
New Sublime Text update - pyed
https://www.sublimetext.com/3
======
Overtonwindow
I'm not a programmer, please forgive me, but I love using sublime as of
writing tool for legislation and public policy in my work. The color coding
system popular in programming, has been invaluable in drafting legislation.

~~~
dreen
Out of curiosity, which syntax highlighter are you using? as in for which
language? (it says which one in lower right corner)

~~~
mromanuk
super interesting! I'm thinking out loud: could be possible that there is
niche waiting to be untaped with new tech–tools for lawyers (and others
professions)?

Edit: I mean, no high–tech, but tools with a higher level of complexity where
the UI isn't a dumbed down version, and where the software exposes some
functionality to a better skilled user. I'm thinking the "millennial"
professional, should be more comfortable with software and pushing the limit a
little bit.

~~~
bonyt
I'm a third year law student (well, my last day was this week!), and I've been
using Sublime to take notes and outline things for class. I use a custom
syntax highlighting (modified version of the markdown syntax) to make it easy
to read.

It is common for law students to digest course material into a short-ish
(20-30 pages, depending on the class) outline of the material, as a way of
studying. With my modified syntax highlighting config, I use different color
bars to represent different level headings to make it easy to see how my
document or outline is organized.[1] I then have a latex template for pandoc
which lets me convert it to a beautiful document that is useful during open-
book exams.

Using Sublime as a WYSIWYM editor is much more pleasant, as the editor is far
more responsive, than using a WYSIWYG editor (like MS Word). I actually
recently wrote a paper for class entirely in Markdown in Sublime. Pandoc lets
you convert markdown to PDF (it uses latex internally), and when you convert
to docx format for Microsoft Word, you can use a reference file to define the
style formats. It's really easy to write something like a brief or a memo and
convert it with a reference file to a format that others can work with,
properly styled.

[1]: Here is a screenshot of what my editor looks like:
[http://i.imgur.com/xU9eSwt.png](http://i.imgur.com/xU9eSwt.png) :)

~~~
kochthesecond
This is pretty neat. As a programmer, my editor not only color codes, but it
gives me sort of hyperlinks to other definitions i am using/referencing, both
to others work and my own. It also provides me hints and help about the
current context i am writing about (working in), and it is often very relevant
to what I am currently working on. that help is invaluable.

------
micnguyen
The company behind Sublime really fascinates me.

Given how many developers I've seen use Sublime, in the modern age of social
media I'm so surprised SublimeHQ is still invisible. They hardly do any
marketing that I've seen online, no social media engagement, nothing. Not
necessarily a bad thing, but Sublime just seemed -primed- to be that sort of
company with a hyper-engaged user base.

~~~
ryanmaynard
IIRC, its just one person; Jon Skinner.

~~~
bshimmin
Definitely at least one other person:
[http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-3-buil...](http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-
text-3-build-3103)

And despite their lack of "social media engagement", they do have a Twitter
account (@sublimehq) with nearly sixty thousand followers - and they tweet
just about as regularly as updates for Sublime Text are released!

~~~
nikolay
Jon Skinner [0]

Will Bond [1]

Jon's only GitHub project is funny: [2]

[0]: [https://github.com/jskinner](https://github.com/jskinner)

[1]: [https://github.com/wbond](https://github.com/wbond)

[2]: [https://github.com/jskinner/test1](https://github.com/jskinner/test1)

------
keithnz
loved my time with sublime, then atom crossed a line where, while not as good
as sublime in some area, it got good in other areas... then... vscode came
along and showed how snappy an electron app could be, but didn't have a lot of
stuff.... then bam, it opened up, and still not as many toys as Atom, and not
quite as slick as sublime, it hits a bit of sweet spot somewhere in between.

~~~
usaphp
can you tell me what exactly in Atom or vscode is worth switching from ST?

~~~
geoffpado
The fact that a minor update got released isn't a rare enough occurrence to
warrant a highly-voted post on HN.

Snark aside, VSC has grown up quite a lot, very quickly. If you like Sublime,
good for you, stick with it. But it looks like VSC is going to pick up support
for more new things, faster. Personal favorite: support exists to plug in
third-party debuggers and get debug tools/build errors inside VSC.

~~~
coldtea
> _The fact that a minor update got released isn 't a rare enough occurrence
> to warrant a highly-voted post on HN._

So, it's not as mature enough and still adds things regularly, including still
struggling with speed issues?

