
Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone - pykello
http://limetext.org/
======
overgard
I wish they wouldn't attach themselves to the sublime brand. It's not theirs,
and it's pretty shady to ride another project's coattails when their intent is
essentially to cannibalize it by being sublime-but-free. You can discuss the
merits of open source and paying for tools all you want, but basically their
goal is to put a man out of business who's made something that a lot of people
love, because he has the gall to charge $60. Anyway. I'm all for competition,
but do it under your own banner with your own ideas.

Also, I think it's weird that the fact that it's made in Go is part of the
pitch. I mean, unless I'm contributing... I don't care. You could write it in
brainfuck if it does the job.

~~~
oridecon
I agree, but the main reason for most people (I can't comment on the author's
intention) is that Sublime is lacking updates and transparency about the
development.

They did announced something recently, like getting ready for ST 4. And 3 is
not even a major upgrade from ST2, IMHO.

~~~
dyeje
I've been using Sublime Text 2 for a few years now. I'm not sure what a major
upgrade would entail when it works so well already. Do Emacs and Vim get
'major upgrades'? [actual question]

~~~
wooter
no, but emacs and vim don't charge 60 bucks per version. I'm not saying this
is necessarily negative for ST, but its the point he was making. I frankly
think 60 bucks is worth robust support which ST certainly did not have.

Anyways, theres no satisfying HN. When Atom came out, the consensus was that
they should've come out and said it was an ST clone upfront. Now someone does
that and it seems the tide has changed.

While we're on Atom, since switching I've found its everything ST should've
been. Its open source and has a huge community developing very useful plugins
(not to mention, they're well integrated from a usability perspective -
git/terminal status/linter/etc). Also, I have yet to run into a serious
bug/versioning issue which ST plugins were rife with before I dropped it.

~~~
wldcordeiro
I don't think Atom is ready to replace Sublime yet for me. The way it renders
text just bugs me for one. The other thing is that it's lacking a good way to
do syntax specific settings like in Sublime. Aside from that it's a matter of
the plugin ecosystem not being as mature.

~~~
hydrozen
Yeah, every font I’ve tried on Atom really doesn’t look good compared to ST on
my mac. Even with css tweaks for antialiasing.

------
bubblicious
If there is one app I've always been thrilled to pay for, it's Sublime Text.
I've purchased and renewed the licence ever since v1 came out. While it may
not be open sourced, you can see it was created with a lot of love for code
and openness. Today there are thousands of amazing plugins to enhance it. And
though I fully respect the open source initiative, I, for once, am very happy
to support / give some money to a peer developer who has made our world much
better.

~~~
jokoon
60 bucks for an editor is quite expensive I think. There are nice alternative
to such an editor.

I wonder what features makes sublime text so much valuable...

~~~
phpnode
60 bucks is less than an hour's pay for many developers. We're talking about a
tool that gets used for > 8hrs/day in many cases. Other industries would DREAM
of having tools this cheap!

* edited to remove the word "most" which seems to be upsetting some people.

~~~
boobsbr
> 60 bucks is less than an hour's pay for many/most developers

WHAT? Where?

~~~
phpnode
from the top of my head:

UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, all of
Scandinavia

~~~
bulte-rs
I don't make 60 bucks an hour (not even 45 euros)..

Much sad :(

~~~
UnfalseDesign
Same here. I'm a web developer in the US and I make $17 an hour... and that's
at a major, international corporation. I think you and I are being shorted.

~~~
Bahamut
Big time, but it also depends on the area of the country you live in. Pay in
the midwest is a lot lower for example, but the cost of living is a lot lower
as well, whereas in Silicon Valley, it is not unheard of for people to make
close to $100/hour (although that is somewhat rarer).

~~~
pionar
Even in the midwest, though, $17/hour (about $35,000/yr) is WAY low. Most devs
in the midwest START at about 50,000 - 60,000 for entry-level.

------
BorisMelnik
Great intentions, and huge shoes to fill. Already off on the right foot by
going open source. Hope the authors have thick skin, this is one market that
people are generally _very_ particular about, and won't hold back on the
details.

For me UI is almost as important as the engine. I'm a very
clean/minimalist/organized person and if the software (or text editor in this
case) does not, or cannot reflect that then there will be issues.

------
eps
I don't like how it shamelessly piggybacks on Sublime's reputation by using
its name left and right and doesn't hesitate to knock it down by calling
itself a "successor". This comes across as disrespectful at least.

~~~
smt88
Sublime is dead. No one is actively developing it.

There's a rich history of piggybacking on dead software, and I (and many
others) clicked this link because of that piggybacking.

