36 ms·

Zed: The Next Phase

304 points by softmodeling 13y ago

quchen 13y ago
Does "Chrome packed" mean I need to have Chrome installed to run it? Does it run in the browser? Do certain libs suffice to run it?
- eudox 13y ago
  I'm guessing it uses CEF3.
- zef_hemel 13y ago
  Right now you need Chrome to install it, the standalone version I mention will embed the parts of Chrome in the binary.
lauriswtf 13y ago
Congrats on launching, this looks like an interesting project. Sorry if I missed this from the post, but is there any particular reason why Zed is tied to Chrome? Are there any technical benefits? P.S. I am asking because I am currently involved in a project of similar type - a web based GUI for databases (MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL, Oracle) - Datazenit[0], but we decided against shipping it as a packaged Chrome app, because it would narrow potential user base. [0] - http://datazenit.com/ http://datazenit.com/ P.P.S. Just to let you know - link to your twitter account is broken (https://twitter.com/zed_editor https://twitter.com/zed_editor).
- krat0sprakhar 13y ago
  The author mentions the benefits of sticking with chrome - * Cross platform: Zed runs on any platforms that desktop Chrome runs on (including Chromebooks) * Installation is easy with just a few clicks * Upgrades are automatic * Settings are automatically synchronized between all computers logged into with the same Google account. * Special “Notes” space is stored in Google Drive and synchronized between computers automatically as well. Link - http://zedapp.org/ http://zedapp.org/
- JasonFruit 13y ago
  Take the underscore out of the Twitter link.
Edmond 13y ago
I hope it works out for you. I'll be hesitant about the productivity pitch though...a lot of developers don't truly care about productivity in the way that one would expect. Often what opinionated developers want is something that conforms to their opinions, productivity just becomes a convenient excuse for the choice of a particular tool. At least as someone who's spent a lot of time pitching productivity to developers I have become skeptical that developers value it as much as one would ordinarily expect. I am the developer of HiveMind (crudzilla.com), a web app platform that literally allows you to get a whole bunch of things done with writing little to no code. I find this pitch simply doesn't fly with a lot of developers :) The open source pitch for instance is something I am sure will get you some followers, though how big a following is not certain. Welcome aboard the entrepreneurial train!
- _pmf_ 13y ago
  > a lot of developers don't truly care about productivity in the way that one would expect A lot of developers are also mature enough not to think that the choice of the developing environment matters (above a reasonable base level, of course). All serious environments are configurable and programmable. It's a plain matter of taste what you use.
  - Edmond 13y ago
    I agree that productivity is more than dev environments. However productivity to me means something very simple, how quickly can you go from "I want x" to having a functional x. The more a tool is helpful in this regard the more productive it makes me. Maybe someone should start a service that actually measures various dev products in terms of how quickly they allow you to complete various dev tasks. For instance most web apps are just CRUD apps, it should be possible to benchmark various frameworks/tool to see how quickly they facilitate development....it should make for an exciting exercise :)
drdaeman 13y ago
Sorry for negativity, but is it really a code editor or yet another notepad clone with syntax highlighting? There are too many of the latter and almost none of the former. I believe code editor to be called one must be designed to work with the code and provide standard facilities to manipulate upon it. The rest is for particular language support module that'd recognize semantics and do the transformations. For example, the very core must have option to bind language module-provided semantics data to text fragments, so, say, highlighter (a proper one, not a TextMate-like mess of regexps) would base its work upon knowing not only "syntax regexp says this is a variable" but "semantic analyzer says this is a variable `foo`, and it's also used here and there, too (but not there, it's another scope), if that matters", while remaining generic. (Edited: minor re-formatting)
- mercurial 13y ago
  It seems to have at least autocompletion and ctags support. Not really something for me, but best of luck to the author.
- scriptdevil 13y ago
  While I understand that it is useful to have semantic information (nothing stops Zed from having it from what I can see in its mode files which use ace-editor's modes currently), I don't really think a code-editor needs to come with semantic information for all languages it supports. I don't know if that is even possible in a generic way. I mean, the behaviour of scope itself isn't generic. There are dynamic-scoped languages (like elisp) vs block-scoped languages (Java) vs function-scoped languages (JavaScript) which are all syntax-highlighted by most popular editors. I would relegate such work to heavier IDEs.
  - drdaeman 13y ago
    Well, my point is not that multi-language code editor must provide semantic information for every language it can edit (that's just infeasible), but that editor's core must be designed with semantics in mind. I.e., not "well, it's text and core has no idea what it is but plugins are free to do anything with that", but "well, core has no idea what that 'typeclass' thingy code analyzer says it is, but it's happy to keep track of it and provide standard interfaces to use this info so maybe highlighter or code folding parts would figure out how to use that information" Then you could start with regexp mess-based parser that provides very basic understanding of the code and replace it with something that gives better code insight at later time, without rewriting the rest. And have generic refactoring module that can operate on many languages just by knowing about names and their possible scopes (whatever scoping type language is, in common cases I believe that still could be reduced to "in this text region").
