The creator of Sublime Text tends to go silent for long periods between stretches of activity, which always makes me wonder about the future of the project. It's a shame, since ST is a well-thought-out editor with great attention to detail, and of course the speed argument (compared to Atom and VS Code), while beaten to death, still holds true.
Of course, it's up to the author himself to choose how he communicates, most likely the current method is working out just fine for him :). And the editor works very well, and the updates eventually return. Just saying that some occasional communication regarding the future of the project, or the current development model ("I spend half the year perpetually wasted in Ibiza, radio silence expected"), would be nice!
I've been very active on the forum, Discord, IRC and the Packages repo on GitHub. I don't think the stereotype of Sublime HQ being radio silent holds true any longer.
We don't, however, make blog posts or tweets saying "we're still working on the next build." However, whenever anyone asks on the forum (twitter, etc) I'll be happy to tell you we are still working on the next build! :-)
That is exactly the reason why I haven't bought a license yet. I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future. Since I don't have to pay, buying a license is more of a donation in order to show support. But the communication seems a bit too sparse/erratic for me to have much trust in this project. The time spans between updates, blog posts, or even tweets are simply way too long.
I also consider the existence of http://docs.sublimetext.info a bad sign. The way I perceive this: At some point, an enthusiastic user was so fed up with the sub-par documentation that they decided to take matters into their own hands, and create a better documentation. But instead of working with the community, the Sublime project people/person just... did nothing? Was there any communication? I don't know. Why not provide the documentation on github and accept PRs? The Sublime project should push for docs.sublimetext.info to be merged into the official documentation.
Same with https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues. Why is the bug tracker "community run"? What does that even mean, considering the "community" can't fix any bugs? I absolutely cannot understand why the author of the software doesn't seem to participate at all in the bug tracker. Here's a quote from https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/594 (from 2014, so I don't know whether it is still true)
> Unfortunately, the only thing I can say is it'll get fixed if Jon Skinner sees it as a big enough priority. Our intent in creating this unofficial Issues page was to have a curated place where known issues can be collected together and triaged, and he can use it as he sees fit to fix bugs in upcoming releases. Without a more direct feedback mechanism, this is the best we can do, at the moment.
What I'd also like to see is a road map for the future with regular (2-4 weeks) status updates.
Instead of writing blog posts as a vital sign, maybe it would help to offer some regularly updated pre-defined "bundles" of ST together with package sets for a certain audience (JS/TS/Python developer, etc.). Many packages have a higher update frequency, so even when there is no new ST build it would make sense to also update such bundles on a more regular basis (I know packages are updated automatically -- but this would give a better impression regarding the activity and the size of the ST community for new users).
I imagine the introduction of something like "Sublime Text distros" in package control, which would provide ST users something akin to the different Eclipse flavors (or the various .vimrc settings available online) could be quite useful. While the package control setup is already pretty straightforward, it is still rather confusing for new users that they have to manually install such a 'basic' feature (and Atom, for example, is much more polished in that regard).
I love Sublime Text. I really dislike heavy IDEs, so for me, it's almost the perfect editor.
But... am I the only person who wants a minimal editor like Sublime, plus an inline debugger? Debugging where you edit code is one of those super-features that I really don't understand why people prefer not to have it.
Ideally it would be something generic and lightweight, with the ability to extend via plugins. The debugging plugins I've used so far just don't cut it though - if I can't click on a line number to add a breakpoint, it isn't good enough.
You're describing VS Code. Now you may not think it's lightweight, but for anyone not toiling away on a turn of the century machine it's plenty fast and has great debugging facilities.
You can have it with Emacs, depending on the language you are using. I have used C/gdb out of the box quite happily and now I use python (elpy) and it works although with some annoying glitches from time to time. Other languages don't work quite well.
If clicking isn't a hard requirement, I think there is something to be said for command line debuggers with well done interfaces.
I spend a lot of my time in Python at the moment which doesn't usually require a debugger because of its restricted control flow, but every so often I find myself in need and I always gravitate to PUDB (http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/pudb.html). And I haven't found it wanting -- yet.
If Sublime only had definite release! It's wonderful GUI editor! I stopped using it years ago when I switched to Vim and Emacs, but if it gets released I will buy it for sure, at least to have it on my work machine.
I like editing text in it, everything is so smooth and well looking, and it doesn't feel bloated. And I just hate all those Electron based editors, no matter how much incrementally they get better from month to month, they never even came close to Sublime's swiftness and polish. I tried VSCode last month, for few hours and uninstalled.
