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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."
Wouldn't it be great to edit the same document, live, in realtime, together with everyone in your group?
No. Fuck, it would be chaos.
While I don't use the networking capabilities of SubethaEdit, it has largely replaced BBEdit for me as my "editor of choice" for programming. Sleek, lightweight, and efficient (not to mention free for noncommercial use), it has a lot going for it.
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.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
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.
- tristan
I recently switched to Mac OS X and gave bbedit a try (I also tried the top rated editors from Macupdate).
I ended up forcing myself to finally learn to use emacs. It has been worth it.
http://www.inf.unibz.it/~franconi/mac-emacs/
Thought I mention it even though SubEthaEdit is pretty handy too.
This paid my last vacation, it mi
Any chance of a *nix or Windows version?
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!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.
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 Done! Oh, for chat, use irc
my cat's breath smells like cat food
I don't know why I am bothering to respond to an AC...
Vim is not *nearly* as elegant, integrated, nor as clean as subethaedit is.
First of all, Vim is still based on vi and requires that you know a variety of interesting things on the keyboard before you can effectively use it (what happens when I hit "d" depends on the mode--when I hit "d" in subethaedit I see a "d").
Second, it is very much not a Cocoa application. Services do not work, it has a nonstandard highlight for a MacOS X program (Carbon or Cocoa).
It neither looks nor feels like a native MacOS X app. Little things, such as the command-keys being listed in the menus, just aren't there. Example: I quit using command-q and Vim gives me an ugly dialogue that reads "Save changes to 'Untitled'?" with the options Yes, No, and Cancel (in that order, yes default). The escape button does nothing.
With SubethaEdit when I close a window I get a standard MacOS X close dialogue, showing the app's icon and saying "Do you want to save the changes you made in the document 'Untitled'? Your changes will be lost if you don't save them" with the options Don't Save, Cancel, and Save, in that order with Save as the default. The escape button cancels.
A thousand little things like that really add up.
The way preferences are handled, color syntax modes, an actual toolbar, indicators as to where the cursor is and basic information about the encoding of the file at my fingertips, the ability to highlight a block of code and indent it all or comment it all, showing line numbers or invisible characters, change how lines are terminated...
The list of differences--both functional and cosmetic, big and small--that make SubethaEdit a better choice than Vim for most Mac developers is enormous.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
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.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
I'd like to add my voice to the praise for SEE we've already seen. I've only tinkered with the collaborative editing on my home network (and it's very impressive), but without that feature SEE would still be my editor of choice, and I've been through the expansive .emacs and minimal vi mastery stages.
Just this morning I noticed that when editing a CSS file, SEE will not only give you a drop-down box of all your symbols / definitions, but also place an icon next to them identifying them as ID definitions, class definitions, and so on.
It's small, clean and extremely funcional - it feels pristine to use. I'd absolutely recommend trying it out, whether the collaborative features interest you or not.
I use Vim a lot (it's included with OS X, after all), but when I go into a meeting I can fire up SEE, create a document, see everyone on the local network and invite them to join in editing it collaboratively (no locking required). Perhaps you could tell me how I do this with Vim?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If 42 is the answer to the question of life, the Universe and everything(wikipedia.org), the equation probably is correct and easily to memorize. You may need a larger computer, though...
So much for Germans not being funny.
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:
"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. "
And now we have it. It's called Wikipedia!
May the Maths Be with you!
I hope you are German and lough out of despair. The last TV commercials from Apple in Germany were IIRC for the first white iBooks - maybe even flavoured iMacs. Hell, I've seen more Compaq Proliant commercials on German TV than Apple adds ever.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
But that's the beauty of vi -- the joy of the unexpected lurking in every keystroke.
Someone please moderate my previous comment down - I somehow managed to post it to the wrong story!