can at any point easily remove a behavior that is causing a conflict. Unlike in most situations where multiple plugins may add functionality and you're stuck with whatever the mixture is, it's very easy to take just what you want with LT plugins. One of the key goals of BOT was to enable people to handle conflicts downstream without needing to touch the source.
  - jbondeson 13y ago
    That sounds great, and will definitely help alleviate headaches when the clashes occur. Have you started playing with strategies to proactively identify potential clashes?
- jbondeson 13y ago
  As an avid Emacs user and having debugged unintended side-effects in minor-modes[1] I definitely know that this is possible there. At the same time though I would hope we learn from what works and doesn't work in Emacs and apply it to new tools. I think one of the big challenges will be establishing the best practices for plug-ins to avoid user-experience-ruining clashes. [1] - I help maintain the smooth-scrolling minor-mode and diagnosing and solving some of the interactions with evil-mode and macros has been... fun. Thankfully the Emacs community is populated by people who provide excellent bug reports!

storrgie 13y ago

Is anyone flocking to this over sublime?

filipedeschamps 13y ago
Currently we are heavely using Brackets to develop Node.js apps and will give lightable at least a try.
- aroman 13y ago
  Very curious about how this has been working for you. How has it improved your experience developing node apps? Any tips you have for setting it up?

daGrevis 13y ago

My comment from earlier today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7023884 tl;dr It's happening!

masukomi 13y ago
it should be noted that if you find the vim support lacking in LightTable it's just a matter of adding what you need to CodeMirror (which is where LightTable gets its vim support) and then LT, and everything else that uses CodeMirror will get better, and all us vim users will be thankful.
- pedalpete 13y ago
  Apparently CodeMirror already has vim bindings. http://codemirror.net/#features http://codemirror.net/#features
- owaislone 13y ago
  How does one actually enable Vim mode in LT?
  - usr 13y ago
    First you have to install the plugin. In the menu at the top, go to View then click on Commands. The commands will appear on the right side (and note that you can just start typing the name of a command to filter it out). Click on this one "Plugins: Show plugin manager". Then on the Plugins, make sure you go to the Available section. Scroll down and find Vim and click on it. Now you have to enable it. Go back to Commands and find "Settings: User behaviors" . Then go to the :editor section between the square brackets. Type "vim" and it will show a popup with several items it can complete. Pick this one: "Vim: Activate Vim mode". It should then insert this: :lt.plugins.vim/activate-vim Save the file and it should now work!
pedalpete 13y ago
deGrevis, it will be happening TWICE! I asked the original question, as I've been spending a bit of time creating an IDE, I'll be continuing development and will also be open sourcing it.

elwell 13y ago

Good timing, right when Clojure is starting to take hold.

guiomie 13y ago

This looks interesting, and I always wanted to learn lisp/clojure, but the website doesn't say much on how to use the tool. Anyone with good blog posts about clojure with light table on windows ?

jamii 13y ago
Try http://docs.lighttable.com/tutorials/full/ http://docs.lighttable.com/tutorials/full/

elyase 13y ago

Is there going to be an Instarepl for Python?

jbeja 13y ago
There is already one
- elyase 13y ago
  Is it documented anywhere? I know there is a REPL but haven't seen anything about an Instarepl like the one for Clojure.
  - jamii 13y ago
    There isn't an instarepl for python, only the normal eval-in-editor. For debugging, watches are a semi-substitute.

elwell 13y ago

Source is mostly ClojureScript. Interesting... was expecting jvm Clojure.

dminor 13y ago
Chris mentioned this at the end of a previous post: http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/01/24/the-ide-as-data/ ClojureScript on node-webkit is looking like a very interesting platform for desktop apps, especially with om/react.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  I would like to see ClojureScript as a server side language as well.
  - poweribo 13y ago
    Clojurescript is Clojure on the browser. Clojure runs on JVM / Server-side.
  - babby 13y ago
    It is if you run it on node.js, as it is when you run it on node.js -> node-webkit silly :).

josephagoss 13y ago

I always thought that the best license was the MIT one. Can someone enlighten me as to why choosing GPLv3 is a better choice?