And people are often relaying on metrics and public opinion of usage of certain tool. Look, on latest StackOverflow Dev Survey Notepad++ was way ahead of everyone, it tells you something.
Release or not release is just a name. You shouldn't let that be a factor. In my experience it is absolutely stable and as bug free as software can be.
However, I'm not sure how well maintained it is. I fear all the time that the author, jps, has quit, but then every few months he has a development sprint and releases a new version.
I'd rather have it permanently called "beta" but a minor update every month, than one version declared finished, with rare or no updates afterwards.
On the contrary, I still miss the speed of ST but the price-vs-feature ratio on VSC is too high for me to ignore anymore. No way the boss will shell out $70 per license if/when ST3 is ever released (now that half our team has dropped it anyway). Guess what you said about not relying on "public opinion" includes your own.
If you're using Vim / Emacs, people should consider giving an equal amount that you'd pay for a ST licence to Vim / Emacs instead. Even better, if you're a company then pay the equivalent of what Visual Studio costs.
Notepad++ just works and is great. It's lean and has a common UI, has syntax highlighting and auto-complition. The Texteditor that comes with Gnome is similar. Same with Nano, it just works and has a good enough UI.
Why people cry about sublime not having a "release" yet. I have faced 0 bugs, seriously 0 and I'm using it for more than 3 years. Its way more performant than the rest "cool" editors and honestly...it just works! Maybe you need a little bit more configuration to make it perfect for you but thats just it.
On Mac, one bug that bites me about once per week is the editor becomes unresponsive. Not the whole application, I can still focus on windows, use the menus, and scroll the text, but the text editor just goes vegetable. The caret disappears, and I am unable to select text, type, paste, etc. Occasionally it returns after 20-30 seconds, but usually I have to restart Sublime.
It's still a great application in spite of this bug, but it is annoying when it happens.
Actually this dev build (well, the one released a couple of hours earlier than 3128) had a pretty major bug with gutter icons which broke text editing, scrolling etc.
Thankfully it was fixed very quickly in 3128, and my experience with ST dev and beta builds is much the same as you, that's it's been very stable in general.
I'm just hoping that ST3 will be marked as final soon, so that Skinner may collect the upgrade fees before VSC has completed its take over of the world (of free editors). As a long time fan, I do get - and admire - the perfectionism, but hopefully there's room for dot releases after the 3.0 final.
I am really not at all wealthy (plus i have to provide for my family), but as a developer, i am always completely surprised about the peoples penny-pinching if it comes to paying for good tools. If you use good tools, you can identify with them, and are more likely motivated to learn their functionalities (shortcust,plugins etc..) so you become more productive. So after one or two month this investment will have been more than just payed off.
70$ is nothing for a good tool.
... and then some people wonder why a company can not afford to make marketing etc ...
For vim users, there's also the ActualVim[1] plugin, which uses neovim's headless mode for processing. I've always been somewhat disappointed by vintage mode / vintageous in ST, and while ActualVim still has some issues, it's definitely promising. (It even works on Windows now! Though I couldn't quite get my plugins running yet)
Shameless advertising: since the developer of Vintageous stopped maintaining it, @gerardroche and I have started a fork that we will review PRs for and occasionally work on. We've already merged a bunch of outstanding PRs, added some new features and fixed some bugs.
Sublime is my favorite editor for LaTeX. I've tried every other editor on the market, TexMaker, TexStudio, OverLeaf, ShareLaTeX.
All LaTeX editors pale in comparison to Sublime + LatexTools Plugin + git. Each tool in this stack is designed to do one thing and they do it perfectly.
I'm an absolute fool for upgrading my text editor whilst I have two major project deadlines due before Easter, but I like to live dangerously. And it was worth it - the new Adaptive theme looks fantastic!
Frankly, I don't care that the dev isn't very loud on the internet, and a new build every 6 months seems perfectly fine. And if it stops being developed, it's a standalone app, it will be many years before it bit-rots. I will be using it for years whatever happens.
But if it were open source, people would know that if it ever got dropped it other people could keep it going longer.
I'm really only concerned with it bit-rotting though. New features? Who cares? It does everything I want it to and I was already using third party syntax definitions to keep up with language changes, it's not like it matters if Sublime doesn't change much. It looks like they'll have high DPI support complete soon if not already, so once that's done I'm really struggling to think what else I want out of it. Not that I have a high DPI monitor, but if we're thinking about things that might make it unusable in the future if it gets dropped.
