Chocolat - the new editor

by Void_ • 15 years ago

142 140 15 years ago

No vim mode support?

This is the programmer/IDE-dweeb's version of "well yeah.. but does it run Linux?" Only half joking; the parent's comment is exactly what I thought after searching through the feature list.

It's funny how, when forced to work outside of vim, the first thing I (and at least one other person, it would seem) do is try to make the environment as vim-like as possible (with usually-mixed-to-unsatisfactory results).

Eclipse and Visual Studio are the only IDEs I can think of that, outside of The True Vim, support the "vim-like" editing paragidm with any robustness (viemu on VS2008 ($), vsvim on VS2010(free-as-in-beer).. I forget the name of Eclipse's premiere VS plugin.. but I know it's in the gallery.. there's also the "embed a vim window in Eclipse" thing, but I found it somewhat ackward). MonoDevelop has a core-support vim plugin, as well, but it's not-quite-there, yet (as of 2.6).

Anyone else have any preferred "not-vim-but-vim-like" editors, when forced to work outside of The Better IDE? (And I don't want to hear that viper-mode shit, either. It's a False Vim and you know it.. like the snake that tempted Adam and Eve into Sin!).

strangetimes• 15 years ago

Whoa! Thanks for the heads-up on VsVim. I'll be installing that tomorrow.

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-...

rednaught4• 15 years ago

By "not-vim-but-vim-like" do you mean modal editors?

ConceitedCode• 15 years ago

Komodo IDE does a great job with the Vim key bindings.

http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide

devth• 15 years ago

Every time I see a new shiny text editor for mac, I'm like "meh". I would have been excited in my pre-vim days, but now? Nothing touches vim, unless it improves on vim.

snprbob864• 15 years ago

"Who doesn't like tabs?"

In text editors? Me.

I don't like thinking about which individual files are open. Any file under the root of my project (i.e. the editor's current working directory) is fair game for an open buffer. I treat open file as "go to class".

kenneth_reitz• 15 years ago

You should try Sublime Text 2 w/ the tabs and sidebar hidden. It's a dream :)

wahnfrieden2• 15 years ago

I like vim's tabs as a way of grouping kinds of buffers into a few categories, eg each tab might gave several split buffers representing a Django app per tab. This isn't how tabs work in most editors though.

olsonjeffery2• 15 years ago

Is there a way to expose only certain buffers in certain tabs? My experience has been that all tabs show all loaded buffers...

For this reason, I've pretty much forgone tabs in favor of minibufexpl.vim (https://github.com/fholgado/minibufexpl.vim), which gives me a pretty robust buffer-display window on the top of the editor and easy navigation keybindings ([shift+]ctrl+tab).

snprbob864• 15 years ago

Hmmm, very cool. I generally open multiple instances of MacVim for multiple projects. Apparently tabs can have a working directory each. Really interesting... going to have to experiment with this.

swah3• 15 years ago

Emacs user.

Ixiaus2• 15 years ago

Buffers are truly amazing - combined with powerful buffer naming patterns, it's a breeze switching between buffers blindly (included with autocomplete) and if you forget about which buffers are open it's a keystroke away to see an overview of the buffers open...

20-25 buffers open at once? Easy!

burgerbrain• 15 years ago

Hmm.. I am a Vi user with the same attitude.

snprbob864• 15 years ago

Nope, I'm a Vim guy.

alextgordon3• 15 years ago

[developer here]

Honestly, that line betrays my own apathy towards the feature. I hardly ever use them. They probably should be dead.

However! There is currently a plan (with associated scary-looking diagrams) to change how tabs behave[1].

Essentially, you'd be able to use a tab for each logical grouping of open files.

For example, in a django project, you might create a tab for each separate app you're working on. Or maybe a tab for your views, and another for your templates.

I understand that, even with that change, tabs won't fit many people's workflow. So they will always remain out of the way, unless you actually create more than one.

