
Scrawl – A modern, cross-platform C#, VB.NET and JavaScript IDE - khellang
https://fluentco.de/
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stirno
Founder of fluentCODE here. Really happy to see this posted, we just pushed
really hard last night to get the site up. Lots of good comments -- I'll just
add that we will be a lot more than just a C#/VB/JS editor. We've got plans to
build CodeEngines for F#, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, CSS/SCSS/SASS/LESS, PHP,
python and lots of framework specific bits for each of those.

We're a small team working hard on a product we believe in. Ask anything and
I'll try and respond if I don't fall asleep!

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mmgutz
FYI, Go is missing a full featured IDE and Go is picking up steam. Not much
competition in this space yet although JetBrains I think started putting real
effort into the plugin.

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pauljz
I really like Go and have definitely felt there's room for great integrated
tooling there.

I want to do Go as one of our early code engines. We'll probably start off
using srclib for early Go support and then build up some bigger features
around the compiler tools, go fix, and so forth.

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colinramsay
This looks great. I always enjoyed Visual Studio but Monodevelop/Xamarin
Studio always feels a bit rickety to me. The key for me is refactoring and
code intelligence which is briefly mentioned on the homepage, but can you shed
any light on your plans in this area?

Also, a minor thing - what's the typeface in the "PROPORTIONAL FONTS"
screenshot?

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stirno
We're building on/and hoping to contribute to the community Code Fixes/Code
Actions being built for Roslyn as far as refactoring goes in C#. We have some
plans of providing a similar interface for other CodeEngines to implement
diagnostics/fixes.

The font is Input Sans [0]. Great font. We wanted to try and package it with
Scrawl but we never heard back from the author. Its free though, go try it
out!

[0] -
[http://input.fontbureau.com/preview/?size=14&language=python...](http://input.fontbureau.com/preview/?size=14&language=python&theme=solarized-
dark&family=InputSans&width=300&weight=300&line-
height=1.2&a=0&g=0&i=0&l=0&zero=0&asterisk=0&braces=0&preset=default&customize=please)

~~~
colinramsay
Thanks! It would be fantastic if individual refactorings could be packaged up
and shared via github or some kind of package manager...

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stirno
Thats pretty much the plan, we have some fun ideas here but I need to prove
out the UX before I can share much more

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quaffapint
Smart timing. With .NET pushing for cross-platform, there's going to be space
for a good IDE until (if they ever do) the porting of Visual Studio. How heavy
is it? I was looking for a lite IDE (if there is such a thing) for my netbook
that installs all in one directory.

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pauljz
We want to make sure it's light enough to run on netbooks/travel computers.

We've got a Dell Venue 8 with an Atom processor lying around that we're using
as a test device to make sure things still run well under CPU constraints.

We haven't looked too close yet at one-directory deployment or running off a
USB stick, but I just added a sticky note to our backlog to see if we can do
it cleanly.

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tmzt
Cool, maybe cross compile to JS and run on the Chromebook as well? A full-
featured IDE on devices with restricted resources would be great.

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gagege
Just throwing this out there. I'd pay double the price of this if you included
amazing F# support.

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stirno
An F# CodeEngine is currently in the backlog for the v1.0 release. It'll be
the kind of thing that evolves quickly I think. Thanks!

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duncanhill
Just as a general note of interest, I too would pay double the price for solid
F# support!

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luisrudge
Neither free nor open source. Does it matter? This is not a text editor. This
could be THE best non-bloated IDE. The price seems pretty reasonable to me.
Bought it already!

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V-2
You bought it without even test driving a trial?

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luisrudge
Yes. I don't see any reason why not.

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swalsh
I'm not sure i'd use this. Visual studio is a great tool, and is about 90% of
the reason I use dot net.

That said, though it's improving, Javascript support still has a long ways to
go. I find myself writing increasing amounts of it as Knockout and Angular
become standard place. I crave to have some of the features that I have with
editing C# while editing javascript.

If you provided that, i'd buy a license. Though my preference would be a
plugin (like resharper) as opposed to a whole new editor.

I'd also pay a lot more than $75. I already pay $150 at home, and $300 at work
for resharper, i'd pay the same for increased javascript support.

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jchannon
.Net is going cross platform. What are you going to use if you develop on OSX
or Linux? It won't be VS

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l-jenkins
Unless of course they push to make VS cross platform. I wouldn't be surprised
if this is in the works. There has been a huge push at MS to become more cross
platform with their product offerings. They must know a lot of their
developers run OSX with a Windows VM just to run VS. I know pretty much our
entire team does that.

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judah
As someone who has worked with Visual Studio and integration APIs for a long
time, a port of VS across platforms would be a huge undertaking. A rewrite,
essentially.

Visual Studio is heavily tied to WPF (Windows-only) presentation framework,
COM (Windows-only) for communication across components and plugins, as well as
bits of native legacy code throughout (Windows-only.)

Truly, you're looking at rewriting Visual Studio to get it on OSX. Heck, MS
would probably be better off just buying Scrawl and rebranding it as Visual
Studio for Mac.

And remember: while .NET is going cross-platform, there are no public plans
for a cross-platform UI toolkit; there is no cross platform WinForms or WPF
from Microsoft.

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legacy2013
This looks great, but I'm not willing to put down $75 to alpha test a product.

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jchannon
Don't forget those that have to have C# support in text editors now there are
plugins for Brackets, Atom, Sublime, vim and Emacs via
[http://omnisharp.net](http://omnisharp.net)

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polskibus
How do you hope to win with now free ( for single user) Visual Studio?

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Someone1234
Visual Studio has been effectively free for almost ten years with the Express
Editions launching in 2005 (which can be used for commercial purposes).

The only thing that has really changed is that Microsoft has re-merged all of
the individual Express Editions into one coherent [free] product, and they
have enabled things like Visual Studio Extensions.

The biggest "problem" I have with the free versions is lack of Microsoft unit
testing. Aside from the differences aren't that great (and I have Visual
Studio Ultimate at work, and I still rarely notice the differences).

As to what their USP will be: I would imagine that it works on Mac and Linux.
It is cross-platform, so it works on all three of the major OSs unlike Visual
Studio (but somewhat like Sublime).

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V-2
under "Themable"

[https://fluentco.de/images/ScrawlThemeableGraphic.png](https://fluentco.de/images/ScrawlThemeableGraphic.png)

can't wait to use that one :)