It's already $70. I'm ok paying for my tools (I have a policy of no-piracy at my company, which is really weird in my country – We've bought IntelliJ, Affinity, etc), but paying $70 for a text editor is just above my threshold. I took out my credit card and went to the website thinking I had bought my first license at $50, but when I saw it asked for $70, for a closed-source license, I didn't complete the purchase.
I donate 1% of my revenue to open-source, by the way.
I love Sublime. It is cross platform and has a great array of plugins from the community. I have used it for years. I know plenty of keyboard shortcuts and I am productive using it.
It never crashes on me, but maybe I am just not an edge case user of it.
Whenever version 3 is released for purchase, I do not anticipate having any problems getting my employer to pay for a license and I don't mind paying out of pocket if necessary.
Ligatures would be amazing and JPS has said previously that he'd love to implement it, but it's a huge amount of work at the moment when there are other pressing issues.
I tried the new beta: it kinda breaks fonts in old themes (I use spacegray) but the new Adaptive theme looks pretty (I wish I could reduce tab bar height, though).
Also enjoyed switching UI and syntax themes via palette.
Overall looks great but for now I'll stick to ST3 stable release.
My #1 feature request is Sidebar API, you know, for version control integration.
I'm somewhat bummed that Limetext [1] seems to be dead. I like Sublime, but I don't want to rely on nonfree software for my work. I switched to vim for now.
[+] [-] klum|9 years ago|reply
Of course, it's up to the author himself to choose how he communicates, most likely the current method is working out just fine for him :). And the editor works very well, and the updates eventually return. Just saying that some occasional communication regarding the future of the project, or the current development model ("I spend half the year perpetually wasted in Ibiza, radio silence expected"), would be nice!
[+] [-] wbond|9 years ago|reply
We don't, however, make blog posts or tweets saying "we're still working on the next build." However, whenever anyone asks on the forum (twitter, etc) I'll be happy to tell you we are still working on the next build! :-)
[+] [-] ndh2|9 years ago|reply
I also consider the existence of http://docs.sublimetext.info a bad sign. The way I perceive this: At some point, an enthusiastic user was so fed up with the sub-par documentation that they decided to take matters into their own hands, and create a better documentation. But instead of working with the community, the Sublime project people/person just... did nothing? Was there any communication? I don't know. Why not provide the documentation on github and accept PRs? The Sublime project should push for docs.sublimetext.info to be merged into the official documentation.
Same with https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues. Why is the bug tracker "community run"? What does that even mean, considering the "community" can't fix any bugs? I absolutely cannot understand why the author of the software doesn't seem to participate at all in the bug tracker. Here's a quote from https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/594 (from 2014, so I don't know whether it is still true) > Unfortunately, the only thing I can say is it'll get fixed if Jon Skinner sees it as a big enough priority. Our intent in creating this unofficial Issues page was to have a curated place where known issues can be collected together and triaged, and he can use it as he sees fit to fix bugs in upcoming releases. Without a more direct feedback mechanism, this is the best we can do, at the moment.
What I'd also like to see is a road map for the future with regular (2-4 weeks) status updates.
[+] [-] kowdermeister|9 years ago|reply
With ST we see slow but constant development, personally I don't care if the author is not a Twitter addict.
[+] [-] __roland__|9 years ago|reply
I imagine the introduction of something like "Sublime Text distros" in package control, which would provide ST users something akin to the different Eclipse flavors (or the various .vimrc settings available online) could be quite useful. While the package control setup is already pretty straightforward, it is still rather confusing for new users that they have to manually install such a 'basic' feature (and Atom, for example, is much more polished in that regard).
[+] [-] helthanatos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] news_to_me|9 years ago|reply
But... am I the only person who wants a minimal editor like Sublime, plus an inline debugger? Debugging where you edit code is one of those super-features that I really don't understand why people prefer not to have it.
Ideally it would be something generic and lightweight, with the ability to extend via plugins. The debugging plugins I've used so far just don't cut it though - if I can't click on a line number to add a breakpoint, it isn't good enough.
[+] [-] xienze|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plafl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gshulegaard|9 years ago|reply
If clicking isn't a hard requirement, I think there is something to be said for command line debuggers with well done interfaces.
