

Light Table 0.5.0 - ibdknox
http://www.chris-granger.com/2013/08/22/light-table-050/

======
canthonytucci
I love the little spinning glider in the lower left, I don't know what it
represents or how I got it to appear but, COOL!

I want to like this so badly, but so far I can't justify spending the time to
learn to use it just yet.

It might just be a problem with the docs, and maybe I'm just not understanding
what light table is on a conceptual level but:

* docs reference tabs that do not exist in my version of the interface ( a trip to the view menu produced no option to show or hide them, so I assume they're from an older version?)

* they expect me to already have created files elsewhere?

* cmd/ctrl-o dialog? what does this do? (seems like nothing, looks like file prompt, but no tab-completion....am I supposed to type out /home/uname/file/x/y/z?)

* cmd-shift-o opens files....but not directories, how do I get a file tree like in the screenshots?

* if the browser tab has focus, cmd-shift-o dialog will not show (as I'm asked to do in the docs)

* control-tab doesn't switch between tabs

* what is the relationship between this browser window and my js file?

after this I gave up.

I guess I am late to the party? Where can I find the real docs?

I have high hopes for this to mature and someday become something that I can
say goodbye to vim/sublime, but at this point, I'd need a better onboarding to
really give it a go.

Despite their perceived difficulty to use, both emacs and vim provide
extensive awesome help without having to resort to a third party.

Sublime may have help somewhere, but since it works just like every other
desktop program I've never needed to refer to it.

If this is going to be something that's so wildly different from the text
editors I'm used to, I'm going to need more hand-holding to get excited about
it.

~~~
ibdknox
Sorry, we haven't had a chance to update the docs yet - we didn't want to hold
the release any longer. It's at the top of my priority list as soon as I get
done moving apartments this weekend.

ctlr-o is the equivalent of ctrl-p in sublime or ctrl-t in textmate. It shows
you the files available in your workspace. It used to tell you how to add
files to your workspace when it was empty but that seems to have gotten nuked.
[1] If you go to view->workspace you have a tree you can then fill in with
folders and files. Click the folder button and off you go.

I'll add a menu item for opening a folder. [2]

> if the browser tab has focus, cmd-shift-o dialog will not show (as I'm asked
> to do in the docs)

Unfortunately this depends on whether the site tries to be clever and capture
keys, though, there could just be a regular bug here. Will take a look.

> control-tab doesn't switch between tabs

Ah, I used chrome's default ctrl-shift-[ and ctrl-shift-]. Makes sense to add
that one too though. [3]

> what is the relationship between this browser window and my js file?

If you press ctrl-enter or ctrl-shift-enter you have now evaled that file into
that browser window. Any time you eval again, you'll be injecting code into
that frame.

> Sublime may have help somewhere, but since it works just like every other
> desktop program I've never needed to refer to it.

Can you tell me more about what's missing here? Are there specific menu items,
etc? If you tried to use it just like Sublime (as in none of the other fancy
stuff), what is harder/more difficult to wrap your head around?

[1]: [https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-
Playground/issues/695](https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-
Playground/issues/695)

[2]: [https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-
Playground/issues/694](https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-
Playground/issues/694)

[3]: [https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-
Playground/issues/697](https://github.com/Kodowa/Light-Table-
Playground/issues/697)

~~~
SpikeMeister
Perhaps ctrl+pgup and ctrl+pgdn for switching tabs as well? It's a common
shortcut in most tabbed interfaces.

~~~
graue
Yup, this is the one I'm used to and it weirds me out when it's not supported.
Apparently unheard of on OS X though, which is probably why so many web devs
make sites that break it by stealing PgUp/PgDn.

------
jeffbr13
Great work, and I can't wait for plugins to arrive!

This should be the next great text-editor once it's open-sourced - I'm too
young to bother with vim/emacs, and a bit too poor to buy Sublime Text, great
though it is!

The fact that it's written in Clojure(script) makes me want to dive into the
source, and find out how a modern desktop application is built using a Lisp.

~~~
RBerenguel
I wonder how young is too young for emacs/vim

~~~
baxter001
For Emacs your span has to be wide enough.

~~~
RBerenguel
Hmmm what?

~~~
bricestacey
He means size of hands. Children with smaller hands may have trouble with some
key combinations.

~~~
RBerenguel
Thanks. I would have never guessed. Even as a child I had big hands, so... :)

------
tmslnz
Why is it not packaged within the Lighttable.app anymore? Unzipping it's a
folder with a .app inside and all the NW resources next to it instead of
inside. Confused…

------
michaelsbradley
This is the first release of LightTable I've experimented with, and I find it
to be really promising!

One thing: I fired up the built-in browser and pointed it at a local static
server which sits in front of some apps I'm building with Google Polymer[1].
The apps don't work at all in that browser environment -- the console reports
lots of errors related to invalid html and css.

I was able to connect LightTable (per the docs) to an external browser, but
that seems to lessen the LT experience somewhat.

Would it be possible for the LT team to look into why the Polymer polyfills
don't work properly with the built-in browser?

