Vico Editor source code released | Hacker News Reader

Vico Editor source code released

blog.vicoapp.com

102 pointschrisfarms19 comments

Thank you so much for doing this. There's been a recurring theme with text editors on OS X and I'm glad you've avoided it.

A new editor comes out, it's a great editor, but it's closed-source and costs money. People are fine with paying money, so it thrives. Eventually, the developer(s) slow down or lose interest. Maybe they're working on a rewrite. Meanwhile, bug fixes don't happen. Promised features never show up. You end up with a community of developers using a piece of abandonware as their main editor. If they had the source code, they could improve their editor. But they don't so they can't.

I doubt he'll do it, but it'd be nice if Allan Odgaard took a hint from you and released the source for TextMate 1.5.

If he did it would probably kill off Textmate 2 unfortunately

He's killed it himself by taking so long on it. :/

Genuinely glad I bought a copy before it went open source. :)

It's a pretty awesome editor. A lot of the editing power of VIM but behaves like an actual OS X app. Also: built in scripting with a Lisp-like language.

Being open source immediately vaults it ahead of Textmate/Sublime Text for me.

Very classy move; not only did you release the source, you picked a permissive license (2-clause BSD) which means it can now take on a life of its own on in many forms.

Nice to see a dev giving back.

Yet another program that uses some of the vi keyboard commands that is not actually vi (and is thus only a cruel tease).

Why do these exist, again?

oh, drop the fundamentalism already.

Because a little Vi is better than no Vi.

Seriously though, I have used quite a few Vim emulations in several editors and I find them very useful (VsVim, Evil, ViEmu, Vintage...). In fact, I think of this 'embeddability' as one of the major features of Vim. I can use Vim key bindings in Visual Studio, Eclipse, Sublime Text, Emacs... all this very much improves the value proposition of learning Vim.

Rather than being an editor with Vi emulation bolted on, Vico is an attempt to do Vi in Cocoa. Of course it is not Vim, with support for plugins, but for someone who is interested in some of Vi's power in a native Mac UI, it is an interesting proposition. Vico is also a way to learn Vim, commands available in the menu are shown with the Vi commands as shortcuts, rather than Alt-key combos.

I can see however as a paid Mac App Store product, it would have been a tough sell. Most people who seek out an editor in the MAS will likely be looking for something with more form than function. But as an open source app, like Vim, I hope it will see some renewed life.

Have you looked at Macvim? http://code.google.com/p/macvim/

Because MacVIM doesn't behave like a native Mac app.

MacVim is a nice middleground between the hardcoreness of Vim and the level of integration expected by every Mac user.

There are plenty of other text editors on the Mac App Store - what about Vico makes it incompatible with the sandboxing?

I tried Vico when it came out and liked the UI even if the "like Vi but not compatible with any of its plugin" and such that made it unable to take advantage of the whole ecosystem around Vim put me off.

But despite that it seems to be a great text editor and I'm glad the author took the very wise choice of open-sourcing it instead of letting it slide into abandon-ware status. It's a classy move that I wish developers would make more often.

Wise decision of Martin. I hope development will continue even stronger than before!

I installed it and I got this message:

This is a trial version.

Vico will expire after 15 days of use.

Try again. I just download r3132 and it doesn't give me that message.

I didn't get it immediately after downloading r3132. It prompted me to upgrade, so of course I pressed OK. The upgrade must've been to the paid build though.

> Vico will be removed from the App Store

Probably a good move, we should encourage professional mac software to stay well away from MAS. The sandboxing and slow updates just don't gel with a professional workflow

Reply on news.ycombinator.com