I completely support and admire someone who is trying to further the
development of Sublime without having the original code base.

~~~
coldtea
> _Sublime is dead. No one is actively developing it._

No one has to "actively develop it". It's a fully capable editor. It has a
great plugin framework and ecosystem. Pending some incompatible OS change, I
can use it for the next 30 years (using ST-3 from the early alphas, and it has
been rock solid).

For comparison, I also use Vim, and it's not like I use any "new features" in
Vim or anything. The most "current" features I use in it are like 10-15 years
old.

~~~
nicholassmith
"No one has to "actively develop it". It's a fully capable editor."

People seem to forget this quite quickly, but what else is needed in ST3
_right now_? Very little in my day-to-day experience that isn't either solved
via a plugin, or mostly trivial. I'd prefer a much more stable piece of
software rather than one that's having upgrades thrown at it every month to
maintain an 'actively developed' project status.

~~~
colomon
I'm still using TextMate 1 for pretty much this reason. :)

The only features I'd really love to add to TextMate are the rmate remote
launching feature (which didn't work for me when I tried TextMate 2 a couple
of months ago) and syntax highlighting for Perl 6 (which as far as I know no
editor has yet).

~~~
kbenson
> syntax highlighting for Perl 6 (which as far as I know no editor has yet).

You mean, besides standard vim 7.3? Also, here's[1] an emacs mode.

1: [https://github.com/lue/p6mode](https://github.com/lue/p6mode)

------
beefsack
Lime has been around for a little while now, it seems to have a fairly
functional backend but still awaiting a high quality frontend implementation.
Part of what sets ST apart is the frontend.

One of the most impressive goals on the roadmap is to implement a terminal
frontend as well as a QT frontend, which I'm quite excited to see.

Arch users can install Lime from AUR:
[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lime-
git/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lime-git/)

~~~
actf
> One of the most impressive goals on the roadmap is to implement a terminal
> frontend as well as a QT frontend, which I'm quite excited to see.

I'm also interested to see this. I've said before that I think Go could be a
really interesting language to develop GUI software in, however the existing
QML package is "alpha quality". I've considered writing GUI software in Go,
but at this point I think it would be a mistake given that most, if not all,
GUI bindings in Go (and please correct me if I'm wrong) are considered
experimental or alpha quality. In theory this will mean the author's progress
will be somewhat dependent on the go-qml project, and may involve fixing bugs
upstream.

If it were me, I would probably choose another language just based on the
maturity of Go's current GUI bindings.

------
christiangenco
Oh goodness, I'm sorry, but I can't get past that chunky window toolbar. I use
editors like sublime instead of an IDE so my screen real estate isn't taken up
by buttons to leave as much room as possible for my code.

If that isn't right, there must be untold frustrations in the path of using
this editor for me that I don't care to discover.

~~~
easytiger
> I use editors like sublime instead of an IDE so my screen real estate isn't
> taken up by buttons to leave as much room as possible for my code

Why not use something in a terminal with almost no interface then, say emacs
or vi. All they require you to have is a mental model of what you are working
on which you should have anyway/

~~~
m_mueller
If parent is like me: I like to use a pointer device, particularly together
with sublimes multicursor implementation. See some entries that you want to
edit simultaneously, but their pattern is complex to express? In emacs I would
just give up and do it manually, in Sublime I can hold down Command, click
each position and then apply any edit command. Happens very often in my kind
of work.

~~~
vbsteven
I got exactly the same behaviour in emacs by installing the 'multiple-cursors
package and adding the following to my .emacs file

(require 'multiple-cursors) (global-unset-key (kbd "M-<down-mouse-1>"))
(global-set-key (kbd "M-<mouse-1>") 'mc/add-cursor-on-click)

~~~
m_mueller
Ok that's interesting. The following features are also crucial to me:

* Tree view

* Split window with synchronized views when showing the same file

* Regex search over file or selection, results can be turned into multicursors (!)

* Regex search over multiple files or directories

* Multicursors at each line for a selection

* Auto-update of views when file underneath changes (editor should ask what to do in case of edits)

I'm sure all of this _can_ be achieved with Emacs - my question is: How long
will it take me to set up? Will the result be portable, e.g. can I copy some
config file unto any POSIX machine and use it from there in an ssh terminal?
That last point would be the main draw for me on why to switch to Emacs, since
with Sublime I have to mount the drives (with Expandrive) which works well for
the essential things, however there are details like the treeview not updating
in that case.