How often does Vim have updates released? Who even cares for most of them?

~~~
Artemis2
Well, Sublime Text 3 is still a beta.

[https://github.com/vim/vim/releases](https://github.com/vim/vim/releases)

~~~
coldtea
That doesn't mean much, it's just a label. ST3 has been stable (and my main
editor) for 2+ years now.

React was 0.15 until recently, and Node was adopted by major companies like
Microsoft at 0.xx versions.

~~~
Artemis2
The way people number their versions does not mean anything (React is actually
in v15 now). 0.xx has no meaning, except if the developer of the software
explicitly indicates it's unfinished. Version numbers are entirely subjective
by default.

I agree with you on the stability of Sublime Text, but the label beta has, on
the opposite of version numbers, a consistent meaning: it's not finished.

------
donatj
I forget that not everyone is in the dev channel and was wondering why this
was on the front page. There's new dev's every couple days. Didn't realize
there haven't been a stable in a long time.

~~~
HCIdivision17
Looking at the change list, it notes that there won't be artifacting with
theme changes any more? If so that's freaking _huge_. For a while there it
would start up, the package manager would update stuff, and then the interface
would sorta crap itself. A quick reload fixed it, but damn annoying.

Would you suggest switching to the dev builds? I really wouldn't mind being on
the bleeding edge if it meant getting fixes like that sooner.

~~~
coldtea
> _Looking at the change list, it notes that there won 't be artifacting with
> theme changes any more? If so that's freaking huge. For a while there it
> would start up, the package manager would update stuff, and then the
> interface would sorta crap itself._

How is that "huge"? It happened at most 1-2 times a year, and a simple 1
second restart fixed it -- and still left all the files you had loaded.

~~~
HCIdivision17
Due making a backup shortly before a breaking glitch, it actually happened a
whole bunch of times across a whole bunch of computers. Sublime's licensed to
the user, not the machine, so over a few months while I was setting up a slew
of machines I kept forgetting about it when I restored my app directory. Add
that one of the packages would freak out when curl wasn't already installed
first and it was a mess. Sublime would start, update, screw up the interface,
popup, and then I'd have to close it and restart a few times until the package
manager got it up to a stable point.

I say _huge_ because it was _god damn irritating_. In a giant checklist of
stuff I was worried about, it was always an afterthought that caught me by
surprise. When the artifacting completely craps out the side bar such that the
folder tree no longer updates when files change, you can't even tell if the
files are still there.

EDIT: To really drive the point home: this happened _a whole lot_. The above
is a story of woe and sadness, but the real kicker was simply the autoupdate
as noted elsewhere by `jbrooksuk. For a long time I used the Soda Theme [0],
one of the top packages on Package Control. It had a wierd glitch with hotkeys
and would end up reloading shortly after startup. It was possible that it
would garf things up even on restart as a result (possibly as a race condition
such that if no updates were performed, it restarted fast enough to not bork
whatever drew the iterface). I used Soda theme for years, but have recently
switched to Seti and enjoy the change quite a bit.

[0]
[https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Theme%20-%20Soda](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Theme%20-%20Soda)

[1]
[https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Seti_UI](https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Seti_UI)

~~~
andromeduck
Whoa, that is a pretty nice theme

------
ihsw
> Themes may now be switched on the fly without artifacts

Excellent news.

Switching themes and seeing the UI barf is unsightly.

~~~
chatmasta
Why do you switch themes? Night time and day time?

~~~
dreamsofdragons
While not a sublime, I frequently switch iterm's themes when I code outdoors.
A dark background is my preference, but a light theme works much better in
sunlight.

------
bsclifton
If the author of Sublime is reading this thread, please know that I love your
work! I happily paid the $70 and use this as my primary editor (except when
using vim when working over SSH).

I'd also like to see more activity on the Twitter account or just more
engagement with the community. You've got a killer product :)

------
baldfat
RANT: "Ubuntu 64 bit - also available as a tarball for other Linux
distributions."

Linux requires THREE files (.deb, .rpm and a .tar) I personally use OpenSUSE
and can easily compile the software BUT you are not "supporting" Linux when
you only support Ubuntu.