mateuszf 13y ago
It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > It may be better for commercial users, because they don't have to give back their improvements, but it's worse for the project itself for the same reason. OTOH, another perspective is that the GPL is worse for the projects because the restrictions it imposes may make people less likely to touch it at all, and those who don't touch it aren't going to give anything back whether they have to or not, and commercial users demonstrably do give back to projects that are under licenses that don't require them to do so -- and even pay people to work directly on the projects.
  - chii 13y ago
    but having commercial users "altruistically" contribute back means having to trust in them. Had lightable not been GPL, commercial entities could easily have just taken it, make a nice derivative (e.g., make it into a game dev IDE), but never contribute that back at all. TLDR; they got a free lunch. With GPL , said commercial entity either have to provide their derivative's source (thus contributing back via more features/code), or pay the owners of lighttable a fee for not revealing the sources. Neither way allows them to get a free lunch. This is a good thing imho.
- asdasf 13y ago
  That isn't actually the case, just the rational used to make the choice. Actual experience has shown that commercial users simply avoid restrictive licensed projects, and frequently give back contributions to liberally licensed projects. Ogre3d for example switched from LGPL to MIT and got more contributions from the commercial software world.

Touche 13y ago

Looks like the rest of my day is blown as I read through this source.

Touche 13y ago

The post is a little unclear, is Light Table going to continue to be developed in the open or is this a code dump?

jamii 13y ago
Future development will all be open-source.
- Touche 13y ago
  Sorry, my question was unclear, I was asking whether they will be using GitHub (or another publicly visible place) for their daily development or is this just where released versions will be pushed?
  - jamii 13y ago
    No, my answer was unclear :) We will be doing all Light Table development in the open. We will be accepting pull requests (actually, I think we already have) although we require a CA (https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/blob/master/CONTRIB...).
    - acjohnson55 13y ago
      Incredible! Thanks and congratulations!

geertj 13y ago

Does it need a Java Runtime to run?

jamii 13y ago
You only need a jvm to use the clojure(script) language mode. You can use python/js/html/css modes without a jvm.

nilsimsa 13y ago

I look at some of the Kickstarter projects I sponsored (mostly hardware and software) and it seems most of them are a year behind schedule. It is nice to see that I'm not the only one bad at estimating project schedules. :)

rcarmo 13y ago

sigh no way to get an ARM build going, though, nor more pointers for doing so with node-webkit. See https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/703 https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable/issues/703 for more info. (Build instructions currently consist of dumping part of the current binaries and rebuilding the CLJS bits, which is straightforward but doesn't help much with porting to other archs)

methehack 13y ago

Is anyone aware of a particular reason that making a ruby plugin would be difficult? Seems like it would be a lot like the python plugin.

methehack 13y ago
Also -- for those interested in ruby -- basic syntax highlighting appears to be there already (I just downloaded the release and looked)...
- jamii 13y ago
  The code highlighting comes from CodeMirror. Adding ruby support should be fairly simple. The python plugin (https://github.com/LightTable/Python https://github.com/LightTable/Python) is only ~300 lines of cljs and ~750 lines of python and the cljs side shouldn't need too many changes.
  - existentialmutt 13y ago
    That's exactly what I'm doing here: https://github.com/existentialmutt/lt-ruby.git https://github.com/existentialmutt/lt-ruby.git

wbond 13y ago

I understand the reason for picking GPL for the editor. The, rather large, downside I see to this is that effectively all plugins are now GPL, correct? I run a small side business sell packages for Sublime Text and considered the concept of something similar for Light Table. While you certainly can sell GPL software, you can not prevent redistribution, so you effectively get into the business of providing support. I can't foresee being able to run a small support business without catering only to the enterprise. And even then "small" would be a relative term.

ibdknox 13y ago
If you're interested in this, get ahold of us and I'm sure we can work something out. The plan was always to do a dual licensing scheme to enable exactly what you're talking about.
carterschonwald 13y ago
I very much appreciate your work enabling sublime text to have a package ecosystem. I and the world thank you.

sandover 13y ago

Well Chris, the legal eagles here on the Lawyer News site are giving you a good response so far. I'd suggest you also submit this piece to Hacker News, and see what they make of it. I mean in terms of the actual, you know, software that you wrote.

ludston 13y ago
Above me is a beautifully sarcastic and eloquently crafted comment.

belluchan 13y ago

Cool, but how is this yc-backed company going to make money now? Was this a non-profit investment?

scott_karana 13y ago
Just because it's GPLv3 doesn't mean they can't sell commercial licenses for it. So I imagine they're considering support and integration and sources of revenue. (Totally speculative of course!)

neon_electro 13y ago

Will Light Table get OS-specific keyboard shortcuts (Command-based shortcuts on a Mac instead of Ctrl-based ones) in the future? They're probably the biggest reason I'm a fan of Sublime Text.

