
Sublime Text 2: Beta - creativityhurts
http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-beta
======
dtalen
As a longtime vim user I'm interested in knowing if there's anyone that's
switched to Sublime Text (or TextMate, or any other similar contemporary
editor) and if so, how has it gone? There seem to be a lot of cool features
here but do they outweigh the benefit of knowing that they key bindings you've
learned will continue to serve you for decades?

Please, this is not flamebait. I'm interested if anyone's made a switch from
an old standby like vim/emacs to a new editor and how they've fared. Maybe
it's time for me to start looking at all the new editors out there.

~~~
pasbesoin
I gave the Sublime v 1.something a try when I was in a particular situation.
It was ok; however, it was quite resource intensive. Start editing large
files, and be prepared to wait...

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Androsynth
I routinely edit files of 5-10k loc and have never had a problem. It blows
ide's (eg eclipse) out of the water in terms of speed.

~~~
pasbesoin
Maybe it's picked up since version 1. Also, it was a rather large file I was
dealing with. Maybe I'll give it another go.

My understanding/impression at the time was that Sublime was at least in part
using Python, although perhaps I'm mis-remembering. Once I observed that, the
slowdown "made sense" to me. It may have also had to do with (regular
expression) find/replace. So, altogether, my use may not have been "typical".

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daeken
I've been using Sublime Text 2 since the first alpha and absolutely love it.
Insanely customizable, really well laid out, great project management, fast as
hell, etc. I'm still using 'E' on Windows, but on OS X this is all I use.

~~~
flyosity
I've been using it for awhile as well and what's totally nuts is that the
entire interface (colors, images, tabs, scrollbars, buttons) are all described
in a CSS-like language inside a configuration file. I actually changed all the
PNGs out to make the tabs look different and go for a Lion-like scrollbar and
it was no sweat. Everything in the entire app is described in JSON config
files so you can literally muck around with the internals as much as you want.
The best is when you miss a comma, restart Sublime Text and the entire
interface is garbled :)

~~~
swah
I hate the black tabs and would something more like Chrome.

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dan335
It's hard to see which one is highlighted. They need more contrast.

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netnichols
Totally agree.

I also wish the tab text collapsing worked differently. Once you have over a
certain number of tabs they become pretty much useless as you can't see any
titles anymore. In contrast, TextMate keeps all the tab titles visible and
just moves the extra tabs into a dropdown. It's not perfect, but it's more
usable than what Sublime currently does.

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tel
Honestly and evenly, if I'm a proficient vim/emacs user, why would I want to
try this out?

I know there's plenty of market not underneath that hypothetical, but an
editor has to answer that question to even register with me these days. I also
assume I'm not alone.

~~~
debaserab
Yeah, you're probably not the target of a full GUI editor... question probably
isn't even worth answering.

~~~
bretthoerner
What is a "full GUI editor"?

Vim and Emacs both have (optional) GUIs, but I've never used Sublime... am I
missing something?

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flocial
Ever since I stopped waiting on TextMate 2 and learned to love myself more,
I've moved on to vim and now emacs. I'd be weary of any editor that isn't open
source or has a solid organization behind it.

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trustfundbaby
You know what I love about Sublime? It this nifty little feature where if
you're looking at files in your file list in the side bar ... clicking through
them brings up the content of that file in the tab you were last editing (no
opening of a new tab) ... and when you go back to editing your file ... the
content shows back up in the tab.

So you can look through files very quickly, just by clicking through them,
instead of opening 20 files only to close them all when you find the one you
want.

And if you start editing the content of a file you were just perusing, a tab
opens for that file automatically. tres cool.

... totally sold me on sublime.

~~~
trustfundbaby
What would be really cool would be if the sidebar would jump to the file you
were working on when you're editing it ... I have many projects open at a
time, and I hate having to mouse down to find the file I'm currently working
on ... to open ... say ... and associated or related file.

~~~
mnazim
I do not know if this is due to some plugin I installed but my Vim 7.3 has the
exact same feature.

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chime
I just gave it a try and absolutely love the minimap feature. Definitely helps
with browsing through my code quickly. Once it had code-folding, I will hit
'Purchase'. Until then it's TextWrangler for me.

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mrinterweb
For Ubuntu and Debian users, I would recommend installing this from the PPA.
<https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/sublime-text-2> Installing from
this PPA worked well for me and it would appear to be up to date.

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Corrado
I would say this is more than a replacement for TextMate on OS X. Stop waiting
for a TM update and jumpt to Sublime Text 2. I've been using it since the
early alphas and it's always been top notch.

The only thing that bothers me right now is the slightly different keyboard
shortcuts between Linux and OS X, but I think you can "correct" those manually
by editing a couple of config files. Other than that, I _LOVE_ this editor! :)

~~~
andrewgodwin
Not only that, but it's mostly compatable with things like .tmLanguage files,
so there's even some cross-portability there.

(I've never used Textmate, being a Linux user, but being able to benefit from
the ecosystem to get e.g. .pp file highlighting is great)

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veidr
I am really sick of new 'text editors' hitting the scene that can't handle
editing text other than English.