~~~
pauljz
The "Hot Dog Stand" theme was actually requested by more than one person.
Gotta give the people what they want.

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kolev
If we need to compare value to price ratio using JetBrain's products, for
example, $100 (discounted to $75) is a bit too much. I won't even compare to
the free Atom, which thanks to plugins and architecture is turning quickly
into a fully-featured IDE.

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mwagstaff
Looks nice but as a current Sublime user, I'd like to know about plugin
support.

It may be because I'm only able to see the mobile site, but whilst I can see a
mention of "themability", I can't see any mention of extensibility via third-
party plugins.

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stirno
Theres a good bit discussing the modular nature of how we're building Scrawl
on the site but we will have a complete, very powerful plugin SDK.

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Cakez0r
Does it have nuget (and / or npm etc) support? Pretty essential feature for a
.NET IDE

~~~
stirno
We had package manager support in our prototype and will have it in the main
branch again for the v1.0 release. First nuget, then npm and bower. There will
also be extensibility points here to introduce new package managers easily.

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GordonS
How does this compare to Brackets and Atom?

A comparison table would be a useful addition to the website.

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jkrems
One major difference: It's a native app, so it will use less resources, be
snappier, and able to handle bigger files.

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dnesteruk
Actually, this isn't the day and age where native code IDE can be presented to
be advantageous. I think what's sensible is to assume that no thick-client IDE
is sufficient for arbitrarily sized projects.

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guiomie
There is typo under the header Timeline, "We still have a long ways to go —
here's our plan." ... Ways.

On another note, why would I use this instead of visual studio?

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jchannon
To use on OSX and Linux

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jbrooksuk
As a Sublime fan, this looks really nice in comparison. However, as a PHP
developer this is something I want for my Laravel applications.

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stirno
Our backlog includes support for a PHPCodeEngine and framework support for
Laravel and Symfony. Its not the first thing on our list but it will happen!

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dnesteruk
It woudl be great if you posted a few more screenshots of the IDE. I mean
full-size ones.

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mtokarski
I don't see trial download link there, or I missed something?

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andersns
I believe trial will come after 1.0.0 is released. So hopefully soon!

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hokkos
What is the stack behind this IDE ? GTK# or a Chrome Engine ?

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dawkins
No debugger? As an editor it looks very nice.

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stirno
Our prototype had functioning debugging with breakpoints/locals/etc. It will
find its way into the main branch in the next few weeks.

Screenshot of the prototype debugging a scriptcs .csx file:
[http://i.imgur.com/NMK00Jc.png](http://i.imgur.com/NMK00Jc.png)

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VOYD
charging for betas, interesting marketing technique.

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hawat
I hear .net - and I run away.

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xtrumanx
No you didn't. Here you are in the comments section telling us about it.