pdknsk 13y ago

I had no clue what Light Table is, so I went to the website and found out it's an IDE, but couldn't easily find out what makes it different from editors such as Sublime. Also on the main website, the background image has a height of just 762px, but stretches to the full height of the browser window. In my case, to 1920px (pivot). Needless to say it makes for an amateurish appearance. PS. Just from the name, I expected it to be a Lightroom clone.

jamii 13y ago
Where most IDEs rely on static analysis to give you information about your code, Light Table is based around live interaction with your code. You can eg attach to a running browser and inject new js or css code into the page from you editor without refreshing. Check out some of the demos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXpOD6jFls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXpOD6jFls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-b6QEN-rk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8-b6QEN-rk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2rOTrnqqtg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2rOTrnqqtg Light Table is also designed to be easily extensible, in the same way that emacs is. There is a small core which mostly defines interfaces and the rest of the features are implemented as plugins.

cabbeer 13y ago

This is great, Light Table is starting to look like the spiritual successor to emacs.

jbeja 13y ago
Or his little sister.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  Much sexier little sister.
- willismichael 13y ago
  Little sisters have a way of growing up.
  - nickik 13y ago
    And when the grow up you switch from your girlfriend to her little sister, because she is the same but better.

agumonkey 13y ago

I remember a little while ago people being very suspicious about LightTable being open sourced, quoting the fundraising page, doubting about extensibility. Kudos to ibdknox for his creation!

frik 13y ago

So technically LightTable is a web app coded in ClojureScript, HTML and CSS running in Chromium Embedded Framework (C++ application) [1] with a child Node.js background process. [1] Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF): http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/ http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/ Edit: the main author explained his decision to use Chromium here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/light-table-discussion/Y0XBCOUZ7cA https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/light-table-discussi... He is using node-webkit: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit apparently, it doesn't use CEF anymore: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/1406 https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/issues/1406 Valve's Steam and Adobe continue to use CEF for their web based desktop apps: https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/CEF3-vs.-Chromium-Content-Shell https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/CEF3-vs.-Chromium-Con...

rch 13y ago
Also, from your link to the issue indicating why CEF isn't used: "The wrapper for embedding Chromium in C++ apps from CEF is useless to node-webkit, and it adds complexity and costs. Regarding the statement Content API and is not intended to be a starting point for a robust application, I don't think that's true -- Chrome is based on Content API and it's clearly a robust application. Maybe it just want to say Content API is not as easy to use as CEF API."
tbassetto 13y ago
Spotify is also using CEF (3).

madlag 13y ago

This is really exciting news, I am really glad I backed them on KickStarter ! Maybe even a good reason to try to learn Clojure ;-)

Tehnix 13y ago

Would really like to see Haskell integration (via a plugin?) support for this!

izietto 13y ago

Great news! Can't wait to replace SublimeText with this :P

jbeja 13y ago
I already replace it with Emacs
- izietto 13y ago
  I can't get used to Emacs (or Vim neither), they require too much keyboard interaction and they are aesthetically ugly
  - jbeja 13y ago
    Once you get use to the keys and put a nice color scheme the efficiency that you gain is something out of pray, but i think that efficiency is no everyones call.
  - mkartic 13y ago
    why are they 'aesthetically ugly'? do you mean they don't have windows with glossed borders?
    - izietto 13y ago
      I mean they lack in harmony IMHO, like KDE, which has ugly icons and button with not harmonious paddings

yawz 13y ago

So what do Kickstarter backers think about this? Was open-sourcing Light Table always the plan?

liyanage 13y ago
I backed this on Kickstarter and I'm very disappointed that it's now GPL and not BSD/MIT-licensed.

john2x 13y ago

Would a terminal interface (maybe as a plugin) be feasible in the future? I'm cursed with Vim, and I'd love to use this as a REPL for development.

joshuafcole 13y ago
Definitely a possibility -- LT is very flexible. Even if you choose to more or less ignore the plugin interface, you can interact directly with the DOM. I imagine the path of least resistance for a terminal plugin is just to open a new named tab via the API and then inject an existing HTML terminal emulator into it with access to the local machine.
- john2x 13y ago
  I'm trying to picture this. So I have LT open, and then I interact with it via a 3rd party terminal application? Maybe the terminal app can "pull" output from LT (or LT "pushes" output to the terminal app?
  - joshuafcole 13y ago
    You could certainly set up a bridge over sockets or ajax, but I think the true beauty of LT is that you can actually embed an extant web-based terminal directly into LT's dom and interact with its native events. LT runs in node-webkit, which is essentially chromium. The only barrier to entry I can think of is that it might be difficult to set up the terminal emulator to interact with the local FS, but its definitely a solvable problem. My current plugins both interact directly with the DOM and the local FS for various purposes using node and jQuery. The jQuery is honestly unnecessary thanks to only needing to support webkit, but it was a simple expedient and its luxurious not worrying about byte count since everything is running off the local machine.