Bootvis 13y ago
I read that you're not sure how you will earn an income but basically, you will depend on the generosity of your users. If I might try one tip: Who are you? What drives you? Tell us a bit about yourself on your website. I think it will help with income.
- sasvari 13y ago
  http://zef.me/about http://zef.me/about
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  Apologies if this is OT, but does anyone have link(s) to a "Making Money From Open Source for Dummies" guide? The only options I'm aware of: 1. Donations. 2. "Open core" or "freemium" model. 3. Paid books/lectures about it. 4. Get hired as a consultant to teach, trouble-shoot, and/or customize. 5. Get hired as an employee to work more on it or something else. However other than 1, none truly consist of getting paid for the open source per se. Which maybe works out OK, anyway. To clarify, this is not a rhetorical question where I'm trying to slag on open source. I'm already doing a number of open source projects, and enjoy it. I'm genuinely interested, if I wanted to support myself doing open source, realistically what are the options? And I genuinely don't fully understand how.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - wehadfun 13y ago
    Charge for the installer. If I want to use a tool I do not want to try to compile it
  - Skoofoo 13y ago
    One option is building an open source framework to be the base for your commercial projects. Rails and Django started this way. What XChat does is charge for the official Windows binary[1] while being open source. I think something like this would be a good option for Zed. [1] http://xchat.org/windows/ http://xchat.org/windows/
iElectric2 13y ago
I'm using it for a few months after 10 years of Vim. It's very similar to Vim, with proper defaults and JavaScript as approachable language compared to vimscript. I believe the most innovative thing Zed introduces is hackability. Configuration is basically just another project inside the editor. Other cool features/defaults are presented on http://zedapp.org/features/ http://zedapp.org/features/
pekk 13y ago
There are too many editors named Zed, please get a different name to reduce the confusion (and it can't be Xed)
tsewlliw 13y ago
> I’m making Zed my day-time job I'm super excited for you! Passion & Dedication! Bravo
213424355352255 13y ago
Biggest issues with Zed: 1) Chrome extension (I understand the stand-alone application is coming) 2) Vim-style modality missing (exact keybinding replication is not necessary, just the principle of remaining on the home row) 3) Excess editor chrome - the top of the editor takes up 2 lines when it could be compacted to 1
- wazoox 13y ago
  Yes, I'm a Firefox user, and when I install extensions I don't expect being asked to provide a login and password. I'm definitely NOT comfortable with Google knowing what extensions I use, when I use them, etc. A nice reminder of one of the reasons I can't seriously consider Chrome as my main browser.
zz1 13y ago
> Zed currently is only available as a Chrome packaged app Sorry: this is not the kind of OSS that I want to support. Best of luck, though.
- iElectric2 13y ago
  standalone (node-webkit) is in development.
- SlashmanX 13y ago
  Next paragraph: > The stand-alone version will be built on top of node-webkit and be available for Mac, Windows and Linux. Once the initial work there is done, both version should continue working from the same code base, so I should be able to support two versions (Chrome App and standalone) without much effort.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
zimbatm 13y ago
Yes ! I get excited because the author lists "Reduce cognitive load" at the editor's first goal. It's not an absolute and easy to measure metric but is worth having having as a first class citizen. Plus he already proves that he's moving in that direction by removing the concept of open/closed files. For funding: how hard would it be to create a "shared hire" subscription model where participants get a vote into what the author is doing ?
jlongster 13y ago
It's worth mentioning that Emacs operates on files the exact way you want Zed to work (on your philosophy page). I'm not trying to be one of those "Emacs already does this" guys, but you seem to legitimately think it's a new concept, when most people using Emacs use it like that. "Like that" being that we don't care if a file is open or closed. If I'm swapping between 2 files a lot, I will just swap buffers, but usually I just navigate straight to whatever file I need and open it. If it's already open, the buffer will come up; otherwise a buffer will be created. ido-mode makes it trivial to query files/buffers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE (edit: inversely, ido-mode actually saves a history of opened files so if you try to switch to a buffer of a file that isn't open, but you've opened before, it will transparently open it for you and it feels like it was never closed) Also, same thing with file creation. I'll just navigate to the file I want to create and hit enter.
MetaCosm 13y ago
Reading some of the ideas made me update my .vimrc a bit. The point that buffers versus files is mostly useless now is on point. The rest of the points about minimal UI I already use. Create files same way you find them, sure!
agumonkey 13y ago
I like Zed author's choices. I don't think there's anything new in them per se, but a different combination of small existing principles may breed an interesting culture. Good luck.
pyrrhotech 13y ago
I believe his math forgets that we pay 40+% taxes out here in SV :) Nice job all around. Will check it out
tsax 13y ago
At first glance, it appeared to be a Zed Shaw thing to me.
- userbinator 13y ago
  I'm glad to not be the only one who thought "he's writing an editor now?"
electrograv 13y ago
