4 ms·

Ask HN: Beautiful Text Editor for OS X

6 points by anonyfox 12y ago

During the last weeks I fell in love with OS X yosemite, and tweaked/replaced nearly every app I use everyday to match the visual style of yosemite... except my code editor: sublime text 3. I know all the advantages and fixtures and as a full stack developer I "live" in my editor, but...: the whole design feels outdated now in yosemite. I already tweaked sublime through color schemes, themes and custom settings for margins and what have you, but I just can't get sublime to look beautiful. Despite having paid for sublime, I'd ditch it right now for something truly beautiful. Syntax Highlighting/Snippets for stuff like coffee script, markdown and handlebars would be sufficient for me as featureset. Does anyone know a text editor/IDE with a "stunning" UI? Free or paid doesn't matter for me, I just want something nice to look at for the hours of casual coding. This must sound stupid, since most discussions about editors are based around functionality - but i'm really serious about this.

skorecky 12y ago
My Top two would be: Atom: https://atom.io/ https://atom.io/ TextMate 2: https://github.com/textmate/textmate https://github.com/textmate/textmate Not sure if either is 100% Yosemite ready yet, but both put out regular updates and I know for sure Atom has a Yosemite theme.
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  I vote for TextMate. It just upgraded from alpha to beta and it added Yosemite-style tabs which look much nicer than the old ones.
afshinmeh 12y ago
Vim spf13
- skorecky 12y ago
  Every damn time someone looking for an IDE / Text editor VIM comes up. Go away trolls.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    LOL, when people talk/ask about fast and beautiful cars, it's more than natural to name Ferrari at some point. Same with "Vi improved" ;-)
schrodingersCat 12y ago
In the terminal (iterm2 of course), I find vim with the solarized theme (http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized) combined with he right plugins to be a beautiful and useful text editor. In the gui, I really love sublime text (http://www.sublimetext.com/ http://www.sublimetext.com/). Atom is also quite nice, so you really can't go wrong with that
rholdy 12y ago
I've heard good things about Brackets. But haven't fired it up with Yosemite yet.
danalec 12y ago
I'm a sublime text 3 user too and I've been trying out slap: https://github.com/slap-editor/slap https://github.com/slap-editor/slap
kenferry 12y ago
Panic's Coda comes to mind first for great design, and it was just updated. http://panic.com/coda/ http://panic.com/coda/
_em_ 12y ago
could you list what apps you replaced with which ones ?
whichdan 12y ago
Have you tried the Soda[1] theme for Sublime? It's very slick, but assuming you've tried it, our definition of beautiful is wildly different. Do you have examples of other apps which you consider aesthetically pleasing? [1] https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/
eivarv 12y ago
I recently stumbled upon a theme for Sublime Text called El Capitan[1], which matches the visual style of Yosemite very well, save for a few minor differences. If you are partial to the new dark menu bar and dock, you might also want to check out Gravity[2], which is almost as successful in making Sublime Text seem at home. [1]: https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20El%20Capitan https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20El%20Capitan [2]: https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20Gravity https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20Gravity

6 points by anonyfox 12y ago

skorecky 12y ago

My Top two would be: Atom: https://atom.io/ https://atom.io/ TextMate 2: https://github.com/textmate/textmate https://github.com/textmate/textmate Not sure if either is 100% Yosemite ready yet, but both put out regular updates and I know for sure Atom has a Yosemite theme.

0942v8653 12y ago
I vote for TextMate. It just upgraded from alpha to beta and it added Yosemite-style tabs which look much nicer than the old ones.

afshinmeh 12y ago

Vim spf13

skorecky 12y ago
Every damn time someone looking for an IDE / Text editor VIM comes up. Go away trolls.
- atmosx 12y ago
  LOL, when people talk/ask about fast and beautiful cars, it's more than natural to name Ferrari at some point. Same with "Vi improved" ;-)

schrodingersCat 12y ago

In the terminal (iterm2 of course), I find vim with the solarized theme (http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized) combined with he right plugins to be a beautiful and useful text editor. In the gui, I really love sublime text (http://www.sublimetext.com/ http://www.sublimetext.com/). Atom is also quite nice, so you really can't go wrong with that

rholdy 12y ago

I've heard good things about Brackets. But haven't fired it up with Yosemite yet.

danalec 12y ago

I'm a sublime text 3 user too and I've been trying out slap: https://github.com/slap-editor/slap https://github.com/slap-editor/slap

kenferry 12y ago

Panic's Coda comes to mind first for great design, and it was just updated. http://panic.com/coda/ http://panic.com/coda/

_em_ 12y ago

could you list what apps you replaced with which ones ?

whichdan 12y ago

Have you tried the Soda[1] theme for Sublime? It's very slick, but assuming you've tried it, our definition of beautiful is wildly different. Do you have examples of other apps which you consider aesthetically pleasing? [1] https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/

eivarv 12y ago

I recently stumbled upon a theme for Sublime Text called El Capitan[1], which matches the visual style of Yosemite very well, save for a few minor differences. If you are partial to the new dark menu bar and dock, you might also want to check out Gravity[2], which is almost as successful in making Sublime Text seem at home. [1]: https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20El%20Capitan https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20El%20Capitan [2]: https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20Gravity https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/Theme%20-%20Gravity