~~~
easytiger
Interesting, I guess it is just an editing preference. Multiple cursors i
associate with mouse use (I know it isn't the same but I bet most people use
the mouse with them). I consider touching the mouse dangerous for myself and
for productivity.

> Tree View

This i fully understand (and exisits in emacs) but I think not necessary
either for my workflow. A treeview does already exist in a format called
folders and files ;) I prefer to know the structure of the directories I'm
working in and rarely require a reference to them visually

> Split window with synchronized views when showing the same file

I do too and this is a very basic emacs feature

> Regex

Emacs has a massive number of regex and non regex search options. Though
usually i simply use Ctrl-Z; grep; fg, which is less efficient but fits my
mental model better.

But ctrl-h a <regex> has ~ 34 commands on my machine. Including things like
dired-do-isearch-regexp

> Multicursors at each line for a selection

No idea what this means sadly!

> Auto-update of views when file underneath changes (editor should ask what to
> do in case of edits)

I doubt any editor handles this stuff as well as emacs and is invoked in my
environments daily.

Apart from multicursor stuff (that i do not see the point of for my workflow)
everything you mention is a very very old basic emacs feature.

~~~
m_mueller
Multicursors are one of these things that you don't understand the use for,
_until_ you start using them, at which point you can never go back. In order
to understand what they do, just have a look at all six gifs on this page:
[http://www.sublimetext.com/](http://www.sublimetext.com/).

And sorry, but if you don't know about multicursors, I'm not sure whether you
get what I mean with "Regex search over file or selection, results can be
turned into multicursors". Just have a look at the animations in above URL.
Can emacs do that without turning this into a big modding project?

~~~
unhammer
gif1: It seems the multiple-cursors package does this, though I don't quite
see the point when you have regex-replace.

gif2: I typically do this kind of stuff with CUA-rectangles: [http://trey-
jackson.blogspot.no/2008/10/emacs-tip-26-cua-mod...](http://trey-
jackson.blogspot.no/2008/10/emacs-tip-26-cua-mode-specifically.html) Looks
about the same.

gif3: looks like M-x, though there are newer alternatives to M-x like smex
that do more fancy matching:
[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Smex](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Smex) I
feel like I'm faster with plain M-x, though haven't really given smex much of
a chance

gif4: There's a million packages that do this in various different ways (using
recent files, VC-tracked files, bookmarks, Meta-dot with TAGS or parsers to go
from symbols to definitions, etc.). I suppose people have different
preferences for how to navigate quickly to other files.

gif5: M-x occur is built-in. There's also multi-occur to show over several
files, or occur-edit to edit directly from the list of hits without going into
the file itself, etc.

gif6: regex-replace also has been built-in forever, mc/mark-all-in-region-
regexp seems to match this UI more closely though.

But I'm sure lots of the newer Emacs packages have been inspired by Sublime or
TextMate (or vim!) :-)

~~~
m_mueller
Thank you!

------
headgasket
Sublime Text is a sublime textbook example for small shops/single devs wishing
to make a dent in the status quo.

Love the problem space. Look around. Listen to input from good counsellors,
ignore the negative "it already exists your reinventing the wheel" and the
"i'll try it when it has x".

Here's what the author got as initial feedback. If he had let that negativity
get to him we wouldn't have sublime.
[http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/anatomy-of-a-
next-g...](http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/anatomy-of-a-next-
generation-text-editor)

I suggest a high pass filter on comments on your current project: smart people
with helpful comments know how to give valuable feedback to even the worst
idea without negativity.

Cheers, and march on! GLTA F

------
Mandatum
I'm not opposed to an open-source text editor that aims to replicate features
of a closed-source application. But "Lime Text" is clearly riding on the
success of "Sublime Text", and it irks me because "Sublime Text" isn't owned
by a big large company or someone with a lot of money - it's a project that
started as someone's side-project and has just recently started as a full-time
job.

John, the author, has been clear in the past that if for some reason he no
longer wants to continue developing Sublime Text, he'd open-source it so it
wouldn't rot in the bit graveyard.

Yes, GIMP rides the coattails of Photoshop, and LibreOffice rides the
coattails of Microsoft Office; but these are commercial applications that are
supported and paid for by consumers. Sublime Text is optional. Sublime Text is
free, but you can pay for it - if you like.

Change the tag-line and keep the name.

------
randunel
Am I the only one who immediately wondered how Atom was doing when seeing this
article? :D

~~~
erikb
Yes, me too. The last time I looked it was only for Mac users, which is
totally wrong for a HTML based editor. Didn't mind looking a second time
(until I hear some great buzz, I guess).