Thanks for posting, and great work so far! Unfortunately, I encountered a few deal-breaker issues with Zed. So here are a few criticisms, if this helps you improve the project (but by no means let this detract from the current success of a great project!): 1. IMO you're using the wrong text matching algorithm for file search. This is pretty critical, considering it's the main interface for opening files. Zed seems to search for simple text substrings only, whereas both Sublime Text 2 and Xcode look for the longest common subsequence. This is huge, for me at least; in Xcode or ST2 I can type the first few letters of one of my files, followed by a few more letters from different words in it, followed by ".cpp" and it finds the file. Zed (as is) is completely unusable to me, because my project folder contains many similarly named files (.h, .cpp) as well as a ton of other source files from external libraries/modules with similar sub-words with what I'm searching for which for some reason always show up first and saturate the search results. With Zed there's no way to narrow down to what I'm looking for besides typing in the full name of the file. With ST2 or Xcode this is not a problem due to LCS. 2. This is not your fault necessarily, but it's a big deal to me: Text rendering is slow in Zed (and in every other web-technology-based code editor I've tried, e.g. Light Table). For example, scrolling is even choppier than Xcode. The primary (if not sole) reason I moved away from Xcode to ST2 was because Xcode's horribly laggy UI was driving me crazy. This is a bit of a personal rant, but we're living in an age with multi-gigaflop CPUs and multi-terraflop GPUs, yet we have somehow regressed to a point where scrolling (of all things) is laggy? IMO this is absurd, as an industry trend in general. For this reason, I generally dislike the trend to write everything (including local apps) in HTML/CSS/JS. These technologies really weren't designed to support this sort of complex dynamic UI. While it's quite impressive what's possible despite this, the stress of forcibly warping HTML/CSS/JS to accomplish some of these UI feats shows through as horrible inefficiency.
- zef_hemel 13y ago
  Thank you for your constructive comments. I can work with this :)
  - mc_hammer 13y ago
    fwiw the search is called fuzzy matching also, gl on the project
crashandburn4 13y ago
Hi, first off, love that you've decided to keep it open source (lack of open-source code is what pushed me away from sublime into the arms of my current mistress, emacs), keep up the good work! Can I digress into a feature suggestion? This is no small one and I don't really know where it lies on a feasibility scale. One thing I'd really like would be the ability to turn whatever text-box I'm writing in into a frame of my current editor (I currently use edit-with-emacs). I looked into writing a chrome-extension (which is the only way I can think of to accomplish it) with ACE editor to do this but I didn't have enough time. My thoughts are, since you use a web based editor, you can use javascript to replace the input box with a resized frame of your editor, the next requirement is importing your personal user settings from your chrome packaged app into the frame to have it working there (I currently don't know how you'd accomplish this, maybe some integration with google drive which you already have for your notes?). The main reason I think this would be a useful feature is vim keybindings, I use them for everything and feel less productive editing text without them. Being able to integrate the IDE that I use and am used to into every text box ubiquitously on the web seems like a huge win to me. Sorry about the digression, it's just I liked the sound of your application and wanted to share the one thing I've been missing online (which is a web-based editor where it's extensible, and can be used on any site, I do realise that there is a big gap between your project and my feature suggestion, just wanted to make it.)
- dangoor 13y ago
  We actually talked about that feature a good bit when working on Bespin (in 2009). I haven't used it in years, but you may find this bookmarklet helpful: http://ajaxorg.github.io/ace/build/textarea/editor.html http://ajaxorg.github.io/ace/build/textarea/editor.html
AbhishekBiswal 13y ago
It's nice, simple, usable. But whenever I maximize the app window, it just goes fullscreen. Is it supposed to be like that? Or is it a bug?
tbirdz 13y ago
>Can’t some random person fork the project and attempt same thing? Yep. Worse, they can fork the project, and create a proprietary version and start selling it. If you released it under the GPL, then they would not legally be allowed to make a proprietary version and start selling it. Also, the GPL does not prevent you from selling your software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
- e12e 13y ago
  Seeing as how this beverages web technologies (although it installs locally right now), AGPL might be a better choice. As long as he retains copyright, he'll be free to also sell commercial licenses if that becomes interesting/viable. That said, having the legal right to something, and being able to enforce it, isn't the same thing (just ask Adobe).
  - psykovsky 13y ago
    That's only because Adobe isn't in the movies business.
    - e12e 13y ago
      Yeah, that's right. Movies aren't subject to illegal downloads. /s (On a more serious note, while I'm not a supporter of the draconian DRM schemes that have been enacted into law -- and while the studios make completely ridiculous claims for damages -- implying that films aren't being copied in a way that conflicts with their licensing terms is clearly wrong)
- AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
  I REALLY hope he already knows this, as he's putting his career and saving on the line here. Although I don't think he should go GPL, he should at least know about the license differences.
  - zef_hemel 13y ago
ebbv 13y ago
I really want to suggest rewriting it in native code. A web based editor is a fine side project but if you want it to be a business people pay for, it needs to have native performance. It's popular to claim that the web is near native performance, but honestly, it's a load of horseshit. Web performance is better than it's ever been but it still has a long way to go before it's anywhere near native.
- chr1 13y ago