[1] https://github.com/fileability/chocolat-public/issues/159

lpgauth• 15 years ago

I'd love to give it a try!

dreamdu5t• 15 years ago

Reinventing the wheel...

zachrose• 15 years ago

It's the only way to roll.

chrishenn2• 15 years ago

A actively developed and quality casual editor for mac would be great.

Textmate is still awesome, but it's getting stale on the innovation side. I can't say I've given Vico a try, but it isn't free ($40). And Kod looked great too, but it's stuck on version 0.0.3.

Then again these aren't completely valid complaints. Vim is as great as ever, even though you aren't seeing any shiny big and innovative releases.

Perhaps Chocolat will be worth the £30 price the developers plan. But I don't think I could move away from vi style navigation.

Cushman5• 15 years ago

Vico is a good contender for TextMate 2, but it's still pretty buggy for something he charges money for.

Chocolat looks more like a contender for TextMate 1 to me... less Vim bindings? I'll probably skip it.

chrishenn2• 15 years ago

Textmate 2 seems pretty much non-existent. There hasn't been a lot of information as to what it will actually bring. That said, Textmate 1 is still a very good editor if your into macros instead of vi-style full keyboard control.

The problem I see is that every new editor isn't featured enough so it falls short compared to peoples editor of choice in some trivial way ("I don't like tabs" or "There's no go to file feature.")

tedkalaw• 15 years ago

I purchased Vico and haven't regretted it yet. I'll be pleased when the Lion bugs get sorted out.

I've also wanted to love Textmate but can't give up my vim commands.

alnayyir• 15 years ago

Aquamacs is good, free, and open source.

seldo• 15 years ago

This seems like a reasonable editor, but doesn't list any features that would motivate me to switch away from Netbeans for my PHP work.

overshard• 15 years ago

Oh look, another text editor. Just use TextMate if you're on Mac OS X. If you want something cross platform use Sublime Text, and if you want to be awesome and have a few days to customize and learn use VIM or Emacs. I use Sublime Text on my laptops and desktops and vim on my servers. It's the only editors I need for any operating system and any situation.

barclay• 15 years ago

I love me some textmate, but the lack of split window editing makes me sad, every time I start really working in it.

stephth3• 15 years ago

Indeed. I would gladly pay $50 bucks just to be able to split windows in my textmate.

dcope3• 15 years ago

TextMate has been acting very wonky for me on 10.7.

guywithabike• 15 years ago

See: http://blog.macromates.com/2011/lion-notes/

reaganing• 15 years ago

Looks very nice from the screenshots.

I've been trying out a number of text editors since installing Lion and haven't found one I liked as much as TextMate, but want to as I expect TextMate 2 to never come out and for 1.5 to stop working with some future version of OS X.

jackwagon2• 15 years ago

What differentiates this from Textmate? It so far looks like a clone, which I'm sure is just superficial.

martingordon• 15 years ago

It's actively being developed, for one.

jackwagon2• 15 years ago

Textmate works great for any. What features are Textmate users waiting for? Is this with Chocolat is going to deliver?

andrewflnr• 15 years ago

Now that's a landing page. It had just enough information on the first page, and easily led into the more detailed info in the sidebar navigation. If I was on a Mac and was remotely interested in trying a new editor, I might well have stuck my address in there. As it was, it still drew me in enough to poke around. Well done.

prof• 15 years ago

Indeed, I almost put my e-mail in and I don't even own a mac.

pmr_• 15 years ago

On the other hand the clear list of features made me realize it offers nothing I don't already have or want.

tsycho• 15 years ago

But that's a good thing. If you had signed up with high hopes, expecting something else, and then the product disappointed you, then you might write a bad review/blog post etc. potentially turning away other users who might have liked the features[1].

So if the features don't appeal to you, it's good in the long run for the creator to not have you as a beta user.