I'm also curious about this vim reimplementation some guys are working on.
I'll go and check that out right now!

~~~
ropiku
There is a build for Windows now. I've started using Atom along with Sublime
and Atom is a lot more stable now.

~~~
asantos3
You can use it the ppa and it's on AUR too. I use it on windows and on arch
and it's fairly stable for something in alpha.

------
piqufoh
I applaud the open approach, but I don't see the need to reference Sublime
Text to increase traction. Why not market this as a cool new feature rich
editor implemented in Go (with the bonus of having all the ST / TextMate
compatibility to go?)

In fact, why does Lime reference Sublime Text at all?

~~~
weavie
From
([https://github.com/limetext/lime/wiki/Goals](https://github.com/limetext/lime/wiki/Goals))
it is largely aiming to be a drop in replacement :

\- Compatible with Textmate color schemes (which is what ST is using) \-
Compatible with Textmate syntax definitions (which again is what ST is using)
\- Compatible with Textmate snippets \- Compatible with Sublime Text’s python
plugin API. I’ll probably never implement this 100%, only the api bits I need
for the plugins I use. \- Compatible with Sublime Text’s keybindings and
settings (think most of it is working) \- Compatible with Sublime Text
snippets \- Sublime Text’s Goto anything panel

------
kopparam
Love the fact that the backend is in GoLang. And just like all of you, Sublime
Text is one of those few apps where you actually feel like contributing to the
developers. The only thing to do now is get on the IRC and check it out.

------
wintermute306
If this can print, I'll move over when it's read. I adore Sublime Text but
having to c&p out of it to print is a bit of an annoyance for me. Otherwise
it's a perfect app, I adore it.

~~~
gchp
Out of interest, what do you print code from Sublime? Interested in hearing
why you need to print code, if that's the case.

~~~
crusso
That's a huge assumption, that one can only use Sublime for code.

Personally, I pick a single text editor and use it for all my plain text
editing needs.

I don't print very often, but when I do, I do it for a reason. Just the other
day, I was creating some offline study information for my child. Printing was
my only option.

I was editing away in Sublime and then when I went to print, I opened up the
File menu and looked a second before I remembered... "Oh yeah, this
application knows better than I do about my need to print". Muttering to
myself, I copy/pasted the document into Word and continued on my way.

------
softinio
Sublime is great but I must admit it is going the way of textmate in lack of
support. Developer should open source it and get contributors working on it.
Like someone suggested he can raise money on kickstarter to take it to next
level and maybe charge for a pro version which he can add extra features to if
he wants.

Personally I am using Sublime still but the next time I have to pay for a
license won't be for sublime. Most likely going the IntelliJ Idea route.

Name for Lime Text is shameless :-) Come on you could have come up with
something original !

------
guilbep
Just for information. I was using sublimeText 3. I updated two weeks ago the
last release (Build 3059) and even (Build 3062) and it crashes.. since I don't
want to bother using a close thing that crashes. I switched to atom.io And so
far It's way better than three months ago (It's now fast enough) And It's
really getting traction on the plugin side also.. I don't think I'll ever come
back to sublimetext. I even went back to emacs for one week.

~~~
Dolimiter
atom.io is not fast enough, not even close. Not for a professional developer
who is using it 8+ hours a day.

~~~
guilbep
Sorry for being an 10+ hours a day professional developer more productive on
atom.io (latest) than on a buggy sublime text 3

~~~
tillinghast
Well, see, you _could_ only be an 8+ hours a day professional developer… :-)

------
1971genocide
I have seen peasant art students shell out insane amount of cash for
photoshop, etc. Hell a calculus textbook for first year college is cheaper
than sublime text.

You know software developers are dirt poor ( or really cheap ) when they
cannot shell out 60 dollars for a piece of software they use everyday. Sublime
puts so many expensive IDEs to shame and it costs a fraction ( as a donation )
and people still are up in arms about it.

~~~
zanny
I use Kate as my main editor, and I have contributed $100 in the last year to
the KDE project. That is a bit more than the cost of a Sublime license, at
least.

It is not about cost. It is about freedom. And there is no way I'm giving
someone money to take away my software freedoms if I have an alternative. And
I will _always_ give the free alternative the money I would have spent on the
proprietary one.

~~~
1971genocide
I agree, sublime could have been made open source. But compared to the
elephant in the room ( VS ), Sublime is mostly open source ( all its plugins
are ). Their core could have been made open source. but I think its an act of
self-preservation by the creator which I do not have a problem with.

