
Sublime Text 3 dev build 3128 released - coldtea
http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev
======
klum
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!

~~~
ndh2
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](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](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](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.

~~~
gmiller123456
> I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future.

I'm exactly the opposite. I consider the license as compensation for work
already done, I operate under the assumption that the vendor will have made
enough to not care to work on it further.

~~~
tedmiston
Completely agree. What is there today is well worth the license fee even if
there's never another update -- though this isn't one of my concerns as
Sublime is so much more usable / lightweight / snappy vs Atom. [For it to be
sunset, there would have to be a better alternative out there, and for the
general case of multiple languages, I don't believe there is.]

Also packages are well separated from the Sublime releases so even in the case
that there isn't another update, the ecosystem is still active. That said, I
do wish the internal Python for plugins would receive a version bump though.

------
news_to_me
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.

~~~
xienze
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.

~~~
bpicolo
I actually switched to VS Code vs Sublime for most tasks just recently. It has
a few quirks (looking at you, files that just close for no reason) and isn't
quite as quick, but the language/debugging packages and support are just
leagues better.

~~~
jdi
> ... files that just close for no reason)

Do you mean if you select (preview) a file from the tree browser on the left,
the file appears, but if you select another one, it goes away ?

Use this setting/preferrence:

"workbench.editor.enablePreviewFromQuickOpen": false,

~~~
tedmiston
Or double click to fully open them.

------
Philipp__
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.

~~~
captainmuon
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.

~~~
greenhatman
That's true. I've been using Sublime for years and I've never had a bug or a
crash. It pretty much perfect. And it's blazing fast.

I actually even use its fuzzy search to search my harddrive sometimes. Because
I haven't found an easy app for Linux that works like Search Everything on
Windows.

~~~
pier25
> I haven't found an easy app for Linux that works like Search Everything on
> Windows.

[https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert](https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert)

~~~
andrepd
That's not quite like Search Everything, which is just a tool for searching
files by name.

In that vein though, see also Synapse: [https://launchpad.net/synapse-
project](https://launchpad.net/synapse-project)

~~~
pier25
True, but searching by name it's one of the main features of Albert and it's
certainly more convenient than using ST to search your computer.

~~~
tedmiston
s/Albert/Alfred

------
agounaris
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.

~~~
DamnInteresting
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.

~~~
gaastonsr
It has never happened to me. By the way something great about sublime text is
that I can quit and open ST again in ~2 seconds max. It's that fast.

~~~
DamnInteresting
Restarting is indeed quick, but sadly sublime text windows don't re-open on
the same desktop they were on when I quit. They all pop up on whatever desktop
is up when I re-launch, and I have to arrange 4-5 windows again. It's not a
huge deal, but it is an inconvenience.

It's a testament to the quality of the app that the gripes are so minor.

------
wbond
We've got a forum post for the dev build at
[https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-
build-3127/27213](https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-build-3127/27213) to
report bugs and other feedback.

~~~
baby
Thanks for the awesome work! Can we get an image of that new logo and new
theme for the impatient/curious people on mobile :D

~~~
wbond
This thread has the new icon and screenshots of the Default and Adaptive
themes:
[https://twitter.com/wbond/status/851979232477671424](https://twitter.com/wbond/status/851979232477671424)

~~~
izietto
Is there a way to have the same files icon in the sidebar? I just want to
discern from folders and files, I don't care about file extensions

~~~
etatoby
I'm pretty sure the icons are up to the theme. You could take your favorite
theme, duplicate its directory, and edit the icon definition file.

------
sundvor
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.

~~~
swah
Sublime fans and VSC fans are almost disjoint sets...

~~~
coldtea
You'd be surprised. I'm tempted to go to the VSC side from time to time
because of the more polish -- it's the speed that brings me back.

~~~
etatoby
You'd t think with their big team and resources, they would have been able to
use a more performant cross platform toolkit, say Qt or maybe some of their
.Net stuff.

Why did they choose to base their editor on Electron, of all things,
especially considering the existing results of Atom (horrible) is beyond me.

~~~
merdreubu
I think the development of VS Code was kind of an accident. They built Monaco
(the editor component) for Visual Studio Online, then made it a standalone
text editor as a side project and it ended taking off big time.

~~~
nojvek
I'd rather have VSC team have members working on making underlying electron
API'S faster. Get it to speed of sublime.

