Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

by amarsahinovic • 14 years ago

89 81 14 years ago

anonymouz• 14 years ago

> Unparalleled extensibility.

A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs.

Is there some kind of feature comparison somewhere? Or any particular highlights? The feature list is a nice start, but basically what I would expect of any decent editor anyway (except for code completion).

Breakthrough• 14 years ago

Don't forget about Notepad++ (Windows only though) and Sublime Text (best text rendering I've seen yet), which I'd argue are also valid comparisons - yes, even to Vim/Emacs.

That being said, I did have a quick look through the Textadept manual, and there are quite indeed a few useful and unique features... Whether or not this indicates "unparalled" extensibility though, is another matter all together.

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

Textadept is build on top of the Scintilla engine like Scite and Notepad++.

MaggieL• 14 years ago

If you're already running Java, jedit.org is worthy of your attention in this area. Extensible with Beanshell, or with plugins written in Java.

eikenberry2• 14 years ago

IMO you can't compare an editor to Vim/Emacs if it can't run in a console.

e12e3• 14 years ago

The fact that this has a small core of C and Lua, according to the website, is a much better selling point than "unparalleled extensibility".

I don't think even most Vim fans would claim vim is "as extensible" as Emacs -- while maybe on paper -- not really. I prefer Vim, but it's hard to argue with the sentiment that "Emacs is a nice operating system".

Still with proper support for Lua, I suspect it might be forced to do a lot of the same things Emacs can be forced to do (such as email, for instance). Not sure if I want an editor that does all that.

Yes, I'm aware Vim can be made do a lot of stuff like that as well, I just don't think quite as many users actually enjoy using Vim like that -- as does Emacs users. I might be wrong of course.

irahul9• 14 years ago

> I don't think even most Vim fans would claim vim is "as extensible" as Emacs

Vim fan reporting. Apart from async(which Vim can't do), Vim is as extensible as Emacs in letter and spirit. Considering that you are vowing vim allegiance, I think tpope's plugins would have made it pretty obvious how extensible vim is.

> Still with proper support for Lua, I suspect it might be forced to do a lot of the same things Emacs can be forced to do

Again, async. Vim can't and won't do async. If vim starts supporting async execution, vimscript will wrap existing imap, smtp implementation and update the ui. I am guessing emacs does the same. If it doesn't, I am in complete awe - not by the extensibility but by the pointlessness of implementing smtp server in elisp.

jemeshsu• 14 years ago

Textadept uses Lua as scripting language. Sublime Text uses Python as scripting language. Any hipster working on a text editor that uses Javascript as scripting language?

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

> A bold claim to make when your competition includes Vim and Emacs.

The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking.

irahul9• 14 years ago

> The code base is actually small and mostly written in Lua, so that it is actually possible to change the editor to your liking.

When I say extensibility, that's not what I mean. Code is available and it's small and mostly written in Lua - that's all good. But I don't want to mess with core because then syncing upstream is a huge pain. The only interface I want to deal with the extension interface. I haven't looked at the api yet, but I am skeptic about the claims. Vim has vimscript, Emacs has elisp, sublime has python...Editors has been providing extension interface for a long time.

dysoco• 14 years ago

Looks interesting, does it support TTY mode? I might try it.

e12e3• 14 years ago

From the link:

  > "The version of Textadept for the terminal requires only ncurses."

I suppose that would fit?

I notice that some keyboard bindings[1] are different in "Terminal"-mode (I suspect that means in terminal on GNU/Linux and possibly *BSD, but I suppose it might include MS Windows cmd.com (if supported) and OS X Terminal as well) -- as compared to the GUI-variants (MS Windows and OS X appear to just substitute control for command - while the "Terminal"-variant uses e.g. meta-control-n, rather than just meta-n or control-n for new file).

I think I'll stick with VIM, thanks. Still having another powerful editor available isn't a bad thing.

[1] http://foicica.com/textadept/api/_M.textadept.keys.html#Key....