[1] the counter argument is that any publicity is good publicity :)

dcope3• 15 years ago

Beautiful landing page, beautiful product. This looks to be an awesome editor. Can't wait.

rednaught4• 15 years ago

I agree that it's a great looking looking site. But I don't see many detailed feaures. Can I ask you what you think makes this look to be an awesome editor? I am a Vim and Komodo user so I am admitedly hard to please but it seems the other new kid on the block, Sublime Text 2, offers more than Chocolat.

dcope3• 15 years ago

I can't speak directly on Vim since I don't use it much. I have only used it for very quick edits and am no "Vim power user" by any measure of the spectrum. Ever since switching to OS X, I've been using TextMate. As everyone has been assuming, TM seems to be slowly dying. With the upgrade to Lion I've come across many bugs and quirks with TextMate. Chocolat seems like it's going to be something fresh and inviting for users. Coming from TextMate, I think this will solve the need for a nice, new editor that will embrace new OS features and actually be supported.

jfb2• 15 years ago

I know I'm a graybeard, but I have yet to see a serious editor on any platform that could get me to switch away from Emacs. The perils of 20+ years of muscle memory and accumulated knowledge, I suppose.

davidw2• 15 years ago

Emacs also has the advantage that, whatever you decide to throw at it, it'll probably do it pretty well. It may not be the absolute best editor for one given language or environment, but you can be sure that it will handle it well, and of course you'll get all the other stuff with it that that one editor for the one language probably doesn't have.

wynand• 15 years ago

My Emacs history only goes back 5 years.

A number of days ago, I downloaded Textmate and started playing with it. In the beginning I almost wanted to just delete it and go back to Emacs. But as time went on, its simplicity became increasingly pleasant; so last night, I purchased a license.

To me, it's good to know that innovation in text editing is not over. I don't think that Textmate is the last word by any means but it is a beautiful tool and I'm curious to see how Chocolat stacks up.

jimbokun• 15 years ago

"The perils of 20+ years of muscle memory and accumulated knowledge, I suppose."

This cuts both ways. For people whose muscle memory is attuned to the standard Mac or Windows shortcuts and UI conventions, Chocolat (or Textmate, or some Windows text editor) might be more appealing.

tincholio3• 15 years ago

That sounds pretty limited to copy/cut/paste and opening and saving. If you're doing heavy editing, and more so if you're using the editor for programming, you won't find that much use for standard shortcuts.

For Emacs, there's also Aquamacs and CUA mode, which use the "native" shortcuts as you'd expect.

jfb2• 15 years ago

Of course. I wouldn't try and force Emacs down the throat of someone who was just looking for a simple text editor; but by the same token, it is at times wearying to read about "innovations" in editing that Stallman implemented 20 years ago. And so it goes.

high5ths• 15 years ago

I keep looking for a Mac text editor that supports Lion auto-save...

gillygize• 15 years ago

No one has mentioned it yet, but the authors are also the ones who have created the Ingredients documentation viewer: (http://fileability.net/ingredients/). If there is integration between Chocolat and Ingredients, it could be a compelling text editor for people like me, who do iOS development.

mrmaddog2• 15 years ago

When will somebody produce a text editor built for remote editing of text files? The vast majority of programmers that I know do all of their work on a remote build-server, and thus are relegated to using emacs, vim or some extremely ungainly combination of TextMate+FtpServer/Remote Filesystem Mount.

Could some intrepid developer create an app that would allow me to easily a) open and edit remote files b) open arbitrary terminal windows that are already ssh-ed into my build server so I can grep/find/make/whatever else I have to do. This would be the killer editor for me and most people I know, and it pains me every time I see a new editor that doesn't do this.

rednaught4• 15 years ago

I'm not sure how well "relegated" is going to go over here since Vim and Emacs are considered by many the best editors.

If you're on a Gnome-flavored Linux, then many "lesser" editors can use GVFS to remotely work on files.

shurane• 15 years ago

does sshfs count, either?

inportb2• 15 years ago

KDE tools can also work with remote data, using KIO slaves :3

mrmaddog2• 15 years ago

Don't get me wrong, I have grown to love emacs. I use it all day, every day, and a good portion of my hippocampus is dedicated to storing away emacs keyboard shortcuts. But why can't I have what is good about emacs (a ton of buffers, unlimited bash shells, keyboard based) in a native text editor? I'm content with emacs now, but why do engineers have to spend so much time wrestling with an editor like emacs before being able to use it properly?

mechanical_fish2• 15 years ago

Emacs has Tramp, which gives you (a), and one of the emacs terminal modes can do (b) if you write the requisite script (which I estimate at two lines) and bind it to a key.

