Important features for editors

[Joshua Landau]

On 4 July 2013 08:32, cutems93 <ms2597 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> I am researching on editors for my own reference. I found that each of them has some features that other don't, but I am not sure which features are significant/necessary for a GOOD editor. What features do you a good editor should have? Keyboard shortcuts? Extensions?

Let me give you some reasons I really, really like Sublime Text.

* Fast. Like, really fast. I've used Vim -- Sublime Text is faster.
Considering I'm on a middle-end 5-year-old computer (not for long...)
this matters.

* The rendering is gorgeous. There are subtle shadows, there's
perfectly crisp text (the main reason I no longer use terminal
editors, actually), and once you choose the right theme (Nexus and
Phoenix, Tomorrow Night for me) it's just lovely. There's this feature
where it shows you tabs -- but only for the part of the file you're
on. There's, instead of a scrollbar, a little "bird's-eye-view" of the
whole code on the RHS. This goes on. Visually it is stunning, in a
helpful way. If it had proper terminal-emulation support, I'd replace
my terminal with it. It's just that usable an interface.

* Multiple cursors. This is something that no-one else really
advertises, but it's one of the most used features for me. It's
something you just have to try for a while -- I think it's a bit like
Vim's power-of-Regex but easy for a, you know, human. (I just found
https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors).

* Good navigation between and inside of files. A lot of things have
this, so I won't say much more.

* The "Command Palette" is a dropdown that you do commands from, and
because of the way you search it, it's like a hybrid between vim's
command-based power and something that's actually discoverable and
easy.

* Usable on *really big* files, and has one of the best binary-file
support I know of. I open binary file a little more than I should, not
that I can do much with them.

* Useful extensions, installable at a button-press --
<C-P>in<CR>[search for package]<CR>. Like SublimeREPL. I know
Emacs/Vim will do better at REPLs, but few others will.

* Etc. This goes on.

Looking at Dave Angel's list, Sublime Text pretty-much aces it.

What I don't understand is where he says:

> The main negatives I can see are:
...
>     It's available for OS/X, Linux and Windows, with a single purchase
>     The eval/demo is not time-limited (currently)

How on earth are those negatives?

He basically only dislikes it because you have to use PayPal, which is
his choice. I can't say I agree with it though.