  But then he will spend a huge amount of time replicating functionality that browsers provide, functionality which is hard to implement and hard to maintain. Also will loose advantage of being easy to extend. But on what kind of computer did you test this? On my windows desktop it is as fast as sublime. On mac scrolling isn't smooth, but from chrome timeline i see that it is choppy because it doesn't handle scroll events correctly, not because of performance.
ishansharma 13y ago
FYI, BitDefender shows site as infected: http://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info?url=http%3A//zedapp.org/2014/04/zed-the-next-phase&language=en_US http://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info?url=http%3A//zedapp... Might want to check it out, I got a bit red alert before I could visit the page.
Datsundere 13y ago
He should also take donations, not just letting people buy the software.
- drachenstern 13y ago
  https://www.gittip.com/zefhemel/ https://www.gittip.com/zefhemel/
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rcarmo 13y ago
Interesting, but needs a few tweaks: - I simply cannot resize the windows on a Mac using the Accessibility API (I'm using Moom to tile my windows via keyboard bindings, and Zed is invisible to it) - Needs a few more docs on how to set up a theme (I tried three times before I managed to set Solarized on) - As much as it may seem counter its philosophy, I need vim bindings :) And yes, it's a tad slow. So is LightTable, which is why I am still using vim inside a terminal...
bsimpson 13y ago
On ChromeOS, I got stuck on the very first screen: I can either enter a Project or a URL to edit. Typing text in either place does nothing interesting. "Enter" does nothing. Clicking around, I can't find any way to make a new window. All I want to do is see your editor and start playing with it. I don't even really want to edit a file yet. No obvious way to make any of that happen. The first window is too small. The note about how to edit remotely requires scrolling, but it isn't obvious that the page needs to be scrolled.
- zef_hemel 13y ago
  You can edit a local project (click "Open Local Folder"), a Dropbox folder ("Open Dropbox Folder") or the built-in Notes, Configuration and Manual projects. None of those work? Works fine my my Chromebook.
  - bsimpson 13y ago
    Even after making the window big enough so I don't have to scroll, this is all I see: http://imgur.com/9WWEFmz http://imgur.com/9WWEFmz
thetwentyone 13y ago
I would love to use a chromebook as my main development machine, but the main thing is that I would like to be able to use Git offline. Has anybody moved to a chromebook as their main machine and been able to use version control while not connected to the internet?
- ioddly 13y ago
  I have, assuming installing Ubuntu on it isn't cheating.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  One option is to put the Chromebook in dev mode and use Crouton[^1] to install Ubuntu as a chroot. It's easy to do and works well. You can use ChromeOS as usual side by side. [1]: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
- spankalee 13y ago
  The Spark project ( https://github.com/dart-lang/spark https://github.com/dart-lang/spark ) is porting git to work on ChromeOS. I'm not sure how far along they are.
Dewie 13y ago
Mac OS X seems to be incredibly widely used by programmers now. Because every time I see a screen shot to illustrate some GUI, it was taken on a Mac. :)
Dorian-Marie 13y ago
Amazing, that really close to what I thought Atom was going to be, "just" a webapp.
gcb0 13y ago
I can't avoid thinking it is a sweet attack vector for being a browser extension... I would probably use it if i have to edit on a chromebook, but then again, i prefer to avoid touching chromebooks even with a 10ft pole.
habosa 13y ago
Thanks for making this a Chrome App! This will fill a big gap for me on my Chromebook, especially the ability to edit Dropbox files. You should add Google Drive support as well if possible, since you're already in the Chrome ecosystem.
baby 13y ago
node-webkit is amazing, but is it really suited for an IDE? I don't see how you could launch a node-webkit application as fast as Sublime Text for example.
spacesword 13y ago
You say: "Worse, they can fork the project, and create a proprietary version and start selling it" So why not release the source code under GPL or even MPL or EPL?
badloginagain 13y ago
I would like the ability to highlight all instances of a highlighted word, like in Notepad++
- chr1 13y ago
  Yeah this is the most important feature in editor. But did you try zed? it already has this feature.
guelo 13y ago
I wonder if this guy's success so far is based on Zed Shaw's tech fame. There should be a trademark on tech personalities.
beat 13y ago
I'll give this a try. I've been knocking around looking for a new OSX editor, and haven't been completely happy with any of them. Current editor-of-choice is Light Table, but I'm not in love with it. It's really interesting to try all these new, modern editors and see the subtle tradeoffs the creators made.
bashcoder 13y ago
Much success and wisdom to you in your efforts - love the courage, and your eagerness to take feedback. As to the app, my recommendation is to avoid putting .zedstate files inside the project directories themselves. Instead, keep them in a ~/.zed/ directory. Keeps folks from having to make special .gitignore commits for all of their projects.
sciguy77 13y ago
Can someone give me their opinion of Zed vs Sublime? I'm curious.
p4bl0 13y ago
Do you have plan on making the Zed server described in http://zedapp.org/features/edit-remote-files/ http://zedapp.org/features/edit-remote-files/ to allow concurrent edit of the same file by different clients to enable collaborative work?
Zelphyr 13y ago
Zed highlights the always forgotten necessity of documentation. The app looks great. Has a few quirks but seems otherwise stable and I LOVE being able to edit remote files with a local editor. But I don't care how good your app is; if you didn't write documentation then you're just not done. And don't go giving me that adage "its open source! contribute the docs yourself." The fact is, its YOUR project that YOU wrote and it is simply incomplete with little/poor documentation. So, to the Zed author: before adding anymore features please take some time and write good quality docs. The community will thank you.