GhostHardware 13y ago

This is the first time I read about lighttable and I'm glad I did. It looks really sweet. Now all I need is good vim plugin and I think I'm finally set.

e12e 13y ago
Apparently there are already vim keybindings: https://github.com/LightTable/Vim https://github.com/LightTable/Vim Not sure how complete they are, though (or rather: if they make lt work "like vim", or just add some short cuts).

joshuafcole 13y ago

I've been working with LT for a bit over a month now by picking at it through the dev inspector and grepping over the compiled cljs source. I've used that to build two plugins in JS [1][2] to help LT meet my needs as a day to day editor. The biggest takeaway I had is that an editor built on the DOM is a _very_ natural experience to work with. I come from a heavily emacs background and was always fond of its extensibility, but I found it fairly imposing to try and create or update nontrivial UI functionality. The usage of HTML and CSS greatly streamlines that process and makes it feel much more accessible. Perhaps more importantly, not trying to restrict plugins to using a particular API has opened LT to integration with the tons of projects already built for the web -- from terminal emulators to emmet.io, integration is very nearly as simple as including the project's source and embedding it's root element into a tab. There's a lot of low hanging fruit at this stage in the game, so I look forward to seeing rapid plugin development in the coming weeks. [1] Claire - Fuzzy File Finder inspired by ido-mode in emacs (https://github.com/joshuafcole/claire https://github.com/joshuafcole/claire). [2] Recall - Workspace Persistence Plugin to keep your tabs and tabsets loaded between sessions (https://github.com/joshuafcole/recall https://github.com/joshuafcole/recall).

jsilence 13y ago
Wondering whether someone is working on a org-mode plugin.
- joshuafcole 13y ago
  Not at the moment, but it sounds like an excellent project. At the moment my plate is a bit full with: 1. A SASS-based theme framework for LT that modularizes all of the widgets and plugins into partials. It's pretty difficult to just dive into the existing CSS and figure out what to change to achieve a particular effect. You're basically required to poke around in the dev inspector. 2. A proper C++ language mode via clang. Once those are up in several weeks if nobody else has tackled an org-mode implementation I'll probably investigate it. If you have any free time and a desire to learn or use clojure I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot though. The community would definitely appreciate it.
- 13y ago

muyuu 13y ago

Now that it's GPLv3 I'd like to donate but I haven't found a way. Any way to donate?

dangayle 13y ago

Anyone else not want to read any of this comment thread because the first thing you see is how it descends into a discussion of the GPL? Please, it's like politics and religion. Is it possible to just talk about the software itself? I'm sure there are some great comments hidden in there, but I'm not willing to slog through the mess to find them. In other news, I downloaded Light Table and I'm willing to give it a shot.

deevus 13y ago
I share your exact sentiment. It would be good if HN had thread collapse.
- weavie 13y ago
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hn-utility-suite/?src=api https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hn-utility-su... does the trick if you are on Firefox.
- ideaoverload 13y ago
  Chrome extension to collapse HN threads: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collapsible-c/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap...
- rayshan 13y ago
  Hacker News Enhancement Suite [1] is pretty great with collapsible comments, even shows you new comment count after you revisit home page. Styling may be a personal taste thing though. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
  - mercer 13y ago
    Not only does it show new comment count, it highlights the unread comments in the thread itself. I've become so reliant on HNES that I avoid accessing hacker news on other devices (and when I have to, I use hn.premii.com).

nilved 13y ago

This is pretty cool. Does Light Table have plain text configuration that can be stored in git? I would consider an editor that isn't configured that way to be a regression.

atmosx 13y ago

I give it a shot under macosx. The CPU goes a little bit crazy on my Air, but since it's an Alpha version might be improved in the future. Good work though, I like the look and feel.

chetanahuja 13y ago

I'd never heard of light table before this. Came here to see what other devs thought of it. Found furious discussion about open source licenses instead. Feels like usenet in 1995.

