
Sublime Text 3 Updated - jimhart3000
http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16696&sid=17192023051cb99eb52ebf3f9e3c6824
======
ceronman
I love this editor and it makes me sad to see how the project is stalled.

In 2002 the investors behind Blender launched the "Free Blender" campaign.
They asked for 100,000 EUR as a one-time fee for open sourcing it. At the time
the project was dying as a proprietary product. The investors got the money
and today Blender is a healthy open source project.

I would love to see something similar with Sublime Text. The author seems
uninterested in continuing with its development while many users want to see
it moving forward. I believe it can raise much more money than Blender at the
time.

~~~
coldtea
> _I love this editor and it makes me sad to see how the project is stalled._

Stalled? It just had an update.

It's also in the 3rd version, under development, which came just a couple of
months after the 2nd version had been released. He could just have released
ST2 and keep it at that version for 3-4 years.

Instead he immediately started development ST3, which had frenetic development
in the first months, and has been completely stable for a year or more (I
know, I use it everyday, along with several plugins).

And in the forum he even mentioned ST4 base libs he is preparing a month or so
ago.

~~~
jrochkind1
> and has been completely stable for a year or more

If this is true, why are the releases still labelled 'dev' releases?

How is anyone supposed to know that it's actually a stable release they should
be using? Research it on HN comment threads?

~~~
coldtea
> _If this is true, why are the releases still labelled 'dev' releases?_

Because it's an arbitrary label.

Or because John wants to hook something additional up or polish something
before giving it his "3.0" blessing.

Or because it crashes on Linux and needs to fix that too...

But not because there's any issue with it on OS X, at least not for me, and
I'm a heavy (8-10 hours per day) user.

~~~
jrochkind1
Or because other people in this thread insist that in fact it's not stable,
and there are numerous bugs on multiple platforms.

Regardless, if you want people to know that a release is ready for use by
people who want a stable release, you label it a final release, right?
Presumably the developer(s) do not believe it is ready for wide use. Whether
they are being overly conservative or not is I suppose another question.

But it seems silly to suggest that everyone should do research on their own to
discover something labelled 'beta' or 'dev' should really be considered the
latest stable release.

~~~
coldtea
> _Or because other people in this thread insist that in fact it 's not
> stable, and there are numerous bugs on multiple platforms._

I don't know what plugins those people use. They might have thrown in the
kitchen sink of unstable plugins. Lots of people using ST3 in the forums
without issues. Plus I know my personal experience on my platform of choice.

> _Regardless, if you want people to know that a release is ready for use by
> people who want a stable release, you label it a final release, right?_

Well, some projects prefer the perpetual beta designation. Heck, even Google
did that for years for stuff like Gmail etc.

------
ggreer
Please note that this is a dev build of Sublime Text 3. You can only get it by
manually downloading or checking for updates using a dev build. The most
recent stable build of ST3 is from December of 2013.[1]

Dev builds are alpha-quality and generally unsuitable for everyday use. The
current build will change permissions on any file you save.[2]

1\. [http://www.sublimetext.com/3](http://www.sublimetext.com/3)

2\.
[http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16696&s...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16696&sid=17192023051cb99eb52ebf3f9e3c6824#p62854)

~~~
eknkc
He says he'll fix it in the next build..

Which I assume, will be released in 6 to 36 months. Yay!

~~~
kolev
Patience is a great virtue!

------
polyvisual
I've almost given up with Sublime Text. I have a bug with the Linux version on
xubuntu which causes the application window to shudder when I scroll. It's
something to do with smooth scrolling.

I can't register at their forums as it requires a keyword which you can only
get by emailing keyword@sublimetext.com - I've tried three times and each time
I've been ignored. I've also tried email the other ST employee, but been
ignored also.

Very frustrating when I've paid for a licence.

~~~
bithush
xyzzy3

edit: before anyone gives me shit for doing this it isn't exactly a big
secret, it is a pretty poor way of 'securing' the forum. Just stick a captcha
on it for gods sake.

~~~
polyvisual
Thanks.

I agree - it's the shittest, most user-unfriendly method of securing something
against spam I've ever encountered.

------
bproctor
It's kind of sad that this project has become so dead that an update to a dev
build is news worthy.

~~~
Karunamon
Not sure I subscribe to the idea that ST is "dead". The base editor is stable
enough for day to day use ("dev" build be damned) and all the extra
functionality (i.e. new features) is provided by plugins anyways.

ST could never see another update and would remain a competitive editor for
daily use due to its plugin ecosystem.

~~~
levesque
I wouldn't consider ST3 to be stable or usable under Linux since it just
wrecks file permissions.