304 points by softmodeling 13y ago

Does "Chrome packed" mean I need to have Chrome installed to run it? Does it run in the browser? Do certain libs suffice to run it?

eudox 13y ago
I'm guessing it uses CEF3.
zef_hemel 13y ago
Right now you need Chrome to install it, the standalone version I mention will embed the parts of Chrome in the binary.

lauriswtf 13y ago

Congrats on launching, this looks like an interesting project. Sorry if I missed this from the post, but is there any particular reason why Zed is tied to Chrome? Are there any technical benefits? P.S. I am asking because I am currently involved in a project of similar type - a web based GUI for databases (MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL, Oracle) - Datazenit[0], but we decided against shipping it as a packaged Chrome app, because it would narrow potential user base. [0] - http://datazenit.com/ http://datazenit.com/ P.P.S. Just to let you know - link to your twitter account is broken (https://twitter.com/zed_editor https://twitter.com/zed_editor).

krat0sprakhar 13y ago
The author mentions the benefits of sticking with chrome - * Cross platform: Zed runs on any platforms that desktop Chrome runs on (including Chromebooks) * Installation is easy with just a few clicks * Upgrades are automatic * Settings are automatically synchronized between all computers logged into with the same Google account. * Special “Notes” space is stored in Google Drive and synchronized between computers automatically as well. Link - http://zedapp.org/ http://zedapp.org/
JasonFruit 13y ago
Take the underscore out of the Twitter link.

Edmond 13y ago

I hope it works out for you. I'll be hesitant about the productivity pitch though...a lot of developers don't truly care about productivity in the way that one would expect. Often what opinionated developers want is something that conforms to their opinions, productivity just becomes a convenient excuse for the choice of a particular tool. At least as someone who's spent a lot of time pitching productivity to developers I have become skeptical that developers value it as much as one would ordinarily expect. I am the developer of HiveMind (crudzilla.com), a web app platform that literally allows you to get a whole bunch of things done with writing little to no code. I find this pitch simply doesn't fly with a lot of developers :) The open source pitch for instance is something I am sure will get you some followers, though how big a following is not certain. Welcome aboard the entrepreneurial train!

_pmf_ 13y ago
> a lot of developers don't truly care about productivity in the way that one would expect A lot of developers are also mature enough not to think that the choice of the developing environment matters (above a reasonable base level, of course). All serious environments are configurable and programmable. It's a plain matter of taste what you use.
- Edmond 13y ago
  I agree that productivity is more than dev environments. However productivity to me means something very simple, how quickly can you go from "I want x" to having a functional x. The more a tool is helpful in this regard the more productive it makes me. Maybe someone should start a service that actually measures various dev products in terms of how quickly they allow you to complete various dev tasks. For instance most web apps are just CRUD apps, it should be possible to benchmark various frameworks/tool to see how quickly they facilitate development....it should make for an exciting exercise :)

drdaeman 13y ago

Sorry for negativity, but is it really a code editor or yet another notepad clone with syntax highlighting? There are too many of the latter and almost none of the former. I believe code editor to be called one must be designed to work with the code and provide standard facilities to manipulate upon it. The rest is for particular language support module that'd recognize semantics and do the transformations. For example, the very core must have option to bind language module-provided semantics data to text fragments, so, say, highlighter (a proper one, not a TextMate-like mess of regexps) would base its work upon knowing not only "syntax regexp says this is a variable" but "semantic analyzer says this is a variable `foo`, and it's also used here and there, too (but not there, it's another scope), if that matters", while remaining generic. (Edited: minor re-formatting)

mercurial 13y ago
It seems to have at least autocompletion and ctags support. Not really something for me, but best of luck to the author.
scriptdevil 13y ago
While I understand that it is useful to have semantic information (nothing stops Zed from having it from what I can see in its mode files which use ace-editor's modes currently), I don't really think a code-editor needs to come with semantic information for all languages it supports. I don't know if that is even possible in a generic way. I mean, the behaviour of scope itself isn't generic. There are dynamic-scoped languages (like elisp) vs block-scoped languages (Java) vs function-scoped languages (JavaScript) which are all syntax-highlighted by most popular editors. I would relegate such work to heavier IDEs.
- drdaeman 13y ago
  Well, my point is not that multi-language code editor must provide semantic information for every language it can edit (that's just infeasible), but that editor's core must be designed with semantics in mind. I.e., not "well, it's text and core has no idea what it is but plugins are free to do anything with that", but "well, core has no idea what that 'typeclass' thingy code analyzer says it is, but it's happy to keep track of it and provide standard interfaces to use this info so maybe highlighter or code folding parts would figure out how to use that information" Then you could start with regexp mess-based parser that provides very basic understanding of the code and replace it with something that gives better code insight at later time, without rewriting the rest. And have generic refactoring module that can operate on many languages just by knowing about names and their possible scopes (whatever scoping type language is, in common cases I believe that still could be reduced to "in this text region").