~~~
falcolas
So, they have two out of three then. Does there appear to be any reason you
couldn't use the .deb for Ubuntu on Debian? Perhaps someone would be willing
to take the tarball and make a RPM file for him to host (or set up the tooling
to make it dead simple for the author).

~~~
baldfat
So not supporting Redhat the #1 Linux commercial product is fine? The vast
majority of commercial Linux is RPM based.

The issue is they should just have it automatically build RPM with the DEB if
you have a DEB it isn't diffecult to so a RPM.

------
PhasmaFelis
I was trying to choose a Mac text editor recently; got it down to Atom and
Sublime, and then discovered that _both_ of them do code folding wrong. They
think it's based on indentation, not syntax, so if you try to fold something
like:

    
    
      if (something) {
        some code
      //commented-out code
        more code
      }
    

It folds everything from the opening bracket to the comment, then stops.

Both editors have had issues filed over this bug for years, which have been
ignored.
([https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/3442](https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/3442),
[https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/101](https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/101))

I eventually decided to go with Atom; it's open-source, so I can at least
aspire to fix the damn thing myself when I get annoyed enough.

~~~
coldtea
And why start the comment ahead of the indentation level?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I didn't write the code in question, but I've done the same thing before.
Usually it's because I'm cursoring up and down a file, see some lines I want
to comment out, and don't bother moving over to the start of the text first.
Syntax highlighting greys out the comment, so it's not visually obtrusive.
(Which is another reason I'm baffled that Atom and Sublime both misbehave this
way--they've _got_ syntax highlighting! They're already aware of block
delimiters! Why don't they apply that knowledge to code folding?)

And I understand there are other reasons to not indent. In some languages,
it's conventional to have certain kinds of declarations come at the beginning
of a line, even if they're inside a block. (I think C++ does this, but I
haven't used it since college--anyone want to comment?)

------
bsbechtel
I recently updated from Sublime Text 2 to ST3. One thing I loved about version
2 was that it was insanely fast. Version 3 is significantly slower. Can anyone
point me to any resources that might help me determine why the slowdown?

~~~
kmfrk
I had to disable all my linters, because I also ran into severe input lag. It
fixed the worst input lag, but I still have no idea what exactly the culprit
was.

Really wish packages could be subjected to some kind of performance benchmark
to shame the worst offenders to fixing their isht.

------
wiesson
Why is it so much faster than atom?

~~~
trymas
Because C (or C++, I do not know exactly) and not vast amounts of layers of
abstraction?

~~~
Hurtak
I thought Sublime is written mainly in Python?

~~~
Terribledactyl
It implements a Python interface so the plugin ecosystem uses it, but the core
of it is c++ afaik.

------
marcosscriven
Regarding the comparisons with Atom, can I take the opportunity to ask if
anyone from ST could expand on their answer here[0] as how they go about
making a custom OpenGL interface?

Do they use GLEW? Skia? How do they ensure anti-aliasing is done right?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114)

~~~
jskinner
Sublime Text 1 used OpenGL (1.1 only, hence no GLEW) and Direct3D, while 2 and
3 are mostly software only.

While Sublime Text 2 and 3 do use Skia, only a tiny fraction of its
functionality is actually used, just for rasterizing lines and blitting
images. Font rendering is done by using the underlying platform APIs to do the
glyph rasterisation.

~~~
marcosscriven
Wow, thanks for responding! Very impressive work.

~~~
billforsternz
It seems Jon comments on hacker news about once a year. So you win the hacker
news lottery!

------
bsimpson
In case anyone was wondering, the new JavaScript syntax highlighter appears to
understand ES6, but chokes on JSX. If you're writing React, the Babel package
is still a good idea.

~~~
bpicolo
Makes sense. JSX isn't javascript. :P

------
oneeyedpigeon
Is there a roadmap anywhere? I bought ST2, and I think I'm going to need to
pay again for ST3 when I decide to upgrade, but it's still in beta and has
been for over 3 years now. Would be nice to know when it will eventually be
released.

~~~
oliwarner
I don't think so, it's the sort of software that's ready when it's ready. You
can _use_ the pre-release versions of ST3 (ie what's currently available) on a
ST2 license. That gets rid of all the nag screens.

I bought ST2 too in 2012 after a few weeks using it. It was certainly an
expense but given how much it was speeding some things up, I considered it
very good value.

I've used it for _at least_ 6,000 hours since then, probably closer to twice
that. I'm not going to fight an upgrade when it eventually gets here.

------
nikolay
I wonder what kind of release process this guy has as the dev version always
lags behind stable -
[https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev](https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev)

~~~
coldtea
Who told you it lags? Version numbers? That's because stable version X+1 come
after dev version X.

