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Comment by ed0 | Hacker News Reader

I am not too familiar with the technical details regarding the text rendering in ST3, but I can clearly see the difference between ST3 and Vim/GVim. At least on the machines I use (Desktop Archlinux & MBP OSX). Apparently ST3 uses Skia2d[1] for rendering which is what Google Chrome uses as well. Even for the text. But again, it's not just about the text rendering. ST3 is designed for the modern GUI and Vim/Emacs are not. What I want to see is the raw power of Vim + nice modern UI rendering/feel. It can't be that hard.

[1] - http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev (search for Skia)

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It would be helpful if you could precisely describe exactly what it is that makes ST3 look better for you than emacs or vim.

Saying that "I can clearly see the difference" and calling it a "nice modern UI rendering/feel" is too vague to be useful for improving emacs or vim in any concrete direction.

I can see the difference too. For whatever reason, text in Sublime with the same theme looks sharper than Vim (Yosemite). Maybe it's because it's not surrounded by ugly text rulers and inverse mode split bars, or maybe the text itself is actually sharper. Who knows? The programs are free, try it yourself.

Also, both Vim and Emacs feel really chunky and numb when showing completions and switching buffers. They take many hundreds of milliseconds to respond to keypresses, while Sublime responds close enough to instantly for me to not notice. It makes a big difference for something that's done hundreds of times per day.

(That said, I'm still using MacVim as my primary editor. The botched ST2->ST3 transition demonstrated above all else the danger of proprietary lock-in...)

> I can see the difference too. For whatever reason, text in Sublime with the same theme looks sharper than Vim (Yosemite).

It would help if you would send a comparison of screenshots to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.

Is it really lock-in if the upgrade is a completely separate install?

I imagine when neovim is ready we'll see frontends for it with all the optimised subpixel rendering you could ask for.

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