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

The terminal version works only on Unix/BSD, but it was only introduced in 5.5. (Which means there might be glitches as well on Linux.)

marcusramberg2• 14 years ago

Have you seen the scroll bars on this thing? Or the Icon? No way I'm using this on OSX...

farmdawgnation• 14 years ago

Agreed. Whoever suggested this thing is a good fit for OS X should be harpooned by the ghost of Steve Jobs.

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

I do use this on OS X and agree that it does not look quite 'native'. It might be possible to port Textadept to be fully native. Scite, which uses the same Scintilla engine, is available as a native OS X app.

It might also be possible to tweak the GTK layouts for the OS X version.

PedroBatista• 14 years ago

Imagine your friends see this app running on your computer, i mean gooosh.... whatevahhh they wouldn't invite you to their minimalism exquisite design parties anymore.

marcusramberg2• 14 years ago

I know you Linux guys are used to every app having a completely different look and feel, but on the mac this app just doesn't feel native.

But your story was cool too...

turtlebits• 14 years ago

You might have a heart attack when you see the file picker ;)

dotmanish• 14 years ago

Suggestion about the website: Please include a separate section called "Screenshots". A lot of people directly click there to get a feel of the software before they download.

leke2• 14 years ago

A video tutorial too would be awesome.

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

Not a video tutorial, but a demo of some Zen-Coding-like HTML editing on YouTube from 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSAinGsc7dA

amarsahinovic2• 14 years ago

Screenshot with dark theme: http://i.imgur.com/oqByS.png

tern• 14 years ago

Scrollbar chrome makes me instantly lose interest.

If there was a screenshot without this (is there a terminal version?), I would regain interest. Screenshots are important especially to people like me who may or may not care. They're the fastest way for a potential user to answer the question: is this worth caring about at all.

Some questions you can answer with screenshots:

- Does it run on my platform?

- Are there any glaringly ugly things about it that will be a dealbreaker?

- Is it more beautiful/cool than what I'm already using?

- To what extent can it be customized?

- What kind of people are using it (if you have user screenshots)?

steve19• 14 years ago

Unfortunately the GTK theme it is shipped with is a little off putting on OSX.

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/4600/screenshot20121119at...

The save dialog is standard GTK as well, not OSX.

leke2• 14 years ago

Just tried the Linux version and I like it! If the Windows version is portable, I'll carry it around on my USB stick.

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

The Windows version is quite portable if you manually set the .textadept home to your USB stick. A while ago I wrote a Portable Apps launcher [1] that did that automatically for you, haven't used it in quite a while though. (I wrote this before GTK was included in the Windows package.)

[1] https://github.com/rgieseke/textadept-portable

majke• 14 years ago

And a youtube video showing Textadept with some third party plugin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSAinGsc7dA

rymith• 14 years ago

What does this do that Vim doesn't? I'm just not sure I see any selling points. You can extend Vim with Lua, vim has multiple viewports, support for hundreds of languages, and all the other features like code complete, etc... What itch is this supposed to scratch, that something like Vim, a proven project, cannot? I understand that every developer wants to carve his name out and be king of his own sandcastle. But as a rule, I don't support that unless the developer has really thought about the problem and decided that a new project was the only way to solve a problem.

irahul9• 14 years ago

> What does this do that Vim doesn't?

It's not vim. That alone will be a selling point for a vast majority.

TallboyOne2• 14 years ago

I didn't realize a vast majority were nincompoops.

andrewflnr2• 14 years ago

Vim is cool but... crufty. It seems like the point of this project is to be both extensible and simple/comprehensible. For that, there's nothing like starting from scratch.

zem• 14 years ago

and yet every single project to reimplement vim "cleanly" has failed. the only successful other implementation out there essentially ported the vim codebase directly to java. i can only conclude that vim has built up a tremendous amount of sheer value along with the cruft that is not easy to reproduce.

osa1• 14 years ago

let's see when will first vi plugin for it come out..

autotravis2• 14 years ago

Does the "toggle block comment" option actually work (Ctrl+/)? Tried it with python (file saved with .py ext and syntax highlighting even showed up), but couldn't comment with that keybinding...

edit: block commenting didn't even work when selecting it from the Edit menu.

