Kickstarter for an Open Source Programmer's Text Editor using HTML5

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1241383920/open-source-programmers-text-editor-using-canvas-a

78 52 15 years ago

benatkin• 15 years ago

I hate to be that guy, but why use the GPL? Why not use MIT, which is popular in the Node.js community, or Apache 2, which is popular in the CouchDB community, or even a tri-license like the ACE Editor and many other Mozilla-related projects use?

GPL or not, I wish you luck in this project.

streptomycin2• 15 years ago

The GPL doesn't even mean much for SaaS. The AGPL is the license that best fits in with the FSF ideals in that scenario.

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

GPL was chosen in this case as it was the best way for us to maintain control and fund this as a startup. That final pledge tier wouldn't exist otherwise. As we're trying to do this without large amounts of financial backing it would be difficult to ensure that development stayed open otherwise.

shazow• 15 years ago

I don't understand how having a GPL license will improve your funding situation.

Are you expecting that people will come along and pay $4,096 for an MIT license?

If they were doing it to support the project, then they would do it just the same if it was MIT to begin with, but who would do this just to get a different license?

duck2• 15 years ago

What editor do you use on your linux box?

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

Vim, but there's no reason to start that discussion here. ;-)

duck2• 15 years ago

Haha, well, I asked because what you create will be influenced by what you use.

BonsaiDen• 15 years ago

Finally someone who's going to port VIM! to the browser ...right? Right? RIGHT? :(

StavrosK3• 15 years ago

Fabrice Bellard already did it:

http://bellard.org/jslinux/

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

That man is tough to compete with ;-)

Raphael• 15 years ago

I see vi, no vim.

wmf2• 15 years ago

Didn't Bespin already do this?

MrNibbles2• 15 years ago

Yep, and they did it well!

Here is a demo if you are interested: http://ajaxorg.github.com/ace/build/editor.html

And here is the GIT repo: https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace

Notice the last commit was only hours ago, so its still quite active

How will this be different?

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

Yeah, Bespin was trying a similar approach with regards to rendering. They had a lot more baggage (server side code, workarounds for issues that have now been resolved) that is no longer necessary. They've now merged into Ace though and the rendering approach was scrapped in favor of a DOM-based method. I think this gives it a lot more overhead than is necessary.

wmf2• 15 years ago

So are you planning to take the last canvas-based release of Bespin, rip out the crap, and improve from there, or are you going to NIH it?

zyang• 15 years ago

collect donations, fork bespin... profit

MrNibbles2• 15 years ago

Why Canvas for rendering text? Makes very little sense, DOM hardware render support is better on many platforms right now.

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

Agreed. DOM rendering support has gotten really good over the past year. I want to try a different approach that will make everything seem smoother. Also, since with this sort of text editor you want everything to be aligned in a grid the rendering becomes a set of aligned glyphs... so the GPU rendering can be optimized more so than when considering the entire DOM. If there wasn't that simplification I wouldn't even be suggesting this.

yid• 15 years ago

Sorry to be the one to ask this, but why can't you start this as an open-source side project? I'd be more inclined to support improvements to a core product rather than support another (what seems like) pie-in-the-sky project -- I'm referring to the promises of GPU acceleration, client-side github/dropbox integration, syntax highlighting, scriptable interface -- none of which are trivial for even a full-time developer.

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

It's tough enough making money as an independent developer as is. I really can't afford to work on this as a side project. As for the pie-in-the-sky... reuse as much as possible. With the exception of GPU acceleration everything exists as either side-effects of the implementation (javascript scripting for extensions) or as an available library (dropbox/github integration). Not that I'm saying it is easy... I wouldn't have a Kickstarter otherwise.

grayrest• 15 years ago

GPU acceleration isn't going to make a difference here. Bespin started as Canvas-based and moved to Ace's DOM based rendering because there wasn't a significant performance advantage to keeping it on canvas.

Mozilla and the ajax.com guys have put a significant amount of effort into this area (the current system is the third rewrite for the Mozilla guys) and both teams had a pretty good set of js hackers. I disagree with some of the decisions made (mostly due to scope and what I think is important vs what they think and my background in writing several Vim plugins) but the decisions weren't made from technical ignorance or not being willing to experiment with non-DOM backends. If you aren't familiar with what they're doing, you're going to spend most of your time rediscovering pain points. The simplest example I know of is that there isn't a good way to figure out exactly what the user typed other than having them type into a hidden text field and reading the results back. The obvious approaches seem to work for US/EU keyboards but fall apart on the CJK family.

catshirt• 15 years ago

bespin, cloud9, etc. there are quite a few mature, free options out there already doing a great job.