~~~
cwyers
Neither do the Sublime Text developers; even the main release of Sublime Text
3 is listed as beta, and the download link on the front page of their website
is still Sublime Text 2.

~~~
maccard
But do they still update the stable version of ST2? From what I gather "beta"
is his way of describing the fact that he's actively developing it

~~~
cwyers
The last release of Sublime Text 2 was over a year ago. And the post I was
responding to was claiming Sublime Text 3 was already stable.

~~~
maccard
My point is that the "released" version has been abandoned. He's not
supporting previous versions at all, you pay for access to an actual beta
build, but if you happened to buy the full product you're SOL

------
a2tech
The article doesn't link directly to the list of changes which are as follows:

Improved quote auto pairing logic

Selected group is now stored in the session

Fixed a crash triggered by Goto Anything cloning views

Windows: Added command line helper, subl.exe

OSX: Added 'New Window' entry to dock menu

Posix: Using correct permissions for newly created files and folders

------
jrochkind1
I don't really understand why these new releases are called 'dev' builds, and
there isn't an official non-dev ST3 build yet.

Are most people using ST3 anyway, despite the releases being labelled dev
builds? Are they in fact pretty stable? Are most widely used plugins updated
for ST3 (and maybe no longer supported for ST2?)

Should I just go ahead and switch ST3 "dev"?

All multiple years of 'dev' releases gets you is confusion, if this is what
most people are using and most plugin developers are targetting, i wish the
developer would just call it a release.

~~~
Maken
There are actually non-dev builds of ST3, and those are somewhat stable and
what most people use.

Dev builds:

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

'Stable' builds

[http://www.sublimetext.com/3](http://www.sublimetext.com/3)

------
hit8run
Sublimetext 3 beta is really stable and fast as hell. I don't know what black
magic they use under osx but it is even smoother than
[http://chocolatapp.com](http://chocolatapp.com) which is a native cocoa based
editor with nice builtin code completions for many languages.

~~~
kolev
Agreed. That's why we all love Sublime Text and why we are so pissed off that
we can find the pulse.

------
wickchuck
Anyone have a clue as to what were supposed to be able to do with this
"Windows: Added command line helper, subl.exe". I'm guessing it's mainly for a
shorter exe name to add to your path when launching sublime from the command
line, but maybe I'm missing something?

~~~
dedward
It's just to launch the editor from the command-line.

IT's nothing new - sublime text 2 (at least on OS X) had the "subl" command so
you could launch an edit session from the cli.. I assumed the rest had the
same.

It's certainly not a new feature or anything to celebrate.

~~~
ben336
It is new on Windows.

~~~
aenario
not so much, you could always do sublime somedirectory and it will open it. It
appears the novelty is the --help option and more importantly the --wait
option, so you could include sublime in a script workflow (as a git commit
editor ?)

------
coldtea
People talk about the "bus factor", and how OSS would have been a better
option.

But far more often I've been beaten from the:

1) "Yeah, core devs moved on now, and nobody cares to maintain this OSS
software".

2) "Yeah, core devs decided to rewrite everything from scratch and change APIs
and ABIs".

~~~
krondor
Because that doesn't happen outside of the OSS world?

~~~
coldtea
Don't know, haven't seen it as often.

Money and existing customers depending on you and you depending on them
provides a good motive to not do (1) and to avoid (2).

Also a lot of no-OSS software, especially of the desktop variety, is
unpolished and un-finished, usually a moving target, so (1 -- the owners
moving on and nobody picking it up) is more damaging for its user compared to
some proprietary software being abandoned which he can still use for ages as
is.

For example Microsoft is legendary for avoiding (2) at almost all costs, to
the point were 20 year old Windows 98 programs still run as is on a modern OS.
Heck, people still use VB6 which was superceded like 13 years ago... If you
pick a software with a good following, chances are they will continue to
support it.

------
tuananh
hardly a noteworthy update.

------
tokenizerrr
Sad to see there is still no word on an ARM build.

~~~
tuananh
At this rate, it's best you forget it and revisit the idea in the next few
years.

------
crxgames
Glad to see the project is still alive :)

~~~
kolev
It's hardly still _alive_. These aren't even _cosmetic_ changes, honestly!

~~~
jbrooksuk
Why does it need cosmetic changes? There are a few actual bugs to sort out
first.

~~~
kolev
Agreed, my point was that it's a dead project as new updates don't even have
cosmetic changes. I bought a license, I really like it, but just like Intype
and E on Windows and Kod and TextMate on Mac, the fate of Sublime Text is
pretty clear.

~~~
indeyets
but textmate is alive and new builds are released quite often!
[https://github.com/textmate/textmate/](https://github.com/textmate/textmate/)

~~~
kolev
True, TextMate's agony is at a lower pace than Sublime Text, but it's still
not having the metabolic rate of Atom and the likes.

------
Walkman
Wow, another update (3064)!

------
steveeq1
I read up on this editor a little bit, but the thing that gets me is: what's
wrong with emacs? I don't see anything this editor does that emacs can't do.

~~~
jrochkind1
emacs? The thing that gets me about you emacs users is, what's wrong with vim?

~~~
steveeq1
it's easier to extend the editor with emacs-lisp than vimscript is the main
advantage. But yes, vim isn't bad as a text editor either. I use both.