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

By default comment strings are not defined in core Textadept. Add them like this:

http://foicica.com/wiki/comment-supplemental

Or install the Python language module:

http://foicica.com/hg/python/

autotravis2• 14 years ago

Awesome, thanks. I just added that comment string def to init.lua and it works great.

Edit: why is this not there by default? I'm not sure any developer would not want a block commenting function...

optymizer• 14 years ago

<rant>That's great. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to vim and gcc, because I don't have a cross-platform open source IDE that has been "relentlessly optimized" for my language of choice, to look slick, to not consume gigs of RAM and to not stop the world while I'm typing some text. What I have is a long list of text editors. Oh, here's another one. That's great.</rant>

pepve2• 14 years ago

About that extensibility, would it be possible to implement inline diffs? (Paint margin green for added lines, show a red marker for deleted lines.)

rainysunday11• 14 years ago

The (deprecated) debug module has some screen shots that show margin markers:

http://foicica.com/wiki/lua-debugger

The styling and symbol choice is configurable.

Not sure how inline diff works though (for deleted lines), do you have an example in another editor?

pepve2• 14 years ago

Here is how Netbeans does it: http://netbeans.org/projects/versioncontrol/pages/Git_ui#Inl...

skymt• 14 years ago

It's a little off-putting that the documentation brags about the low line count without mentioning the use of Scintilla, which already implements most of a text editor. Still, I'm willing to give it a try.

spullara• 14 years ago

Sadly, on the Mac, this doesn't feel like a native application and things like changing the size of the window are broken. Also, a horizontal scrollbar appearing in an empty text window is strange. Might work great on Linux and I like the idea but the execution on Mac leaves a lot to be desired.

godDLL• 14 years ago

Yeah, I tried the 'source-map' layout but it won't remember the zoom levels when re-opening a session. http://i.imgur.com/mxYO0.png

And it doesn't use Exposé for windows, at all. That's a shame. I'd like to have several editor windows open, with separate buffer lists.

I like where they're going with it, but are they there yet? Meh.

dualogy2• 14 years ago

OK, so I find Sublime Text 2 extremely perfect for my needs... now how does this thing beat pure perfection? ;)

polarix• 14 years ago

I had a similar question, and looked through the docs...

Textadept does not appear to have multiple select features on par with SublimeText. But then again who does?

SeanDav• 14 years ago

I tried using Sublime Text 2 but it has no ability to toggle automatic updating of changed files, unlike Notepad++ for example.

dualogy2• 14 years ago

Yeah it does auto-update changed files by default, but you can enable the option to highlight unsaved files more prominently (should be on by default really) so such cases for me always show up on my radar immediately. And then a simple Ctrl+Z reverts the file to whatever was in that editor-buffer beforehand.

crazydiamond• 14 years ago

Has anyone tried this out in terminal (ncurses version). I get an error on osx, so i can't load a file. I get this if I give a file on command line.

> ....0.osx/Textadept.app/Contents/Resources/core/file_io.lua:143: bad argument #1 to 'iconv' (string expected, got nil)

Open file (M-S-O) does nothing.

Tried C-u (snapopen) and get a similar iconv error:

> pt.app/Contents/Resources/modules/textadept/snapopen.lua:67: bad argument #1 to 'iconv' (string expected,

I am executing the textadept-ncurses.osx file. Thx. Please note that <backspace> is acting like a TAB but C-h is working correctly.

akkartik• 14 years ago

I just tried it out and parts of the ncurses UI seems less responsive than I'm used to in vim. For example, try hitting ctrl-alt-f for incremental find, then hit esc to leave it. It seems to take a second to exit incremental find mode. Does anybody else see this?

eikenberry2• 14 years ago

I didn't see this in the Debian repository yet? Years of experience have taught me that 99% of the time if a project isn't in the Debian repo it isn't mature yes or useful to more than a small niche and probably not worth my time. The 1% that is missing there is when I am part of the small niche.

Not meant as an attack or anything. Just an observation and possibly a 'marketing' suggestion if you'd like more users.

Textadept: fast, minimalist, and Lua-extensible cross-platform text editor

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