Interview with SubEthaEdit Developer

WaxPoetic writes "There is a fun interview with the developers of SubEthaEdit, the only collaborative editor for Mac OS X. Topics covered include Apple slowing developing, BEEP, why they kept a free version, being a German Mac user, hopes for the Tiger release, and their hatred of metal interfaces."

Comments

subethaedit style editors

[OmniVector]

For those who don't know, SubEthaEdit is a fantastic text editor for the mac. It's main benefit is the ability to do live text edit collaboration with many other users, and the ability to find these users with rendezvous (zero-setup networking). The program has a great niche in things like notetaking. I and my group members for a particular human interface class studied it in greater detail.

Re:subethaedit style editors

[Mononoke]

I would LOVE to try this collaboration thing everyone raves about, but can't get rendezvous to work.

Have you got port 5353 open everywhere? If you've got any firewall (including Apple's) running, it might not be.

"Well Known" TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Software Products.

for different operating systems...

[1isp_hax0r]

From the FAQ:

Any chance of a *nix or Windows version?
We love developing macintosh applications with Cocoa and are determined to improve SubEthaEdit on that platform. We currently have neither resources nor experience to port our products to other platforms.

While I use a mac, most of my development is using unix editors like emacs or vim. As a unix developer you do not have to wait for these guys to port to *nix. You already have this functionality!
Just install screen. First user starts screen with an editor inside. Make a new screen console and change the permission of the personal screen socket. Let other users log in and hook into your screen using

screen -x

Done! Oh, for chat, use irc :) Or communicate via comments like real geeks do!

Re:for different operating systems...

[Durin_Deathless]

That means everyone shares an insertion point, which isn't how SEE works. Everyone has a distinct insertion point.

Re:for different operating systems...

[martingunnarsson]

Yes, and SubEthaEdit isn't a communication tool, it's a text editor with multi-user support. Grandparent has got it all wrong!

Re:Really good program

[daeley]

I did have to write a python script that would work like bbedit's command line tool (with a few of the same options, such as -c), but once that was taken care of I started using it as my primary text editor.

A shortcut for that if you don't mind simple capabilities would be to add an alias to your .bash_profile, a la:

alias see='open -a SubEthaEdit'

Then you can open/edit a file thusly:

see foo.html

which will open the file in SubEthaEdit for editing.

Re:Enhanced Carbon Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

SEE's syntax highlighting system is user extensible, you can add gawk support yourself pretty easily.

Re:Really good program

[Llywelyn]

I tried this, but it didn't quite do it for me--it wouldn't let me open a file that didn't already exist (something I do all of the time), for example

I was also very used to the syntax of BBEdit's command line tool, so I wanted to type "subetha -c filename.m"

An alias is a good solution, but wasn't quite enough.

Re:Really good program

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh-

They have a shell script listed in the FAQ on their site:
See if this does it.

Re:Really good program

[Llywelyn]

Yeah, it is new with 2.0 :-)

Re:Really good program

[Goo.cc]

"I did have to write a python script that would work like bbedit's command line tool"

I e-mailed the creators of SubEthaEdit about this, as I would like to use it was an editor for Mutt, and they told me that a command line tool for SubEthaEdit is in the works.

More options... SubEthaEdit isn't the only one.

[ShallowThroat]

there is also iStorm", which uses rendezvous and can do more than just text/code. it's worth a look if you are in the market for that kinda thing.

Re:Really good program

[javax]

try this one in your ~/.bashrc:

subetha() {
if ! test -f ${1}; then
touch ${1};
fi;
open -a SubEthaEdit ${1}
}

this will work with files that not yet exist.

Re:Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

:help clientserver

Re:Sounds familiar

[ioErr]

Frequently Asked Questions: What about the name?

The name has been chosen to honor one of the greatest visionaries of computer supported collaborative writing, Douglas Adams, author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", one of the funniest and greatest books on earth. In his books he envisioned a travel guide for aliens, which was updated by multiple editors collaborating over the "SubEthaNet". To quote him:

The Guide was compiled by researchers roaming round the galaxy, beaming their copy in, which was then instantly available to anybody to read. Over, believe it or not, something called the SubEthaNet. [...] I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end. But I did have the inkling of an idea that a collaborative guide, one that was written and kept up to date by the people who used it, in real time, might be a neat idea.

The ONLY collobaritve editor?

[AusG4]

Before anyone jumps to suggest that Hydra pre-dated this as the first collaborative text editor, I should point out that Hydra became SubEthaEdit, so they are in fact one in the same. Hydra is a better name, but I digress.