You'll find these documented right next to C-x M-c M-butterfly. ;)

Though in practice I find that (a) once you know emacs it's usually just as easy to shell into the remote machine and run emacs there, so I myself have yet to really get the hang of Tramp and (b) the vanilla Terminal app plus a properly set-up .sshconfig goes a long way.

leif4• 15 years ago

if you're already in a remote (tramp'd) file, M-x eshell brings up a remote shell in the same directory

ww520• 15 years ago

Tramp in Emacs is great. For restricted datacenter server farms, it's a godsend to use Tramp to get to any log files or config files on production machines.

What I usually did was to run Emacs on my dev machine, run multi-hop Tramp to get to any of the production servers via a gateway jumpbox. Tramp is able to do multiple ssh hops to get to the target machine, all behind the scene.

Bookmarking the remote files makes it really easy to get back to it.

inportb2• 15 years ago

http://ace.ajax.org/ seems to be built for remote editing of text files. Your other desired features could be built around it.

davidedicillo• 15 years ago

Did you look at Coda?

Skywing2• 15 years ago

I use Eclipse on all of my dev machines, for this. Eclipse runs everywhere, as far as I know. I'm able to keep the same dev setup on my Windows PC, my Macbook and anywhere else I may want. Eclipse can edit files over sftp - no drive mapping needed, etc. I've modified Eclipse to be pretty minimal. All in all it's a good setup - it's definitely not sexy or very exciting, though. I rarely ever see it mentioned but it's the only editor I've found that doesn't feel excessive but also has this necessary edit-over-ssh feature.

mweibel2• 15 years ago

How did you setup eclipse to open files over sftp? Remote System Explorer?

I installed this one but I don't like it :/

rat• 15 years ago

kate has kio which can access files over serveral protocls including sftp.

flyosity• 15 years ago

My testing is done on a remote server but I keep my repo locally. Whenever I want to push it up to my server I hit a key combo in Sublime Text that I've assigned to run rsync to push files over. It usually takes about .5-1.5 seconds which, although not perfect, is a decent solution that still lets me use a local app for text editing.

mweibel2• 15 years ago

+1 for that! I would really like that feature as a major feature in some editor. The one which had that pretty good was ZDE (Zend Development Environment) 5.5 but it's buggy and pretty old now (and not maintained anymore).

I already thought about writing an own editor exclusively for that, but it's too much work to build everything from scratch imo.

msie• 15 years ago

I guess Cyberduck falls under the TextMate+Remote Filesystem Mount category but for me, it's relatively painless. You save a file in TextMate and Cyberduck updates the file on the remote server automatically.

jeremyswank• 15 years ago

fwiw, bbedit has a builtin [s]ftp file browser that works in the way you describe. i use it a lot.

bbedit also has unix shell script support and worksheets that can run one-liners. i don't use it much, so i can't really say how well it works or how useful it it. but i guess it would be possible to do what you describe, and given that it's bbedit, i'm inclined to think it would work intelligently and well.

i'm not affiliated with the company, but i've used bbedit since about 1997. i can see how textmate is superior in some ways, but it lacks some bbedit features that i use a lot so that makes it hard to contemplate changing -- just like the emacs graybeard who also commented.

mhw• 15 years ago

When? Oh, 20-odd years ago! Rob Pike's sam editor (http://sam.cat-v.org/) is architected as two components. One is the graphical front end that typically runs on your local machine, the other implements the actual editing functions and can be run remotely over a shell connection. You can open a huge list of files and perform complex editing operations on them without downloading all the content in to the graphical front end, because the front end only needs the parts of the files that you have displayed in open windows.

exDM692• 15 years ago

Vim ships with this feature, it's in a plugin called netrw and enabled by default.