Bootvis 13y ago

I read that you're not sure how you will earn an income but basically, you will depend on the generosity of your users. If I might try one tip: Who are you? What drives you? Tell us a bit about yourself on your website. I think it will help with income.

sasvari 13y ago
http://zef.me/about http://zef.me/about
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
Apologies if this is OT, but does anyone have link(s) to a "Making Money From Open Source for Dummies" guide? The only options I'm aware of: 1. Donations. 2. "Open core" or "freemium" model. 3. Paid books/lectures about it. 4. Get hired as a consultant to teach, trouble-shoot, and/or customize. 5. Get hired as an employee to work more on it or something else. However other than 1, none truly consist of getting paid for the open source per se. Which maybe works out OK, anyway. To clarify, this is not a rhetorical question where I'm trying to slag on open source. I'm already doing a number of open source projects, and enjoy it. I'm genuinely interested, if I wanted to support myself doing open source, realistically what are the options? And I genuinely don't fully understand how.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wehadfun 13y ago
  Charge for the installer. If I want to use a tool I do not want to try to compile it
- Skoofoo 13y ago
  One option is building an open source framework to be the base for your commercial projects. Rails and Django started this way. What XChat does is charge for the official Windows binary[1] while being open source. I think something like this would be a good option for Zed. [1] http://xchat.org/windows/ http://xchat.org/windows/

iElectric2 13y ago

I'm using it for a few months after 10 years of Vim. It's very similar to Vim, with proper defaults and JavaScript as approachable language compared to vimscript. I believe the most innovative thing Zed introduces is hackability. Configuration is basically just another project inside the editor. Other cool features/defaults are presented on http://zedapp.org/features/ http://zedapp.org/features/

pekk 13y ago

There are too many editors named Zed, please get a different name to reduce the confusion (and it can't be Xed)

tsewlliw 13y ago

> I’m making Zed my day-time job I'm super excited for you! Passion & Dedication! Bravo

213424355352255 13y ago

Biggest issues with Zed: 1) Chrome extension (I understand the stand-alone application is coming) 2) Vim-style modality missing (exact keybinding replication is not necessary, just the principle of remaining on the home row) 3) Excess editor chrome - the top of the editor takes up 2 lines when it could be compacted to 1

wazoox 13y ago
Yes, I'm a Firefox user, and when I install extensions I don't expect being asked to provide a login and password. I'm definitely NOT comfortable with Google knowing what extensions I use, when I use them, etc. A nice reminder of one of the reasons I can't seriously consider Chrome as my main browser.

zz1 13y ago

> Zed currently is only available as a Chrome packaged app Sorry: this is not the kind of OSS that I want to support. Best of luck, though.

iElectric2 13y ago
standalone (node-webkit) is in development.
SlashmanX 13y ago
Next paragraph: > The stand-alone version will be built on top of node-webkit and be available for Mac, Windows and Linux. Once the initial work there is done, both version should continue working from the same code base, so I should be able to support two versions (Chrome App and standalone) without much effort.
deleted 13y ago
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zimbatm 13y ago

Yes ! I get excited because the author lists "Reduce cognitive load" at the editor's first goal. It's not an absolute and easy to measure metric but is worth having having as a first class citizen. Plus he already proves that he's moving in that direction by removing the concept of open/closed files. For funding: how hard would it be to create a "shared hire" subscription model where participants get a vote into what the author is doing ?

jlongster 13y ago

It's worth mentioning that Emacs operates on files the exact way you want Zed to work (on your philosophy page). I'm not trying to be one of those "Emacs already does this" guys, but you seem to legitimately think it's a new concept, when most people using Emacs use it like that. "Like that" being that we don't care if a file is open or closed. If I'm swapping between 2 files a lot, I will just swap buffers, but usually I just navigate straight to whatever file I need and open it. If it's already open, the buffer will come up; otherwise a buffer will be created. ido-mode makes it trivial to query files/buffers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE (edit: inversely, ido-mode actually saves a history of opened files so if you try to switch to a buffer of a file that isn't open, but you've opened before, it will transparently open it for you and it feels like it was never closed) Also, same thing with file creation. I'll just navigate to the file I want to create and hit enter.

MetaCosm 13y ago

Reading some of the ideas made me update my .vimrc a bit. The point that buffers versus files is mostly useless now is on point. The rest of the points about minimal UI I already use. Create files same way you find them, sure!

agumonkey 13y ago

I like Zed author's choices. I don't think there's anything new in them per se, but a different combination of small existing principles may breed an interesting culture. Good luck.

pyrrhotech 13y ago

I believe his math forgets that we pay 40+% taxes out here in SV :) Nice job all around. Will check it out

tsax 13y ago

At first glance, it appeared to be a Zed Shaw thing to me.

userbinator 13y ago
I'm glad to not be the only one who thought "he's writing an editor now?"

