Please port to Sublime

[ericelliott]

I'm loving Brackets, but it still has a ways to go before I can really replace Sublime with it. I'd love to see a port.

[alltom]

I can point anyone who wants to take this on to all the relevant resources to make it work. I'd love for it to happen. It wouldn't take much ambition for anyone who is already familiar with extending Sublime (I'm not).

node-theseus (the tool you use to run Node.js apps under Theseus) listens for WebSocket connections and just turns them into method calls on the global tracer object from the fondue instrumentation library. With the connection in place, getting information about hit counts, and querying the call graph, is about as simple as in fondue's README. The protocol is simple, but undocumented (hence, my offer of pointers :).

I understand there are already Sublime extensions using the Chrome Remote Debugging API. The Brackets extension uses Runtime.evaluate and Runtime.callFunctionOn to communicate with the tracer object in JavaScript in Chrome.

[adrocknaphobia]

@dilvie: We'd love to see you contribute to Brackets rather than spend time porting innovations like theseus to closed-source apps. In your opinion, what's missing?

[ericelliott]

Adam - I love open-source as much as the next guy. I'm all for making Brackets a better tool, too. That said, I can't really complain much about my experience with Sublime. It has served me very well, and continues to serve me well, and I don't mind paying for it. I love its easy editing features, and I have a ton of great extensions for it.

Since you asked for it, here are my top brackets pet-peeves:

• No multiple cursor mode. Seriously? Ace supports it. Maybe that'll help. Multiple selections is the single biggest productivity boosting feature I've ever seen added to a text editor (not including tools that aid in debugging).
• I don't know how to get rid of the bar on the right with the live preview and the install extension buttons. Is there a way to make that auto-hide? I know about full screen mode. That's not what I mean. I have a ton of screen real-estate.. it's a waste to let one application hog it all.
• Open multiple projects in the same workspace? I can't figure out how to do this in Brackets. Switching between projects is a breeze, and that's great, but in Sublime, I can have a bunch of projects open in a single workspace so I can see all the files I'm interested in in the file explorer on the left side of the window... really convenient when I need to refer to related projects for things like call signatures, or parameter names (web software doesn't live in a bubble).
• When I go to install an extension, I can't just start typing an extension name and then select it to install. First I have to click browse extensions, which takes me to a github page. Then I search for the extension there, and click through it and get a github URL, then I go back to brackets and copy and paste. Then, of course the installation fails, saying it can't find the file, and I'm stuck back at manual install. What really happens when I'm busy trying to get actual work done is I give up and pop open Sublime. Contrast: keypress, start typing, select the extension to install, press enter, and magically, my extension is loaded and working.
• The extension ecosystem is anemic compared to Sublime. We need a lot more brackets extensions in order for me to feel like I can really customize Brackets to be the development environment that I want. My must-have are tern, jsdoc snippets, grunt (easily use the project grunt tasks... basically custom extensions for your current project), and SFTP (browse an SFTP location as if it's the local filesystem). I'm aware that some of this is available for Brackets, but there's no question there's still a gap between availability for Sublime and availability for Brackets. I'm glad to see Brackets getting some love in the extension department, but it's not quite there, yet.

[adrocknaphobia]

@dilvie Thanks for the list. Nothing here is a surprise and multiple cursors is definitely the big one we're all missing. We use CodeMirror in Brackets (as opposed to ACE) which doesn't natively support this. We're going to have to roll up our sleeves and contribute it to CodeMirror before it gets surfaced in Brackets. The other features are fairly minor (heck, a simple display: none will hide the toolbar if its really bothering you).

As far as extensions go, we an agile team that builds small pieces of functionality then iterates. We're smack in the middle of an epic around Extension Management (https://trello.com/c/8tksTN46). The current workflow if far from ideal or complete.

FWIW The goal of the Brackets project isn't to replace Sublime (or any other editor). Our focus is on providing a sandbox where anyone can experiment with ideas like Theses. Ideas that originate in Brackets but end up in other editors is how we measure success. So we'd rather spend our time building new cool shit rather than porting ideas.

[ericelliott]

I don't expect Adobe to spend time porting innovations like this to Sublime instead of working on making Brackets rock, but it's still a useful project for those of us who still need to be productive today. Right now, I'm still more productive in SublimeText than Brackets. Mostly because of multiple selections / multiple cursors, and slowness, instability, and general bugs in Brackets. I filed a couple bug tickets yesterday.