Also if you use any desktop linux system, the default text editor can probably open files on remote machines (with a wide variety of protocols), just enter the url. In Gnome it's called the Gnome virtual file system (GVFS).

kanja• 15 years ago

this is like 5 great features from emacs, minus everything needed to turn it into a comprehensive whole and macros. Great.

prtk• 15 years ago

Yet another guy wrote Emacs!!

fedd• 15 years ago

i sometimes need to use the split window to show me 2 or 3 code chunks that are sequential, so that they scroll together.

i mean, not 3 different, distant parts of a document, but like one longer part of a document, where a core function with several recursions and nested loops is defined, in many lines, and i want to see them all.

usually i print them out and then inspect.

is there any editor to do this? maybe chocolat will?..

mechanical_fish2• 15 years ago

Emacs. You're looking for follow-mode:

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html%5Fnode/emacs/F...

The ability to edit the same file (or, in emacs terms, "buffer") in two or more windows is a killer feature.

llimllib• 15 years ago

In Vim, you want scrollbinding: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Scrolling_synchronously

etcet• 15 years ago

Relevant HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2797790

simplify3• 15 years ago

Anyone who thinks this is cool should check out Sublime Text 2. It has all these features and much more (json config files? oh yes).

Also, it's cross-platform; learn once, use everywhere.

desireco42• 15 years ago

Agreed

lovskogen• 15 years ago

Do you often switch from linux to windows for your coding environment?

simplify3• 15 years ago

I personally don't, but I know some programmers who often do.

michaelcampbell• 15 years ago

I do. Our official deploy environment is RedHat, but our official development environment is Windows. I use a linux distro in a VM to do most of my dev, but since a lot of guys use Windows I have to make sure that scripts and such work in both. The actual coding I don't switch as often, but there is some. I use emacs for most of it.

jasonlotito• 15 years ago

More often than you realize. I switched from Windows to Mac at home last year, and being able to take my editor with me was critical. I also had Windows/Linux machines prior to that (and now, of course, OSX and Linux).

bentlegen• 15 years ago

> json config files? oh yes

I find JSON makes for awful config files. For the sole reason that they can't be commented.

Klonoar• 15 years ago

This, a thousand times this.

sparky• 15 years ago

Sublime Text 2's config files have JSON-like syntax, but allow C (/* */) and C++ (//) style comments.

alanh• 15 years ago

Unless the program forbids you from adding extra keys, which I do not expect to be the case, you could add dummy keys like

    { 
      actual_config_item: "Some value",
      comment_on_above:   "Explanation / pseudo-comment"
    }

alextgordon3• 15 years ago

I actually made a language, especially for Chocolat's configuration files. It's a stripped down form of s-exprs, with string literals designed to avoid escape characters.

https://github.com/fileability/self-ml

subsection1h• 15 years ago

  learn once, use everywhere.

...until the company stops providing sufficient support. Though, this may not be a big problem for some users. Maybe people who use closed source text editors don't extend their editors to the extent that Emacs users do, and thus, the time they spending using their text editor is not viewed as an investment.

Derbasti• 15 years ago

The cross platform thing is huge for me. If I am investing a lot of time in some text editor, I want to be able to migrate that skill set to wherever I go.

In that regard, nothing beats Vim. There are Vim keybindings for every major IDE. I mean, hell, there are Vim keybindings for Emacs, right?

But still, even if I can't integrate my favorite keybindings into some IDE or other, I at least want to be able to use the text editor of my choice on the platform of my employers choice. Sublime does that. JEdit does that. Emacs and Vim do that, too (they even support non-graphical modes). One could argue that E/Textmate sorta does (No Linux though). BBedit, Notepad++, Chocolat, WinEdt, SubEthaEdit and Kod do not.

For me, this is probably the first major decision point for text editors. Sorry, Chocolat, I'm sure many people will love you, but chances are, I might get stranded on some strange OS and then I will only be lovesick.

drivingmenuts2• 15 years ago

Personally, I'd prefer a Preferences GUI, rather than JSON files. If you're going to release on a platform, follow that platform's conventions.