This doesn't mean it lags, just that the dev version came out first, and only
after it was checked for a while, it was deemed worthy to hit the stable
(well, actually beta) channel.

That's not different than any other project I know.

~~~
nikolay
I don't look at the version number only, but at the changelog, too, but didn't
pay much attention, until now.

Most sane projects create a build and test it, and don't rely on testing
source code because the build process itself can cause defects as well.

What we've been testing as a dev build should have been promoted to stable,
but, I realize now, he has the changelog embedded in the executable, and it's
possibly merged across dev builds. He also has differences in the
functionality between the dev and beta builds as you can't run the dev without
a key.

~~~
SyneRyder
It sounds like his approach is similar to the Windows 10 Insider Builds model
of Fast Ring & Slow Ring. Even if all the Sublime builds in Dev are stable, I
don't want to be updating every 2 days to get some minor bugfix. When I launch
Sublime, I mostly just want to get to straight to work, not be thrown out of
the zone by an update.

It took me a while to learn that lesson from my own customers. As a developer
I'm excited to make sure customers always get new features ASAP, but customers
would complain they were perfectly happy with what they'd bought & only wanted
an update maybe once or twice a year. But everyone's different - that's why
the option of a Dev/Beta channel & a Stable channel is good.

~~~
nikolay
No, the dev/beta channels are a good idea. I think nginx has a similar release
process as their stable now is ahead of their mainline as well.

------
m_mueller
Is it just me or did this break the python syntax highlighter for line
continuations within strings? I had to install MagicPython to fix it.

~~~
bpicolo
In strings or docstrings?

~~~
m_mueller
normal strings with "\" line continuations.

------
wrcwill
Anyone know why this update changed highlighting for me?

Tomorrow Night Scheme, strings in double quotes are now gray instead of
green?..

~~~
dsego
Chalk it up to syntax highlighting improvements, I guess.

------
bobsoap
PSA: If you haven't updated yet, I'd wait. The new version apparently broke
syntax highlighting for many languages. Check out their support forum[1] -
it's causing ripples.

[1] [https://forum.sublimetext.com/c/technical-
support](https://forum.sublimetext.com/c/technical-support)

------
thincan11
Is sublime working on something big?

~~~
eddiecalzone
No.

------
Fizzadar
:( Python docstrings are no longer coloured as strings, but comments...

~~~
anentropic
I fixed that myself in ST2 in the syntax definition files

------
vyacheslavl
ST now supports async/await keywords in python! yay!

------
zyxley
It's good to see more ST updates, but it's sad that it feels like they're only
even bothering because of the popularity of Atom.

~~~
usaphp
What exactly are you looking for in ST improved? I just can't find anything
that I think can be any better, it's just perfect already for me, I've tried
using Atom but always went back to ST after a week of poor performance and
battery drainage of Atom.

~~~
elliotec
Yeah Atom still has issues. I've had crashing problems on 4 year old Macs.

But ST makes you pay $70. And also isn't open source. And more people know JS
than Python to hack on it. And Github has a powerful marketing team and lots
of resources to put behind Atom and it's development. And ST doesn't get
updated too often.

~~~
cageface
$70 is absolutely peanuts for a tool that you use for hours every day.

The main reason so much modern software is bad is that people aren't willing
to pay for even a fraction of the actual value it delivers. I would happily
pay $700 for my main code editor if that would guarantee regular updates and
new features.

~~~
jethro_tell
To your point I think a lot of people would pay that kind of money if it
guaranteed the company would both, continue to update and continue in its
current direction. But that really hasn't been the case with most projects,
and the open source products tend to have better shelf life.