~~~
tracker1
If you compare it to the likes of Brackets and Atom, it was significantly
faster than the others at release... I'm not sure what can be done to make
significant performance gains... I mean being able to even handle large files
(disabling any highlighting/autocomplete, and only displaying portion of the
file may be necessary)... as it is, for most of what I've used it for vsc is
great.

Electron is essentially Node grafted to Chromium... There are a few things
that could be done, but would depend on a lot of upstream cooperation to do
so.

~~~
nojvek
Sublime uses skia as its rendering library, which is what blink (chromium
frontend) uses for rendering. May be electron can provide a nicer api to
interface directly with skia.

By giving performant lower level access to render, may be VSC can move some of
the perf sensitive code directly to compiled optimized binaries.

Sort of like what node native libraries do.

Sublime does some pretty great dark magic. I was impressed to see vscode
approach similar speeds to sublime in search. I believe there is plenty that
can be done to make rendering fast, reduce memory consumption and make it a
bit light weight. But it would require access to metal APIs

~~~
tracker1
VSCode's plugin model is pretty impressive and tends to isolate the side
effects of poorly performing plugins (including language/autocomplete, etc)...
so that the main editor tends to be responsive. There should be room to tweak,
but I'm pretty happy overall. Way better experience than any full IDE I've
tried... I only hope they keep it that way as features come in.

Also, as an Electron app, there is a node element, so compiled components are
already an option.

------
big_paps
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 ...

------
SebiH
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)

[1]:
[https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim](https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim)

~~~
trishume
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.

[https://github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous](https://github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous)

~~~
SCdF
Awesome! Vintageous is nice, but there are outstanding bugs that are annoying
and it has had that "it doesn't matter if you write a nice PR I'm going to
ignore it" feel about it for some time.

------
mataug
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.

~~~
joshuata
Absolutely! I've tried so many other tools, but LaTexTools + Skim is so
simple. It makes writing LaTex almost comfortable.

(I love LaTex, but it is still one of the most frustrating pieces of software
ever conceived.)

------
bshimmin
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!

~~~
sundvor
Agreed. Just upgraded myself and it looks great. C# syntax highlighting is
also looking much better.

------
mangecoeur
Hypothetically, what would it take for ST to be released as open source?
Money? Could we crowdfund that?

~~~
doubleunplussed
That would put a lot of people's minds at ease.

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
_Windows font rendering defaults to DirectWrite unless using Consolas or
Courier New_

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
I imagine it uses ClearType, Windows' subpixel font rendering software. Don't
know for sure though.

------
wooptoo
Great release!

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.

~~~
izietto
Buy another license and gift it to someone ;)

~~~
nkkollaw
I would take it.

------
toxican
Is there usually a delay in updates being available to the "in-app" updater?
Getting "No updates available" when I check.

edit: manual download is very slow. Maybe things are just a bit bogged down at
the moment.

------
jasonlfunk
I know that it's probably just change aversion... but I'm not a huge fan of
the new icon.

But I'm happy for the update!

~~~
Kudos
Link for the lazy:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9LqjoBXYAE-P6k.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9LqjoBXYAE-P6k.png)

I think it's much better than the previous one, but I've always replaced the
icon for that with this anyway: [https://dribbble.com/shots/1836652-Final-
Round-Sublime-Icon](https://dribbble.com/shots/1836652-Final-Round-Sublime-
Icon)

I think I'll leave the new one in place for a while and see whether it grows
on me.

~~~
SippinLean
Much better, more unique and somewhat memorable, says a _little_ something
about what it does instead of just communicating "orange S" like the last one.

I wonder how that delicate shadow holds up at small sizes and in monochrome.

------
teddyc
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.

~~~
ino
You can already buy Sublime Text 3.
[https://www.sublimetext.com/buy?v=3](https://www.sublimetext.com/buy?v=3)

------
mtarnovan
Still no support for ligatures, bummer.

~~~
jbrooksuk
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 hold out hope for it happening one day though!

------
szastupov
Excited to hear news from Sublime team!

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.

~~~
balls187
To clarify, this is not a beta, this is a dev build. The Beta channel is 3126,
which has been a rock for me (paid user).

~~~
szastupov
You are correct, I use 3126 too and it's more stable than Atom ever been :)

------
adrianN
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.

[1] [http://limetext.org/](http://limetext.org/)

~~~
jasonlfunk
I'm curious why you don't want to rely on non-free software for your work.

