Lite XL is a small miracle. I can only echo other comments calling it an "open source Sublime Text". It is at least as responsive as Sublime in my tests, and feels even more lightweight. The executable is only 385 kilobytes on Linux, with just a handful of extremely basic system dependencies (SDL, Lua, FreeType, PCRE).
Sublime Text is now getting squeezed from "above" (by VSCode) and from "below" (by Lite XL), while also having serious competition from TUI editors like Helix which are rapidly approaching it in features and performance. I'm not sure how Sublime can hope to survive long term against all of those, considering that Sublime's development pace appears to be by far the slowest of the bunch.
Sublime has, I think, a relatively loyal user base that have gotten comfortable there and don’t really have much of a reason to leave unless for a big IDE for specific projects. The plug-in ecosystem, while clearly aged, still has activity and new developments including adapting the new LSP stuff pretty well, and has some damn committed authors/maintainers.
I’ve been a comfortable user for a while now and enjoy knowing how to use my tool well enough to casually customise it.
That being said, I think you’re right. I’ve got my eyes on trying out the new developments in open source editors. This one is new to me
It seems like with LSP and tree-sitter, a critical mass of foundational infrastructure is now just available for everyone so that new development and innovation can focus on the interface and design. Not sure how much space that leaves for sublime.
Tree sitter came up in the sublime community forum recently and there was a hard “not gonna happen” from the developer team on the suggestion of any form of integration. From what I can tell, the sublime syntax engine is either lacking or the applications of it aren’t taking full advantage of it compared to tree sitter. And syntax awareness seems like an increasingly valuable tool in my hacking of my text editor. So yea, interesting time for text editors… who woulda thought for 2023.
Mainly when creating user interfaces, you can't have buttons (for example a "run" button), the only official UI components are the command palette where you search commands, and a "panel", which is basically a single separate text view.
Plugins such as the terminal plugin [1] uses this panel to show an interactive terminal, but anything you do, such as call another plugin, or simply search text, will remove your panel and replace it with another.
The only ways to create real UIs are with very ingenious workarounds, notable mentions being:
- The color picker plugin [2], which literally bundles a small native executable for each platform it runs, containing a color wheel, which the plugin will call, the user will select a color, and the program will close, returning the color code in its exit code, which the plugin is listening to.
- The debugger plugin [3] which has the most complex workaround I have seen using sublime's html capabilities. It uses the panel to show html elements, buttons with images, texts, lists, tabs, everything thorough this workaround. But again, try to search text and you loose it.
That's mainly where VSCode "won", although I still daily drive Sublime when I am not on a "full blown IDE".
[1]: https://github.com/randy3k/Terminus