I am happy to pay for these kind of things but rarely in a big upfront block
like that. I doubt I'm the only one.

~~~
drewcrawford
Very few people are willing to pay the kind of money that would actually
sustain a company.

Let's run the math, and see if we can build a business around a text editor.

Let's say we can get away with 2 good developers (across 3 platforms, that
seems difficult to me). Let's further stipulate they are willing to take a pay
cut from their previous life at Facebook and are willing to do this as a labor
of love. 90k/yr salary, 180k/yr for both.

Now we need a technical writer, to handle API documentation etc. Let's say we
can get a CS major to do it part-time at 20 hrs/week at $20/hr. 20k/yr.

We also need a sysadmin to wrangle the CI setup, website hosting, install
updates, setup email, etc. Suppose they automated everything in
Ansible/Docker/Kubernetes/whatever_the_cool_kids_do_these_days and so we only
need 10 hrs/week at $50/hr. 26k/yr.

We need a QA engineer to bang on things and file proper bugs. $50k/yr. Let's
further stipulate that this same person will handle customer support, because
we're a lean startup and combine multiple roles in the same individual.

We need somebody to handle marketing (or maybe direct sales, since it's a $700
pricepoint). Let's call it another $50k/yr.

We're now up to $325k/yr. Traditionally we would now have to lease office
space, buy macs, call our AWS sales rep, etc., but let's assume for this
conversation everybody works from home, they have their own equipment, and we
got free startup AWS credit, which is not very realistic at all, but whatever.

So let's stipulate this is a stable burn rate. Nobody will get poached by
Facebook, nobody needs to raise a round, if we can pull in _only_ 325k/yr, we
can do this forever.

When we sell our $700/license, let's say we net 75%. That is actually very
high: most software companies net around 50-60%, because the App Store,
WalMart, the state, etc., take their pound of flesh. But our $700 text editor
is so amazing that people will buy it direct from us, we will have a strong
brand, _handwave_. So we take home an incredible $525.

We now need to sell 700 licenses year-over-year in order to keep this thing
going. Not even 700 licenses _one-time_ , but we actually need to close 60
licenses a month, 2 licenses a day, 365 days a year. To do that, we needa
sales process.

I would love to live in a world where a salesman knocks on your door, does a
2-hour demo, and at the end you have 50% conversion to writing him a $700
check. I just don't live in that world. And that's the kind of sales process
you'd need to _sustainably_ develop a text editor.

Anything short of the exercise I just went through will result in a failed
product. A developer might take a pay cut for a year but will lose interest if
they're well below market. If we don't hire good QA then our quality will be
shit and not worth $700, just think of all the shitty software you use
already. If we don't have support then nobody will want to spend $700 to get
their emails ignored. If we fund via VC then we will have to blog about Our
Incredible Journey the next time Google Docs needs an engineer.

The result of this analysis is the current market. The only way to develop a
text editor is either all volunteers (like Atom), a small part of a large
corporation's marketing budget (VSCode), or a labor of love from one and a
half underfunded and overworked people who we somehow expect to stop being
underfunded and overworked even though we only paid them like half a billable
hour several years ago (ST).

~~~
coldtea
You DO know that apart from a programmer and a helper sales guy, ST has none
of all those other "roles".

And judging from the community size, polls, and similar numbers from other
project, it has sold at least 10.000 licenses (x70 -> 700,000) and i all
probability much more.

> _The result of this analysis is the current market. The only way to develop
> a text editor is either all volunteers (like Atom), a small part of a large
> corporation 's marketing budget (VSCode), or a labor of love from one and a
> half underfunded and overworked people who we somehow expect to stop being
> underfunded and overworked even though we only paid them like half a
> billable hour several years ago (ST)._

Maybe it's the analysis that's way off base, especially the dev numbers.

In fact the whole breakdown sounds ludicrous, like assuming the only dev work
out there is done in cushy Facebook style jobs in the Valley or with
extravagant VC money.

In fact tons of successful indie apps, not just editors, fly in the face of
all you wrote above. No reason to believe a graphics editor (e.g. Acorn) or
VST plugin (e.g. uHe Diva) or FTP Editor (e.g. Transmit) has much more
potential users than a language/OS agnostic programming editor. And yet, all
these companies exist for years, and even have several employees and nice
offices.

As for editors, there's not only IntelliJ, that has tons of people working for
it and is doing just fine, but other long time companies, like UltraEdit (that
boasts 2 million users), a whole ecosystem around paid Eclipse plugins, etc.

------
wnevets
the 3.0 dev channel has been fairly active, 13 updates this year.

------
_RPM
The only proprietary software that I use as a matter of choice is Microsoft
products and VMWare products, For something as trivial as a text editor, I
wouldn't dare use something closed source, proprietary like this.

~~~
haswell
I don't think it's quite fair to classify Sublime as a text editor. Your
comment trivializes the quality of the editing experience, the rich plugin
ecosystem, the speed of the editor compared to common competitors, etc.

You are of course entitled to your preferences, but I'm not sure why you
wouldn't "dare" use this?

~~~
ubernostrum
Emacs and vim are classified as text editors, and Sublime is a small fraction
of what Emacs and vim are.

~~~
pizza
To be fair, the small fraction of features that Sublime shares with Emacs and
vim are hardly insufficient for a good editor.

