

Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor - amarsahinovic
http://foicica.com/textadept

======
dotmanish
Suggestion about the website: Please include a separate section called
"Screenshots". A lot of people directly click there to get a feel of the
software before they download.

~~~
amarsahinovic
Screenshot with dark theme: <http://i.imgur.com/oqByS.png>

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msutherl
Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest.

If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I would
regain interest. Screenshots are important especially to people like me who
may or may not care. They're the fastest way for a potential user to answer
the question: is this worth caring about at all.

Some questions you can answer with screenshots:

\- Does it run on my platform?

\- Are there any glaringly ugly things about it that will be a dealbreaker?

\- Is it more beautiful/cool than what I'm already using?

\- To what extent can it be customized?

\- What kind of people are using it (if you have user screenshots)?

~~~
amarsahinovic
> Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest.

Scrollbar issue is with my XFCE theme, not textadept.

> If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I
> would regain interest

Gnome terminal, windowed: <http://i.imgur.com/Dfh6o.png> Gnome terminal,
fullscreen: <http://i.imgur.com/6yoil.png>

> Does it run on my platform?

Runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

> Are there any glaringly ugly things about it that will be a dealbreaker?

I don't see any.

> Is it more beautiful/cool than what I'm already using?

Well, it depends on what you find more beautiful/cool :) For example, it's
similar to my current GVim setup: <http://i.imgur.com/djaLS.png>

> To what extent can it be customized?

It seems that most of it is written in Lua (except the core), so it seems
pretty extensible <http://foicica.com/textadept/11_Scripting.html>

> What kind of people are using it (if you have user screenshots)?

Can't help you with this :)

~~~
jlgreco
Does this support tiled windows in a terminal like Vim or Emacs? Relying on a
terminal multiplexer to provide that is less than ideal I think.

Looks good otherwise. Not to my taste, but it is refreshing to see a new text
editor that actually seems like it was written by someone who understands the
variety of use-cases of text editors.

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anonymouz
> Unparalleled extensibility.

A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs.

Is there some kind of feature comparison somewhere? Or any particular
highlights? The feature list is a nice start, but basically what I would
expect of any decent editor anyway (except for code completion).

~~~
Breakthrough
Don't forget about Notepad++ (Windows only though) and Sublime Text (best text
rendering I've seen yet), which I'd argue are also valid comparisons - yes,
even to Vim/Emacs.

That being said, I did have a quick look through the Textadept manual, and
there are quite indeed a few useful and unique features... Whether or not this
indicates "unparalled" extensibility though, is another matter all together.

~~~
eikenberry
IMO you can't compare an editor to Vim/Emacs if it can't run in a console.

~~~
yen223
IMO Vim is highly overrated, and its _only_ selling point is that it can run
in a console.

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skymt
It's a little off-putting that the documentation brags about the low line
count without mentioning the use of Scintilla, which already implements _most
of a text editor_. Still, I'm willing to give it a try.

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leke
Just tried the Linux version and I like it! If the Windows version is
portable, I'll carry it around on my USB stick.

~~~
rainysunday
The Windows version is quite portable if you manually set the .textadept home
to your USB stick. A while ago I wrote a Portable Apps launcher [1] that did
that automatically for you, haven't used it in quite a while though. (I wrote
this before GTK was included in the Windows package.)

[1] <https://github.com/rgieseke/textadept-portable>

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majke
And a youtube video showing Textadept with some third party plugin:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSAinGsc7dA>

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dualogy
OK, so I find Sublime Text 2 extremely perfect for my needs... now how does
this thing beat pure perfection? ;)

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SeanDav
I tried using Sublime Text 2 but it has no ability to toggle automatic
updating of changed files, unlike Notepad++ for example.

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dualogy
Yeah it does auto-update changed files by default, but you can enable the
option to highlight unsaved files more prominently (should be on by default
really) so such cases for me always show up on my radar immediately. And then
a simple Ctrl+Z reverts the file to whatever was in that editor-buffer
beforehand.

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spullara
Sadly, on the Mac, this doesn't feel like a native application and things like
changing the size of the window are broken. Also, a horizontal scrollbar
appearing in an empty text window is strange. Might work great on Linux and I
like the idea but the execution on Mac leaves a lot to be desired.

~~~
godDLL
Yeah, I tried the 'source-map' layout but it won't remember the zoom levels
when re-opening a session. <http://i.imgur.com/mxYO0.png>

And it doesn't use Exposé for windows, at all. That's a shame. I'd like to
have several editor windows open, with separate buffer lists.

I like where they're going with it, but are they there yet? Meh.

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crazydiamond
Has anyone tried this out in terminal (ncurses version). I get an error on
osx, so i can't load a file. I get this if I give a file on command line.

> ....0.osx/Textadept.app/Contents/Resources/core/file_io.lua:143: bad
> argument #1 to 'iconv' (string expected, got nil)

Open file (M-S-O) does nothing.

Tried C-u (snapopen) and get a similar iconv error:

> pt.app/Contents/Resources/modules/textadept/snapopen.lua:67: bad argument #1
> to 'iconv' (string expected,

I am executing the textadept-ncurses.osx file. Thx. Please note that
<backspace> is acting like a TAB but C-h is working correctly.