I spend a lot of my time in Python at the moment which doesn't usually require a debugger because of its restricted control flow, but every so often I find myself in need and I always gravitate to PUDB (http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/pudb.html). And I haven't found it wanting -- yet.
[+] [-] tedmiston|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Philipp__|9 years ago|reply
I like editing text in it, everything is so smooth and well looking, and it doesn't feel bloated. And I just hate all those Electron based editors, no matter how much incrementally they get better from month to month, they never even came close to Sublime's swiftness and polish. I tried VSCode last month, for few hours and uninstalled.
And people are often relaying on metrics and public opinion of usage of certain tool. Look, on latest StackOverflow Dev Survey Notepad++ was way ahead of everyone, it tells you something.
[+] [-] captainmuon|9 years ago|reply
However, I'm not sure how well maintained it is. I fear all the time that the author, jps, has quit, but then every few months he has a development sprint and releases a new version.
I'd rather have it permanently called "beta" but a minor update every month, than one version declared finished, with rare or no updates afterwards.
[+] [-] SippinLean|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RazrFalcon|9 years ago|reply
So I have to use Kate for non-Latin text. But it still miles better than VSCode/Atom.
[+] [-] icc97|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frik|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agounaris|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DamnInteresting|9 years ago|reply
It's still a great application in spite of this bug, but it is annoying when it happens.
[+] [-] joshschreuder|9 years ago|reply
Thankfully it was fixed very quickly in 3128, and my experience with ST dev and beta builds is much the same as you, that's it's been very stable in general.
[+] [-] wbond|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sundvor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Antrikshy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prh8|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbeja|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] big_paps|9 years ago|reply
70$ is nothing for a good tool.
... and then some people wonder why a company can not afford to make marketing etc ...
[+] [-] SebiH|9 years ago|reply
[1]: https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim
[+] [-] trishume|9 years ago|reply
https://github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous
[+] [-] mataug|9 years ago|reply
All LaTeX editors pale in comparison to Sublime + LatexTools Plugin + git. Each tool in this stack is designed to do one thing and they do it perfectly.
[+] [-] bshimmin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sundvor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mangecoeur|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doubleunplussed|9 years ago|reply
Frankly, I don't care that the dev isn't very loud on the internet, and a new build every 6 months seems perfectly fine. And if it stops being developed, it's a standalone app, it will be many years before it bit-rots. I will be using it for years whatever happens.
But if it were open source, people would know that if it ever got dropped it other people could keep it going longer.
I'm really only concerned with it bit-rotting though. New features? Who cares? It does everything I want it to and I was already using third party syntax definitions to keep up with language changes, it's not like it matters if Sublime doesn't change much. It looks like they'll have high DPI support complete soon if not already, so once that's done I'm really struggling to think what else I want out of it. Not that I have a high DPI monitor, but if we're thinking about things that might make it unusable in the future if it gets dropped.
[+] [-] stinos|9 years ago|reply
Anyone knows what this means in practice? What rendering is used instead and does this mean Consolas/Courier have a disadvantage or an advantage?
[+] [-] Fej|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wooptoo|9 years ago|reply
Is there any way to donate to SublimeText? We already have licenses at work, but would like to donate $10 or so to show support.
[+] [-] tajen|9 years ago|reply
I donate 1% of my revenue to open-source, by the way.
[+] [-] izietto|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toxican|9 years ago|reply
edit: manual download is very slow. Maybe things are just a bit bogged down at the moment.
[+] [-] jasonlfunk|9 years ago|reply
But I'm happy for the update!
[+] [-] teddyc|9 years ago|reply
It never crashes on me, but maybe I am just not an edge case user of it.
Whenever version 3 is released for purchase, I do not anticipate having any problems getting my employer to pay for a license and I don't mind paying out of pocket if necessary.
[+] [-] mtarnovan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbrooksuk|9 years ago|reply
I hold out hope for it happening one day though!
[+] [-] szastupov|9 years ago|reply
I tried the new beta: it kinda breaks fonts in old themes (I use spacegray) but the new Adaptive theme looks pretty (I wish I could reduce tab bar height, though).
Also enjoyed switching UI and syntax themes via palette.
Overall looks great but for now I'll stick to ST3 stable release.
My #1 feature request is Sidebar API, you know, for version control integration.
[+] [-] adrianN|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://limetext.org/
[+] [-] xgbi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbrooksuk|9 years ago|reply
> Sublime Text 3 dev builds are currently available to registered users only.
https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev
[+] [-] carterschonwald|9 years ago|reply