electrograv 13y ago

Thanks for posting, and great work so far! Unfortunately, I encountered a few deal-breaker issues with Zed. So here are a few criticisms, if this helps you improve the project (but by no means let this detract from the current success of a great project!): 1. IMO you're using the wrong text matching algorithm for file search. This is pretty critical, considering it's the main interface for opening files. Zed seems to search for simple text substrings only, whereas both Sublime Text 2 and Xcode look for the longest common subsequence. This is huge, for me at least; in Xcode or ST2 I can type the first few letters of one of my files, followed by a few more letters from different words in it, followed by ".cpp" and it finds the file. Zed (as is) is completely unusable to me, because my project folder contains many similarly named files (.h, .cpp) as well as a ton of other source files from external libraries/modules with similar sub-words with what I'm searching for which for some reason always show up first and saturate the search results. With Zed there's no way to narrow down to what I'm looking for besides typing in the full name of the file. With ST2 or Xcode this is not a problem due to LCS. 2. This is not your fault necessarily, but it's a big deal to me: Text rendering is slow in Zed (and in every other web-technology-based code editor I've tried, e.g. Light Table). For example, scrolling is even choppier than Xcode. The primary (if not sole) reason I moved away from Xcode to ST2 was because Xcode's horribly laggy UI was driving me crazy. This is a bit of a personal rant, but we're living in an age with multi-gigaflop CPUs and multi-terraflop GPUs, yet we have somehow regressed to a point where scrolling (of all things) is laggy? IMO this is absurd, as an industry trend in general. For this reason, I generally dislike the trend to write everything (including local apps) in HTML/CSS/JS. These technologies really weren't designed to support this sort of complex dynamic UI. While it's quite impressive what's possible despite this, the stress of forcibly warping HTML/CSS/JS to accomplish some of these UI feats shows through as horrible inefficiency.

zef_hemel 13y ago
Thank you for your constructive comments. I can work with this :)
- mc_hammer 13y ago
  fwiw the search is called fuzzy matching also, gl on the project

crashandburn4 13y ago

Hi, first off, love that you've decided to keep it open source (lack of open-source code is what pushed me away from sublime into the arms of my current mistress, emacs), keep up the good work! Can I digress into a feature suggestion? This is no small one and I don't really know where it lies on a feasibility scale. One thing I'd really like would be the ability to turn whatever text-box I'm writing in into a frame of my current editor (I currently use edit-with-emacs). I looked into writing a chrome-extension (which is the only way I can think of to accomplish it) with ACE editor to do this but I didn't have enough time. My thoughts are, since you use a web based editor, you can use javascript to replace the input box with a resized frame of your editor, the next requirement is importing your personal user settings from your chrome packaged app into the frame to have it working there (I currently don't know how you'd accomplish this, maybe some integration with google drive which you already have for your notes?). The main reason I think this would be a useful feature is vim keybindings, I use them for everything and feel less productive editing text without them. Being able to integrate the IDE that I use and am used to into every text box ubiquitously on the web seems like a huge win to me. Sorry about the digression, it's just I liked the sound of your application and wanted to share the one thing I've been missing online (which is a web-based editor where it's extensible, and can be used on any site, I do realise that there is a big gap between your project and my feature suggestion, just wanted to make it.)

dangoor 13y ago
We actually talked about that feature a good bit when working on Bespin (in 2009). I haven't used it in years, but you may find this bookmarklet helpful: http://ajaxorg.github.io/ace/build/textarea/editor.html http://ajaxorg.github.io/ace/build/textarea/editor.html

AbhishekBiswal 13y ago

It's nice, simple, usable. But whenever I maximize the app window, it just goes fullscreen. Is it supposed to be like that? Or is it a bug?

tbirdz 13y ago

>Can’t some random person fork the project and attempt same thing? Yep. Worse, they can fork the project, and create a proprietary version and start selling it. If you released it under the GPL, then they would not legally be allowed to make a proprietary version and start selling it. Also, the GPL does not prevent you from selling your software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

e12e 13y ago
Seeing as how this beverages web technologies (although it installs locally right now), AGPL might be a better choice. As long as he retains copyright, he'll be free to also sell commercial licenses if that becomes interesting/viable. That said, having the legal right to something, and being able to enforce it, isn't the same thing (just ask Adobe).
- psykovsky 13y ago
  That's only because Adobe isn't in the movies business.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Yeah, that's right. Movies aren't subject to illegal downloads. /s (On a more serious note, while I'm not a supporter of the draconian DRM schemes that have been enacted into law -- and while the studios make completely ridiculous claims for damages -- implying that films aren't being copied in a way that conflicts with their licensing terms is clearly wrong)
AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
I REALLY hope he already knows this, as he's putting his career and saving on the line here. Although I don't think he should go GPL, he should at least know about the license differences.
- zef_hemel 13y ago

ebbv 13y ago

I really want to suggest rewriting it in native code. A web based editor is a fine side project but if you want it to be a business people pay for, it needs to have native performance. It's popular to claim that the web is near native performance, but honestly, it's a load of horseshit. Web performance is better than it's ever been but it still has a long way to go before it's anywhere near native.

chr1 13y ago
But then he will spend a huge amount of time replicating functionality that browsers provide, functionality which is hard to implement and hard to maintain. Also will loose advantage of being easy to extend. But on what kind of computer did you test this? On my windows desktop it is as fast as sublime. On mac scrolling isn't smooth, but from chrome timeline i see that it is choppy because it doesn't handle scroll events correctly, not because of performance.

ishansharma 13y ago

FYI, BitDefender shows site as infected: http://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info?url=http%3A//zedapp.org/2014/04/zed-the-next-phase&language=en_US http://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info?url=http%3A//zedapp... Might want to check it out, I got a bit red alert before I could visit the page.