------
areski
If there is One project where a lot of developers would want to hack is
definitely their own editor! It's a big dilemma, I love the idea of seeing an
open alternative but I also love the possibility to support developers working
on what they love!

One problem that raise here is that we haven't find a way to ensure that open
source projects can bring an incomes to their maintainers, even if there is
many users.

------
pantalaimon
Does it support Code completion akin to SublimeClang? That plugin is pretty
much the reason I'm sticking to Sublime Text 2 (can't get it to work with 3).
I know it's from the same author as lime, but according to the github
description he lost interest in C/C++, so I'm wondering if this feature is to
be implemented still? Or is lime compatible with the old ST2 plugin?

------
james33
Isn't Atom the open source Sublime Text clone?

~~~
dragonwriter
Atom and Light Table seem to be open source editors largely in the same vein
as ST (I wouldn't say they are clones).

~~~
ihuman
Isn't Light Table more focused on being an editor-REPL combination than being
a text editor?

~~~
dragonwriter
All three are focussed on being plug-in extensible into full IDEs for various
languages, and have a generally similar design aesthetic that contrasts to
earlier GUI editors, which is why I say they are in the same vein.

Yes, they have feature and focus differences (which is why I say Atom and LT
aren't clones of ST), and one of those is Light Table's having inline
evaluation as a central feature.

------
oridecon
Few months ago I moved from ST but I would come back to a similar open source
solution if it implemented IDE features on packages. So I can have two
shortcuts, one opens with everything IDE-like, the second one would only load
a few packages and be very Sublime-ish. Fast and simple.

~~~
softinio
Out of interest what did you move to?

~~~
oridecon
PhpStorm (jetbrains.com/phpstorm), but it's not open source :(

there are lot of free options too, like NetBeans

~~~
smt88
Netbeans is fantastic for PHP editing, except the go-to-anything functionality
is terrible out of the box. Even after configuring, it's not as good as ST.
Other than that, it's excellent.

------
husted
Always great with more competition, hopefully it will result in better editors
for everyone. I wish someone would make SourceInsight for OSX, it's by far the
best editor I've ever used but it's only available for Windows.

------
unicornporn
Is there a binary somewhere?

~~~
erikb
I'm not sure, but wasn't Go a JIT compiler?

~~~
patrickg
No, it's a regular compiler (not jit). But anyway, you'd need to install Go,
which, I'd guess, not everybody wants to do.

~~~
rakoo
If you want to compile it yourself, sure; if you already have the binary, you
don't need anything else.

------
higherpurpose
One of the things I like most about Sublime over Atom or Light Table, is the
chosen colors for highlights. I think Lime needs a little more improvement in
that area to make me switch.

------
fritz_vd
Cool! I hope the community of SublimeText/Emacs/Vim/ __ __will not tear you a
new one. As editor wars always tend to get quite heated..

------
zura
I wander why SlickEdit is not as popular as Sublime Text? Is this due to
price? Otherwise, SE is quite powerful and extensible as well.

~~~
dragonwriter
ST leveraged the popularity of TextMate and its ecosystem with support for
TextMate bundles. Given the popularity of open-source tools and how that makes
it harder to launch a pay tool, I thinks its a big boost for a payware tool if
its able to capitalize on the popularity and ecosystem of an existing pay tool
just at the time when people are looking for an alternative to it.

------
Siecje
Why don't you make a package to install, instead of requiring people install
from source?

~~~
judk
Why don't you?

(This is an Open Source koan)

------
netghost
I like that it's being developed with separate front ends (QML and Console).

------
schobesam
Always good with more editors. But i think that Atom will be the next sublime.

~~~
erikb
Please go into more details why you think that. After the first buzz of the
semi open beta I didn't hear _anything_ about Atom. And last time I checked it
only worked on Mac and I couldn't even compile it myself on Linux. Beside
having a great idea it is also important how a project is executed.

~~~
gchp
Compiling on Linux is relatively easy now, though I still find Atom far too
slow for everyday use. In my view it has a long way to go in regards to
replacing Sublime.

------
lucio
IMHO there's no need for an OS version of sublime. Sublime is working fine,
stable, has a free unlimited trial. It makes no sense to make a verbatim
"copy". Maybe he can prepare a release into OS if the proverbial bus hits him?

------
gamesbrainiac
Interesting take on the GUI.

------
tchai_
I'm sure it's taken a load of work and is still in early stages, but
describing yourself as the successor of Sublime Text when it looks as shit as
that.. that's some brass!

~~~
Mchl
It's described as 'aiming to become a successor'. Everyone can set their goals
wherever they wish. Whether they get there is another thing.