~~~
T-R
Have you been having a problem with a particular language? I've been using
Sublime Text to work on code with comments in Japanese without a problem for
almost 2 years now (well, the fonts were squished at first, but that bug was
fixed a long time ago).

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btrask
CJK input don't seem to work right (although it displays fine once entered).
There are special steps you have to take because of the way input works for
those languages. Here is the cached version of an old article I read
describing how to do it (summary: use the NSTextInput protocol).

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ORe08or...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ORe08or6mQUJ:yllan.org/blog/archives/231&hl=en&gl=us&strip=0)

(It's a bit harder to read because the screenshots weren't cached, but it
should still be a good starting point.)

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sgrytoyr
ST2 is fantastic. One of the many benefits compared to TextMate is that it
supports Emacs-style marks, which enables commands like kill-region and yank.

I have created an "Emacsify" package with some important keyboard shortcuts
and additional commands. You can find it here:
<https://github.com/stiang/EmacsifySublimeText>

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loevborg
Sublime Text claims to be an editor for prose as well as for code. But does it
allow you to use good-looking proportional fonts with good line spacing? Yes,
in this respect (though in no other) a text editor should be like Word. I
write all my "prose" in a simple text editor (Vim), but I dislike the
limitation of using only fixed-width typefaces.

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palves
How does it compare with powerful IDEs like Intellij/PyCharm or Eclipse? I
mean, does it make sense to have an editor that is both good at "code, html
and prose" (debugging and refactoring comes to mind...)?

~~~
T-R
When I last worked on a Java project, I ended up going back and forth between
Sublime Text and Eclipse.

ST makes navigating the code more quick and smooth - the minimap takes away
the feeling of looking at code through tunnel vision, you can preview files
much more quickly, and view more code at once with minimalist full-screen mode
settings and multi-column layout. The regex search with active highlighting in
both the minimap and the file is also nice, and multi-select is pretty helpful
for refactoring repetitive code.

That said, ST is just a text editor, not an IDE - while some features, like
autocomplete, are partially compensated for, it doesn't do type checking or
follow references across files, so other features that stem from those will be
missed; e.g. refactoring across multiple files is usually faster in Eclipse. I
would usually do most of my editing in ST, and then type-check, compile, and
debug in Eclipse.

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drewjoh
I'm loving Sublime... except the character spacing is weird for me (running on
OSX using Droid Sans Mono). Has anyone else experienced this or know a
solution? Sublime/Textmate example: <http://cl.ly/050P2l37121b2R0P0a3V>

Update: After going through other mono fonts... it seems like all of them are
spaced just a little farther apart than what they appear like in Textmate,
Espresso, etc.

~~~
alabut
That screenshot makes it look like there's no text folding arrows for Sublime,
is that true? I wouldn't even try it out if it's missing that feature because
I use it in Textmate dozens of times a day.

~~~
Groxx
It's true. And it's one of the reasons I can't keep using Sublime.

Also, as nice as that preview-scrollbar is, it doesn't show the full file.
Just ~ 3 screens worth. Almost totally useless for navigating a _file_ as
opposed to a _function_. As much as I hate Visual Studio, the MetalScroll
plugin is just what I would have liked. You can get a "feel" for the layout of
the entire file / class / etc in one glance, navigating with it is massively
better. <http://code.google.com/p/metalscroll/>

What would make me happy is TextMate + Chrome-like tokens in the scroll bar
for where matches exist when you search. And threaded project-searches. But
alas, TM hasn't changed in quite a while. I guess it's time to learn Vim.

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florin_
Been watching sublime for some time now after I gave it a short try. If only
these lightweight editors provided CTRL-click type navigation I'd be sold. I
use IntelliJ IDEA now - it is a powerhouse of irreplaceable help. It works
magic with Java/Groovy/JavaScript/CSS/HTML navigation.

I need Sublime to provide type navigation. Forget debugging and other
features.

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STHayden
I use it and love it. If you ever tried 1.x and have not tried 2.x then you
should give it another try. It's worlds better.

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lobster_johnson
As a TextMate user, I love Sublime and I'm trying to migrate over.

The built-in project-wide search is extremely slow (it seems to search
absolutely everything and consumes 100% CPU while doing it) and seems
unfinished. I really miss AckMate
(<https://github.com/protocool/AckMate/wiki/Usage>).

Also, some files with canonical names (Gemfile, Rakefile) don't have file
extensions nor shebang lines, and so Sublime can't determine the language for
syntax highlighting. Is there a way to fix this?

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frsandstone
Their server is getting hammered right now. Anyone have a mirror?

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fingerprinter
I LOVE this program and I can't wait for it to be in the Ubuntu Software
Center...everyone should be able to get and use this really easily.

