Kickstarter for an Open Source Programmer's Text Editor using HTML5
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
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.
I do plan on learning as much as possible about the current attempts to do similar projects. But I feel that the current options do not adopt enough of a "get out of the way" approach for me. I'm hoping to write an alternative for those who don't want a browser based eclipse. I've been poking at WebGL for this and I really do think it can help... but I also understand that I may be eating my words here shortly.
Thanks!
Their Orion project takes a very different approach of integrating services from all over the web and includes GitHub integration out of the box. It does have a server side part, but it also has a ton of client side code (that's all BSD-licensed!)
Their rendering is based on contentEditable, which means that it handles RTL text better than anything else and is likely to be accessible to disabled people. (For these reasons, we're working on including this editor in Firefox!)
As far as straight up programming editor functionality goes, Ace is hard to beat. It's got extensible keybindings (someone has built vi bindings, emacs is also possible). And don't let the DOM part throw you off... keep in mind that a canvas is DOM also – you could draw a canvas minimap if you wanted to.
And, as others state, if you really want to use canvas for rendering, you can pick up the Bespin code. The last version produced didn't have the server side and all of that stuff.
I think JS-based editors are the future, but I don't think brand new editing components are where the action is at: the action is in the stuff around the editing component.
(ObDisclaimer: My biases come from having worked on Bespin and Mozilla's other developer tools...)
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)))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
Coloring some keywords might make things look pretty, but it surely doesn't make it all by itself an IDE or even a good text editor. Line numbering isn't a 'feature', that's a basic necessity. If these things are taught as 'features', what else is a 'feature' then? The ability to save the text without errors? Let's raise the bar here, please.
For me, Eclipse or VisualStudio is an IDE. Aptana (now Appcelerator Studio) is also more than just an editor. TextMate, VIM, Notepad++, UltraEdit and the like are not IDEs. They are (mostly dumb) text editors.
Personally I draw the line at whether there's contextual code-completion provided via instant introspection or background compilation.
GPL or not, I wish you luck in this project.
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?
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?
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.
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.