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eikenberry
I didn't see this in the Debian repository yet? Years of experience have
taught me that 99% of the time if a project isn't in the Debian repo it isn't
mature yes or useful to more than a small niche and probably not worth my
time. The 1% that is missing there is when I am part of the small niche.

Not meant as an attack or anything. Just an observation and possibly a
'marketing' suggestion if you'd like more users.

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autotravis
Does the "toggle block comment" option actually work (Ctrl+/)? Tried it with
python (file saved with .py ext and syntax highlighting even showed up), but
couldn't comment with that keybinding...

edit: block commenting didn't even work when selecting it from the Edit menu.

~~~
rainysunday
By default comment strings are not defined in core Textadept. Add them like
this:

<http://foicica.com/wiki/comment-supplemental>

Or install the Python language module:

<http://foicica.com/hg/python/>

~~~
autotravis
Awesome, thanks. I just added that comment string def to init.lua and it works
great.

Edit: why is this not there by default? I'm not sure any developer would _not_
want a block commenting function...

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akkartik
I just tried it out and parts of the ncurses UI seems less responsive than I'm
used to in vim. For example, try hitting ctrl-alt-f for incremental find, then
hit esc to leave it. It seems to take a second to exit incremental find mode.
Does anybody else see this?

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pepve
About that extensibility, would it be possible to implement inline diffs?
(Paint margin green for added lines, show a red marker for deleted lines.)

~~~
rainysunday
The (deprecated) debug module has some screen shots that show margin markers:

<http://foicica.com/wiki/lua-debugger>

The styling and symbol choice is configurable.

Not sure how inline diff works though (for deleted lines), do you have an
example in another editor?

~~~
pepve
Here is how Netbeans does it:
[http://netbeans.org/projects/versioncontrol/pages/Git_ui#Inl...](http://netbeans.org/projects/versioncontrol/pages/Git_ui#Inline_diff_-
_show_local_modifications_in_a_files_sidebar)

~~~
rainysunday
What I see on the screenshots there should be possible in Textadept.

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optymizer
<rant>That's great. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to vim and gcc,
because I don't have a cross-platform open source IDE that has been
"relentlessly optimized" for my language of choice, to look slick, to not
consume gigs of RAM and to not stop the world while I'm typing some text. What
I have is a long list of text editors. Oh, here's another one. That's
great.</rant>

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dysoco
Looks interesting, does it support TTY mode? I might try it.

~~~
e12e
From the link:

    
    
      > "The version of Textadept for the terminal requires only ncurses."
    

I suppose that would fit?

I notice that some keyboard bindings[1] are different in "Terminal"-mode (I
suspect that means in terminal on GNU/Linux and possibly *BSD, but I suppose
it might include MS Windows cmd.com (if supported) and OS X Terminal as well)
-- as compared to the GUI-variants (MS Windows and OS X appear to just
substitute control for command - while the "Terminal"-variant uses e.g. meta-
control-n, rather than just meta-n or control-n for new file).

I think I'll stick with VIM, thanks. Still having another powerful editor
available isn't a bad thing.

[1]
[http://foicica.com/textadept/api/_M.textadept.keys.html#Key....](http://foicica.com/textadept/api/_M.textadept.keys.html#Key.Bindings)

~~~
rainysunday
The terminal version works only on Unix/BSD, but it was only introduced in
5.5. (Which means there might be glitches as well on Linux.)

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osa1
let's see when will first vi plugin for it come out..

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marcusramberg
Have you seen the scroll bars on this thing? Or the Icon? No way I'm using
this on OSX...

~~~
PedroBatista
Imagine your friends see this app running on your computer, i mean gooosh....
whatevahhh they wouldn't invite you to their minimalism exquisite design
parties anymore.

~~~
marcusramberg
I know you Linux guys are used to every app having a completely different look
and feel, but on the mac this app just doesn't feel native.

But your story was cool too...

~~~
drivebyacct2
Wow, what a _incredibly_ stupid troll. Could you paint a bigger "I parrot
decade old OS stereotypes" on your forehead?

Especially when this is most likely to integrate in Linux, given that it will
follow your GTK theme.

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rymith
What does this do that Vim doesn't? I'm just not sure I see any selling
points. You can extend Vim with Lua, vim has multiple viewports, support for
hundreds of languages, and all the other features like code complete, etc...
What itch is this supposed to scratch, that something like Vim, a proven
project, cannot? I understand that every developer wants to carve his name out
and be king of his own sandcastle. But as a rule, I don't support that unless
the developer has really thought about the problem and decided that a new
project was the only way to solve a problem.

~~~
irahul
> What does this do that Vim doesn't?

It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

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TallboyOne
I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

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irahul
>> It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

> I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

I am a long time vim user. Where do I get in line for obtaining my free-with-
vim pretentiousness and douchbagginess? Or it doesn't come with Vim and it's
just you?

~~~
TallboyOne
At least you found the line for cant see when someone's being facetious.

~~~
irahul
> At least you found the line for cant see when someone's being facetious

You are a fucking asshole.

Ha, ha. Just kidding. You just don't get my flippant sense of humor.

Sorry. This doesn't work for me. Being facetious is different from being a
jerk.