~~~
Corrado
Sublime Text 2 is not open source and will never be included in Ubuntu or
(likely) any other Linux distro. However, I will say that it is one of the
very few software packages I have ever purchased. That's saying quite a bit
coming from a dyed in the wool GPL guy like myself. :)

~~~
dchest
Ubuntu Software Center includes non-open source software.

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Xavura
I've been using Sublime 2 since early alpha, it is... aptly named. I've tried
dozens of editors and eventually settled on TextMate many years ago.

Within 2 days, Sublime had completely* replaced it--something that many
editors have failed to do.

I can't wait until I get paid, so that I can throw money at them.

* I still use TM on occasion for its GUI theme/bundle etc. editors.

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yannski
Poor syntax highlighting for HAML and coffeescript highlithing is non
existent... This is why I love vim and the Janus "bundle"
<https://github.com/carlhuda/janus/> : they are always up to date.

~~~
chime
CS works for me. Just get the bundle for TextMate.

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orta
I've wrote a ruby gem to act as an equivalent of TextMate's mate command, OS X
only I'm afraid.

gem install slime

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beck5
I bought the alpha a few months back because I was very impressed with the
demo. Its fast, looks good and has good amount of power, power close to Vim
level in my opinion. But at the end of the day I use Vim because it is so
ubiquitous (and open).

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jbrowning
Here is an alternate download location from the developer:

<http://209.20.84.235/>

Source: <http://twitter.com/sublimehq/status/86799940021518336>

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newman314
Does it do language autocomplete?

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nobleach
Yep. You hit CTRL+SPACE and it'll give you a drop down list of possible
completions. It'll also have your previously typed variables in the list.

I'm more of a tab user myself though. So I'll type array_p and hit tab once
for array_push. (for example)

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Inufu
Why should I use Sublime Text and not emacs? (note that I'm not experienced
with emacs)

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swombat
Probably because it will take you between 3 to 5 years less time to learn how
to be proficient at your text editor if it's ST rather than emacs?

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chrisrogers
I am a big fan of this project, and it's made some great progress over the
months. Only thing holding me back right now: code navigator. The overview
display is nice, but a full code navigator would seal the deal.

~~~
bigethan
There's a hotkey that brings up a search with all of the methods in a
particular file (apple-r on a mac) that does the trick for me. Be nice if it
did a bit more, but it does enough for now.

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AaronMT
Selecting text shows invisible characters, awesome (it's the little things).

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XLcommerce
I really like the feel of sublime text, however there's one feature keeping me
on Notepad++ which is double click to highlight text also highlights all
instances of that word in the document.

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derencius
from textmate, to vim and now sublimetext2. I'm not that proficient on
editors, but sublimetext is being great. fast and simple very configurable. my
editor of choice for a couple of months.

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d0m
How's the keys customization? Is there a vi-mode key binding?!

~~~
Stwerner
This is the only downside I've found to using vi/vim full time. Wanting and
expecting the keybindings everywhere, even in things like html text areas.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
If you happen to still use Firefox, there's an extension It's All Text that
allows you to use an external editor like vim for textarea input.
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/its-all-text/>

There are somewhat similar extensions for Chrome to get the same effect, but
requires a more elaborate setup to get around the sandboxing used by Chrome.
[http://superuser.com/questions/261689/its-all-text-for-
chrom...](http://superuser.com/questions/261689/its-all-text-for-chrome)

~~~
Stwerner
Yeah I've got Vimium, so that is pretty nice, but I still get confused a
little bit when it doesn't work as I expect. Vim has ruined my mind.

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georgemcbay
I like this as a code editor, but the lack of even a rudimentary
project/directory view (other than the file list overlay which I don't like at
all) kills it for me.

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fuzzythinker
The "Add Folder to Project" isn't to your liking?

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JeffJenkins
This seems pretty cool, but is there a way to filter out certain file/folder
patterns (or globs) on a per-project basis rather than globally?

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sashthebash
Where is the Peepcode Screencast or something similar for this that teaches me
the basics in about an hour?

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vdm
With a discoverable, well-designed GUI, you shouldn't need one. Emacs and VIM
are very powerful, but not very discoverable.

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swombat
TextMate had a peepcode screencast. In fact, what launched textmate was
probably DHH using TextMate in his "blog in 15 minutes" screencast.

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swah
I can't stand the black tabs.

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drivebyacct2
I think maybe the name of the software might be a more trivial thing to worry
about in a text editor.

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crazymik3
Happy to say that I've already been using it for a while. Big fan.

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tomrod
How does this compare with Coderoom?

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KevBurnsJr
Poor support for PHP 5.3

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thaumaturgy
Wow, this looks great! I really dig the no-distraction mode, I did something
similar with my terminal program and I love it.

 _clicks Download_

...oh. 10.6 required.

Shucks. At least I got to see pictures of it, I guess.

~~~
tomrod
A good reason for a Linux guest on VBox, I spose.