DigitalJack 13y ago
http://diovo.com/2010/11/collapsible-comments-for-hacker-news/ http://diovo.com/2010/11/collapsible-comments-for-hacker-new...
- werner34 13y ago
  This is great, thanks! I unminified it first to look at the code, but it looks like its not doing anything nasty.

politician 13y ago

I am both happy and kind of annoyed by this announcement. As a backer, I felt that I "paid" for some extra licenses by backing this project based on the reward levels. I did get a T-shirt though. Anyway, it's better for the community that it's free(ish) though I wish Kickstarter would exercise some control over its reward system, but lesson learned.

notimetorelax 13y ago
I always thought that kickstarter was a way to subsidize development and is in no way a form of investment.
- chii 13y ago
  and you're right. Kickstarter is not an investment platform. Which is why i don't ever contribute to a kickstarter, unless i know i m getting some return on investment back (either in the form of payment, or an appropriate amount of discount for the product). I wish there is a true crowd funding platform where you could "own" and partake in the profits generated from the funding.
  - nickik 13y ago
    Thats not gone happen because of goverment regulations.
Derbasti 13y ago
Why are you annoyed? You now have all the licenses you'll ever need!
- noir_lord 13y ago
  ....but so will the people who didn't pay. How can I be the elite when everyone gets a castle. (note: this is how is post appeared to me, I've no idea if it's accurate.)
  - 13y ago

_pmf_ 13y ago

I'm impressed by the performance and start-up time of their JS-based environment; it's ridiculous that it's that fast while a heavily modularized OSGi-bnased Eclipse environment takes an order of magnitude more time to start, in spite of lazy loading of modules. The font rendering is shitty, tough, but that's probably expected when using OpenGL.

efnx 13y ago
Wait, I thought they were using Chromium for rendering. Are you saying that chromium uses OpenGL or that they aren't using chromium? And why would OpenGL be the cause of shitty font rendering? OpenGL handles points and shaders, not fonts - that's the job of something like freetype.
azoapes 13y ago
If you're talking about Windows, then maybe it will improve once this issue is fixed: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692
- babby 13y ago
  So, okay then, it's about 12 weeks away from hitting stable. Took em a while but I'm glad it's finally being fixed.

deevus 13y ago

How does "Editor: build file or project" work? Can I create my own build targets?

ciol 13y ago

The Windows install instructions listed on the repo didn't work right out of the box for me - the app would just stay the "light table" welcome screen and nothing would happen. Figured out through the nw console that bootstrap.js was missing in core/node_modules/lighttable, and adding that seemed to do the trick. Maybe I did something wrong, though.

aigarius 13y ago

Nice announcement, but where is the actual source? The github repo "build instructions" currently tell you to run a script that downloads a binary release from CloudFront, unpacks that and runs whatever was in in it. Sorry, that is not source. Well, at least not complete source. Where is the source for the binaries that are being downloaded and build instructions for them?

msmithstubbs 13y ago
The source is at https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable https://github.com/LightTable/LightTable The binary from CloudFront looks to be a convenience to avoid building node-webkit. From the readme: Then we have to do some juggling (unless you fancy building node-webkit from source). You can get the source for node-webkit and build it yourself[1] but it looks to be time consuming and requires a significant amount of disk space. [1]: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/Building-node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/Building-node-...
- vinodkd 13y ago
  i can attest to this. if you dont need to, please dont go down the path of building node-webkit. Actually, its not so much node-webkit as chrome/webkit inside it. that took a few days to download correctly and then a few nights to build. i did it when i was still on snow leopard and needed nw.
- aigarius 13y ago
  Thanks, that helps a bit. So the ltbin binary blob is actually just a renamed nw binary from https://s3.amazonaws.com/node-webkit/v0.8.4/node-webkit-v0.8.4-linux-x64.tar.gz https://s3.amazonaws.com/node-webkit/v0.8.4/node-webkit-v0.8... release. I was unable to find out where the libffmpegsumo.so binary came from (I know it is part of FFMpeg and also integrated into Chromium, but what exact version is compiled there and with what options? They differ a lot, even in the legal context). And then there is the whole plugins folder which contains more sources that are not in git for some reason. There is no real point for LightTable to be providing some bunch of binaries. A pointer to node-webkit would be enough, they have binaries (and build instructions) on their github front page.

philliphaydon 13y ago

I just downloaded it. Besides creating a file, typing some stuff. I don't understand how it works or what it's meant to do... Quick google search, I can't figure it out... Am I missing something? The video on the website, I can't even... So confused :(

phireph0x 13y ago

I backed them on Kickstarter; glad to see they're open sourcing the code.

jopython 13y ago

Will there be a Ubuntu package for Light Table which ensures all dependencies are met.