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

There are some. Bespin is now merged into ace and cloud9 is the actual full-featured (has someplace to save without further integeration) implementation. And cloud9 is sadly not free for non open source projects. I find that they aren't satisfactory for my everyday use.

davidbanham• 15 years ago

Running cloud9 on their hosting isn't free for non open source projects, but you're welcome to download the source from GitHub and install it on your own server.

bprater• 15 years ago

I'm curious about the choice to integrate WebGL. How is current browser support around this? What advantage does it offer in building a text editor?

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

Browser support is hit and miss. I'm gambling that it will be much better supported in browsers 6 months from now. The advantage is that it allows the smoothing of all the rough edges normally found in editors. Quick zooming to arbitrary levels, completely smooth scrolling... things that aren't traditionally necessary but make for something that is so much more pleasant to use.

daleharvey• 15 years ago

I am very interested in an open source web based ide, I would probably take note from bespin moving from canvas to dom is that reimplementing a whole bunch of stuff from scratch that you get for free with dom is a hard thing

I have looked at cloud9 and its an awesome project, but I feel uncomfortable developing against it because it doesnt feel "open source", can anyone expand on their experiences with it? I sent in one patch was ignored and it seems all / most development is aimed towards their commercial offering.

I would probably feel more comfortable if there was a completely open source community edition which cloud9 was downstream from, somewhat like chromium / chrome

fluidbyte• 15 years ago

We just released this over the weekend, it was built from a very similar mindset - Cloud9 looks great but not 'open' enough. If you like it, pass it along: http://www.wiode.com

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

The way you can tell an idea's time has come is that it starts showing up everywhere. ;-)

kelleyk• 15 years ago

I'd kill for someone to work on a modernized/reimagined emacs. There's so much that's beautiful about The One True Editor, but many things take an obnoxious amount of research/config-poking to make acceptable.

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

I'm hoping to at least make this into something that can grow into something like emacs. There is already Ymacs, though it's not a complete solution at the moment.

swah• 15 years ago

An editor on top of Chromium. A desktop program!

d0m3• 15 years ago

Interesting! Good luck going forward with it. I feel like 4k is really a small amount for such a huge project..?

d0m3• 15 years ago

I particularly like the Extendable with JavaScript part.

A minimalist kernel implementing the Js API, the windows (with a possibility to split them), the plugin and a theme system is the way to go IMO.

No cloud, no extra feature. Everything else can then be added by plugins. Git integration with github? No problem. Backup with DropBox? No problem. Syntax Highlighting? Np.

It'd be particularly awesome with the plugin system.. if you can browse and see new addons/plugins. Same with the theme.. where anyone could upload their tweaked theme. :)

I can't wait for something like this to exist..

  (let x (new awesome-web-based-editor)
    (while (not (ready? x))
      (sleep)))

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

That is the goal. So much of the functionality is already present in the browser. We can use the browser's Javascript interpreter, tabs, web connectivity, etc. We just have to put these together to create the core. To answer your other post this is how 4K becomes doable... especially since this is a project I want to do so badly.

antipax• 15 years ago

Kod (http://kodapp.com/) has a node.js-based integrated scripting environment, but I don't know if plugin functionality reaches the power you describe, and I'm not even certain there are any third-party plugins. It would be incredibly powerful, especially since you could probably export plugins as a URL to a minified .js file.

d0m3• 15 years ago

It's not web based though

sandGorgon• 15 years ago

You only give forums and beta access to people who have donated $16 or more, while you send handwritten postcards to people who have even pledged the lowest amount.

Now, I'm not sure if you plan to spend a dollar out of every $4 for international postcards, but it would be nice if you could give access to everyone who donated.

Two reasons for that - not everyone lives in a first world country (and expects postcards) and secondly, even a dollar committed to the idea of a software is more than most people.

flaminglunchbox16• 15 years ago

I was planning on sending postcards internationally to anyone I could... even if it cost a fair chunk of the pledge.

The plan for the forums is to use them not only for discussion but also to vote on direction and cosmetic issues (name, logo, syntax targets).

Do you think that giving people access to the forums for the purposes of discussion but without the ability to vote would cause problems?

As for the betas, I agree that even a dollar is significant but I had to find a balance that I felt would work for the pledge rewards. This restriction is only for the first development cycle however; once the public release is done further development will be open to everybody.

Gotttzsche• 15 years ago

i wish he'd do it in clojurescript

rjd• 15 years ago

Ha, my friend showed me roughly the exact same thing a week or so ago. He got started after talk about regex speed in browsers and went crazy building a sweet proof of concept.

RaRic• 15 years ago

I hope someone will step up and create a canvas-based html editor to embed in web-pages. The current solution using contentEditable has lots of cross-browser and cross-platform issues. I'd back that.

Kickstarter for an Open Source Programmer's Text Editor using HTML5

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