Usually paying for something helps it not to die, like limetext, for example.

For my work, I'd rather pay for something I rely on to increase the likelihood
of it staying alive and keeping up with the work I need to do.

~~~
nkkollaw
Exactly.

It's amazing how people still don't want to pay for software.

~~~
scbrg
It's not that we don't want to pay for software, and I don't think that's what
OP meant when he used the word "nonfree". It's just that we need the four
freedoms in case the software takes a sudden turn in a direction we don't
like.

Now you're going to ask: How is it possible to support the four freedoms and
still charge for the software?

And my answer is: I have no idea, and I don't care. It's not my job to come up
with a business model for you, I'm just stating my requirements.

~~~
nkkollaw
I see. Perhaps I commented too fast.

I don't think it's that big of a deal for a text editor, though.

One thing is if you're a designer and all your files are PSDs and you're
locked in with Photoshop, but if Sublime Text dies you still have lots of
other editors that will open your plain text files: Atom, Eclipse, etc.

~~~
snotrockets
Once you have trained your muscle memory on a given editor, switching becomes
a very big deal.

~~~
giancarlostoro
None of the four freedoms mention it having to be free. ;)

------
xgbi
For those of us that don't own a license, can I use that build without a
license?

~~~
jbrooksuk
No. The dev builds are only available for users with a license.

> Sublime Text 3 dev builds are currently available to registered users only.

[https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev](https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev)

~~~
xgbi
OK, I read that and didn't understand the "registered" (should be "users that
have a License"). I understood as "registered on the forum" and figured I
could try it. It ended up erasing my non-dev sublime text :'(

~~~
eridal
you can still download the old one, just replace the version on the build url
;)

------
Unknoob
I switched to Atom after years using sublime and I love it. Only wish they had
syntax highlighting for Swift, something that I have yet to encounter in any
text editor.

Edit: Looked around a bit and it's fairly simple to add it to Atom.

~~~
npolet
I jumped ship the atom when all the hype was around. Semantically, they feel
almost identical to me. But I missed the performance that came with sublime. I
now bounce back and forth between the two, depending on... well I'm not sure
why I bounce between the two.

I've still to encounter a bug in sublime. Can't quite say the same about atom.
Both great editors though.

Why did you move away from sublime to atom? What was the nail in the coffin
that made you move away?

------
whalesalad
I've had very buggy experience with the latest release. I had to roll back to
3124. My sidebar file list was always empty and it just had wacky behavior. It
is a dev build, afterall.

That changelog is massive (!!!) but I am very disappointed in the fact that
support for font ligatures (Fira Code) continues to get pushed out –
[https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/support-font-
ligatures/17654](https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/support-font-ligatures/17654)

~~~
qqilihq
Can confirm the sidebar issue. Sometimes the sidebar is empty, sometimes
messed up and entries appear multiple times. Also reverted to 3124. Like the
new icon though and looking forward to the next release.

------
dilap
As an emacs user/addict, I'm very jealous of Sublime's amazing performance.
But terminal support, extreme customizability, & the awesome integrated shell
keep me on emacs...

------
ensiferum
Sublime Text is a great piece of software. My only gripe is that the license
I've bought (which was kinda steep IMHO) doesn't carry over from ST2 to ST3.

------
ino
Awesome update, I really enjoy the live theme and scheme switching, it's so
fast and fluid.

I also appreciate the improved markdown syntax highlighting. This was bugging
me slightly.

I like the new icon and I think the shadow could be a bit more pronounced and
the grey corners a bit less pointy.

Sublime Text is one of my favourite computer programs ever.

------
krystiangw
I'm using Sublime for 3 years now ( firstly version 2 ). I have never found
anything better. It just works.

------
ddingus
I love this program. Thank you.

Any chance at a RasPi build? I happen to use these things professionally, and
Sublime would complete the picture for me.

And yes, a license that costs more than the computer is fine.

------
afandian
I've used build 3126 for a couple of weeks (I think) and the regular, daily
crashes of Sublime Text 2 have gone. Recommended.

------
TsomArp
I tried it but I still feel UltraEdit is better. Maybe I am missing something?
Can somebody that really used both comment?

------
wnevets
I dont like the new icon but thats just me

~~~
altern8tif
Liteicon for apps with ugly icons.

------
pratikborsadiya
When are you planning to release it?

------
Ygg2
It's actually dev-build 3128 now :)

------
faragon
Why is not open source?