I suspect laziness on the part of the developer in regards to a Preferences GUI, rather than any attempt at a new paradigm.

simplify3• 15 years ago

Actually I really like the fact that they're JSON files. It makes it very easy to copy/paste preferences between different machines.

stephth3• 15 years ago

@chocolatapp: @iDuuck We support anything that TextMate does, through tmbundles. Though for technical reasons we can't support some commands or macros

https://twitter.com/#!/chocolatapp/status/98131646351544320

mbrzuzy• 15 years ago

In my opinion they will have a hard time competing with Sublime Text 2 if they make it paid. Sublime text 2 supports OS X, Windows and Linux.

I personally work on both Linux and Windows so ST2 is the one for me.

leif4• 15 years ago

With the amount of muscle memory and (deeply personalized) customization that goes in to getting comfortable with an editor, it seems like the hardest place to attract users, and since vim and emacs have already done everything worth doing in an editor (except flashy buttons I guess), it seems like the hardest place to innovate.

textmate, bbedit, kod, coda, sublime text, and now this

What is interesting about this space that makes people think they can make something better than vim and emacs, in fact, so much better that they can overcome the inertia that comes with being a vim or emacs user? I get that you can maybe grab a few notepad/textedit people, but you're never going to attract serious developers.

If you are someone who pays for one of these editors, please help me understand and explain why, unless it's "someone told me about it before I knew any better and now I'm stuck with it for the same inertial reasons".

(ides are different, I do get that, I don't get it when it's a "swiss-army knife" style of text editor)

cdcarter• 15 years ago

Well, since TextMate 2 still hasn't come out yet, and this seems to appeal to a very similar aesthetic, I could see this taking over that market. I'm definitely very interested to try it out.

leif4• 15 years ago

what do you use now, and why?

Cushman5• 15 years ago

Don't lie— we're all gonna buy TextMate 2 anyway.

neutronicus• 15 years ago

Programmer's editors are the kind of product that has enthusiasts. They're like wine. There'll always be a market for them, innovation or no.

frou_dh3• 15 years ago

I don't choose vim or emacs for the same reason I don't choose Linux. The appeal of OS X is that it's a pleasant place to spend time, full of well crafted GUIs specifically for it, while retaining a good amount of Unix power.

alextgordon3• 15 years ago

Yes. We don't fool ourselves into thinking we can convert hardcore Vim or Emacs users. If you love Vim or love Emacs, then you should just use Vim or Emacs! Personally, I desire a better UI.

The number of good, actively developed text editors on the Mac is actually remarkably small.

There's TextMate 2, which has become a synonym for vapourware. Kod's future seems uncertain now that Rasmus got his job. Coda and Espresso are good in their niches (of web development) but they're not general purpose editors.

So we're just left with BBEdit and Sublime. I think there's room for one more :)

pacifi30• 15 years ago

Probably should implement something like screen too

angelortega• 15 years ago

Yet another text editor. This is exactly what the world needed.

voyou• 15 years ago

It seems to me that if you're producing a new product in as crowded a field as text editors, it's not very persuasive to, as these guys do, list a bunch of features, particularly if these are features that are common to most other text editors. The website needs a hook: what does this text editor do, that my current text editor doesn't? What's the high concept, the couple of sentence explanation of what makes this text editor special?

meatmanek• 15 years ago

This was exactly my thought. What exactly does this app have that Sublime Text 2 doesn't have?

wladimir• 15 years ago

It would be nice if you added "for MacOSX" to the title next time, would save me a click in vain.

richardk• 15 years ago

this looks so nice, i'd really like to see a gnu/linux port :)

upinsmoke• 15 years ago

Looks like textmate

mistrQ• 15 years ago

I'm using vico right now, but this has got me super excited!

vedang• 15 years ago

A guided tour of Emacs: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/

Why would I want another editor?

Luyt• 15 years ago

I'd like Chocolat the be open source, so that it's easy to tailor to specific needs, and gets debugged rapidly.

Chocolat - the new editor

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