[1] [http://www.polymer-project.org/](http://www.polymer-project.org/)

------
nikatwork
The "watches" feature video actually made me say "wow" out loud in the office.
Such a simple idea but I can instantly see how amazingly useful it will be.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You might be interested in this paper then:

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1898...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=189802)

(not lighttable, but more research on the topic)

------
nefasti
Love python, but on my day to day I'm using GO and Ruby. I know GO would not
fit into the LightTable philosophy but ruby support would be awesome.

~~~
jared314
Those would make for good plugins when the plugin api is released.

------
josephwegner
So, I'm a bit confused about how these watches work. I expected them to give
me a live view of how a variable changes (like data-binding), but that doesn't
seem to be the case. It seems that it puts a hook into whenever the page
evaluates that code, it updates the watch.

For instance, I put a watch on this javascript:

    
    
      window.scrollY;
    

I expected it to update every time I scrolled. In reality, I had to put an
event hook onto the window's scroll event with window.scrollY inside of it.
This is a bit confusing.

Also, Chris, anyone you can put an update somewhere when you get the docs
finished? This is the first release that is stable enough for me to actually
use, so I don't really know how to do anything. Seems like the docs are way
out of date (ie: How the heck do I search for files in my workspace?).

Great release though! I'm pumped that LightTable is finally stable enough for
me to attempt to replace sublime!

~~~
josephwegner
For the record, I now see someone else commented with the Cmd+o hint.. I guess
that's how you search for files. Either way, I'd love to know when the docs
are updated so I can really dig in!

------
tofflos
Hi Chris!

Thanks for the new release. Is it possible to reopen the open files from the
previous session on startup? I find myself frustrated with having to look at
the welcome screen instead of getting what I was working on in my previous
session. It's also a bit annoying to reopen all the files at the beginning of
each session. Am I missing something?

------
_halgari
Any chance of getting paredit soon? Still the reason why I never use LT for
more than 10 minutes with each release.

~~~
ibdknox
We have someone working with us on basic paredit support :) So.. soon!

------
sjm
In the change logs there's notes about an added Emacs mode; has anyone worked
out how to enable this? Can't see anything in the command list and nothing in
a brief glance through the .behaviours files.

~~~
wging
As Chris mentioned elsewhere: In user.behaviors (ctrl+space, user behaviors),
adding an element to my current editor vector activates vim mode:

    
    
         :editor [:lt.objs.editor/no-wrap
                  (:lt.objs.style/set-theme "default")
                  :lt.plugins.vim/activate-vim]
    

Instead of this, you can write :lt.plugins.emacs/activate-emacs to activate
emacs mode.

Note that this page has nice completion-matching--for example, if you delete
the interior of the string "default" you can see fuzzy completions, and
putting the cursor within a keyword will explain what setting it's bound to.

------
MaysonL
So far, started it three times, had it silently exit without being asked three
times. No Style tab available, no findable way to change that ugly white on
black. Such promising, currently unusable. OS X 10.8.4.

~~~
ibdknox
Can you tell me what you were doing when it silently exited? Can you put up a
gist of whatevers in your logs/ dir?

To change the skin/theme you can put the following in your user behaviors:

    
    
      :app [(:lt.objs.style/set-skin "light")]
      :editor [(:lt.objs.style/set-theme "codemirror")]

~~~
nyc640
Why take out the existing UI for changing these settings? Also, what happened
to the settings for changing fonts and font sizes?

------
tsumnia
I'm a backer, but this is the first time I'm picking up the alpha. As someone
primarily using Sublime Text, what can I expect to be different?

I get its still in Alpha, but just what difference.

------
fingerprinter
This looks great.

Can't find this in the documentation, so wondering two things:

1\. Is there a way to get a python console?

2\. I have a Flask app. Can I run it directly from LT?

~~~
frio
1\. in 0.4.x, no -- but you can have a buffer (say, scratchpad.py) and
evaluate the whole buffer. This is a workflow I find more useful than an
ipython session (although it's a little lame not having tab-completion and
whatnot for inspecting unknown modules). I've not tried 0.5.x yet :).

2\. Yes!

~~~
fingerprinter
#2 - Really? Nice. Any pointers on how? I'm mucking around with it right now
and can't seem to get it to work :/

------
bkurtz13
I couldn't find any way of getting out of Fullscreen mode without killing LT
through the task manager.

~~~
susi22
CTRL+Space "ful" <enter> ("Toogle full screen")

Admittedly, that's not too user friendly

------
ponyous
Are we who pledged supposed to be in private beta?

~~~
DigitalJack
There was a specific level that included the private beta privilege. Is the
kickstarter page not there anymore?

~~~
bmj
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-
table](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table)

Found via [http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/](http://www.chris-
granger.com/lighttable/).

------
pekru
anyone else tried the linux tarball? The binary named ltbin seems to be
missing.

~~~
untothebreach
i had to `tar -xzf` twice, the first time the ltbin executable was missing for
me as well. not sure why?

------
dfischer
Is Ruby support planed?