Datsundere 13y ago

He should also take donations, not just letting people buy the software.

drachenstern 13y ago
https://www.gittip.com/zefhemel/ https://www.gittip.com/zefhemel/

deleted 13y ago

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rcarmo 13y ago

Interesting, but needs a few tweaks: - I simply cannot resize the windows on a Mac using the Accessibility API (I'm using Moom to tile my windows via keyboard bindings, and Zed is invisible to it) - Needs a few more docs on how to set up a theme (I tried three times before I managed to set Solarized on) - As much as it may seem counter its philosophy, I need vim bindings :) And yes, it's a tad slow. So is LightTable, which is why I am still using vim inside a terminal...

bsimpson 13y ago

On ChromeOS, I got stuck on the very first screen: I can either enter a Project or a URL to edit. Typing text in either place does nothing interesting. "Enter" does nothing. Clicking around, I can't find any way to make a new window. All I want to do is see your editor and start playing with it. I don't even really want to edit a file yet. No obvious way to make any of that happen. The first window is too small. The note about how to edit remotely requires scrolling, but it isn't obvious that the page needs to be scrolled.

zef_hemel 13y ago
You can edit a local project (click "Open Local Folder"), a Dropbox folder ("Open Dropbox Folder") or the built-in Notes, Configuration and Manual projects. None of those work? Works fine my my Chromebook.
- bsimpson 13y ago
  Even after making the window big enough so I don't have to scroll, this is all I see: http://imgur.com/9WWEFmz http://imgur.com/9WWEFmz

thetwentyone 13y ago

I would love to use a chromebook as my main development machine, but the main thing is that I would like to be able to use Git offline. Has anybody moved to a chromebook as their main machine and been able to use version control while not connected to the internet?

ioddly 13y ago
I have, assuming installing Ubuntu on it isn't cheating.
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
One option is to put the Chromebook in dev mode and use Crouton[^1] to install Ubuntu as a chroot. It's easy to do and works well. You can use ChromeOS as usual side by side. [1]: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
spankalee 13y ago
The Spark project ( https://github.com/dart-lang/spark https://github.com/dart-lang/spark ) is porting git to work on ChromeOS. I'm not sure how far along they are.

Dewie 13y ago

Mac OS X seems to be incredibly widely used by programmers now. Because every time I see a screen shot to illustrate some GUI, it was taken on a Mac. :)

Dorian-Marie 13y ago

Amazing, that really close to what I thought Atom was going to be, "just" a webapp.

gcb0 13y ago

I can't avoid thinking it is a sweet attack vector for being a browser extension... I would probably use it if i have to edit on a chromebook, but then again, i prefer to avoid touching chromebooks even with a 10ft pole.

habosa 13y ago

Thanks for making this a Chrome App! This will fill a big gap for me on my Chromebook, especially the ability to edit Dropbox files. You should add Google Drive support as well if possible, since you're already in the Chrome ecosystem.

baby 13y ago

node-webkit is amazing, but is it really suited for an IDE? I don't see how you could launch a node-webkit application as fast as Sublime Text for example.

spacesword 13y ago

You say: "Worse, they can fork the project, and create a proprietary version and start selling it" So why not release the source code under GPL or even MPL or EPL?

badloginagain 13y ago

I would like the ability to highlight all instances of a highlighted word, like in Notepad++

chr1 13y ago
Yeah this is the most important feature in editor. But did you try zed? it already has this feature.

guelo 13y ago

I wonder if this guy's success so far is based on Zed Shaw's tech fame. There should be a trademark on tech personalities.

beat 13y ago

I'll give this a try. I've been knocking around looking for a new OSX editor, and haven't been completely happy with any of them. Current editor-of-choice is Light Table, but I'm not in love with it. It's really interesting to try all these new, modern editors and see the subtle tradeoffs the creators made.

bashcoder 13y ago

Much success and wisdom to you in your efforts - love the courage, and your eagerness to take feedback. As to the app, my recommendation is to avoid putting .zedstate files inside the project directories themselves. Instead, keep them in a ~/.zed/ directory. Keeps folks from having to make special .gitignore commits for all of their projects.

sciguy77 13y ago

Can someone give me their opinion of Zed vs Sublime? I'm curious.

p4bl0 13y ago

Do you have plan on making the Zed server described in http://zedapp.org/features/edit-remote-files/ http://zedapp.org/features/edit-remote-files/ to allow concurrent edit of the same file by different clients to enable collaborative work?

Zelphyr 13y ago

Zed highlights the always forgotten necessity of documentation. The app looks great. Has a few quirks but seems otherwise stable and I LOVE being able to edit remote files with a local editor. But I don't care how good your app is; if you didn't write documentation then you're just not done. And don't go giving me that adage "its open source! contribute the docs yourself." The fact is, its YOUR project that YOU wrote and it is simply incomplete with little/poor documentation. So, to the Zed author: before adding anymore features please take some time and write good quality docs. The community will thank you.