GitHub Open Sources Atom, Their Text Editor Based On Chromium

First time accepted submitter aojensen (1503269) writes "GitHub has made good on promises to open source Atom, a programmer's text editor based on Chromium. Atom is released under the MIT license (source repository). GitHub announced the following on their blog: 'Because we spend most of our day in a text editor, the single most important feature we wanted in an editor was extensibility. Atom is built with the same open source technologies used by modern web browsers. ... But more importantly, extending Atom is as simple as writing JavaScript and CSS, two languages used by millions of developers each day.'

Apart from being extensible via HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, Atom also offers out-of-the-box Node.js integration, a modular design with a built-in package manager (apm), and extensive features such as file system browser, themes, project-wide search and replace, panes, snippets, code folding, and more. Launched only 10 weeks ago, Atom seems to have a well-established ecosystem of packages and extensions already." The editor is based on atom-shell, a more general framework for building desktop apps using JavaScript/HTML. Beware: according to the FAQ, by default it sends "usage data" to Google Analytics (which can be disabled at least).

Comments

Google Analytics?

[ButchDeLoria]

Maybe it's the past year getting to me, but I'm wary of a text editor that phones home. https://atom.io/faq

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

So turn it off?

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

I disagree. It can be helpful to authors of software to see how their product is being used. As long as they are up-front about it, I have no issue.

When they try to pull the wool over your eyes, then it gets into "scummy" territory.

Re:Google Analytics?

[MightyYar]

By the way, the data they are collecting:

A unique identifier that is generated by computing the SHA-1 of the machine's MAC address.
The screen width and height
The version of Atom being used
The name of each item opened in a pane such as EditorView, SettingsView, and MarkdownPreviewView
The amount of time the current window was open for
The amount of time the current window took to load
The amount of time the app took to launch

EMACS 2.0

[serviscope_minor]

Remember back when EMACS stood for Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping. It seemed quite funny to build an OS and language first and then turn it into an editor. With all the jokes about how it's a great OS shame it has no decent editor etc etc.

Well this is just EMACS circa 2014. But instead of elisp we have Javascript. And instead of the emacs-platfrom-which-has-no-name we have a browser.

Anyway, here's a few lines from my top window:
13226 user 20 0 902280 187184 27300 S 0.0 18.3 57:49.63 firefox
26114 user 20 0 35532 8680 4344 S 0.0 0.9 0:12.53 gvim

see the difference?

(but hey it's in a browser so it's officially cloud and webscale and at least web 3.1.0-RC2)

Re:EMACS 2.0

[serviscope_minor]

Actually, my post is a bit mean spirited and I shouldn't be pissing on other people's parade just because I can.

It is still very much like emacs in architecture, but with a browser as the platform, not the emacs platform as a platform. This will make it quite resource hungry, but frankly now as then if it's a good editor, people won't care and will use it anyway. It's an instance of hardware being cheap relative to developers and it's not like it will be running on 1e6 servers so it's worth optimizing by rewriting in C++ or anything.

I expect a reasonable number of people will try it because it's new and cool and a reasonable number of them will stick with it. It will then jon the ranks of all the other editors out there and may get a decent following.

I won't be joining them just yet because I happen to really like vim, and it's reached the stage where I don't regularly feel "if only it had feature X".

Re:EMACS 2.0

[fph il quozientatore]

If the comment systems on the internet have taught me anything, it is "if you are insulting someone in your post, make sure that your spelling and grammar are flawless".

Re:EMACS 2.0

[_xeno_]

It's not so much that it can't, but that it won't. I got a beta invite, so one of the first things I tried to do was open a 6MB CSV file to see what would happen. It pops up a cryptic error message which you can decode using the developer tools: files larger then 2MB aren't allowed.

The reason is simple. Atom is slow. Really, really, really slow. Now granted the MacBook Pro (remember, it's also Mac-only) is a couple years old, which in Apple terms means it's time to be replaced (can't wait to stop receiving updates for it and getting yelled at by IT for that), but it absolutely and noticeably drags editing text.

Scrolling is slow. Editing is slow. Searching is slow. Everything is just - slow.

In a text editor. In 2014.

Re:EMACS 2.0

[dotancohen]

Remember back when EMACS stood for Eight Megs and Constantly Swapping.

The new acronym is:
A
Ton
Of
Memory

Re:EMACS 2.0

[Jane Q. Public]

I tried Atom when this was first announced a month or so ago.

It's nice in some ways. But not only is it big, as you point out, it's also very S - L - O - W and uses a HUGE amount of CPU resources for a mere editor. It's like trying to kill an ant with a cannon. A big, heavy cannon.

I tried it out for a few minutes, looked at the memory and more importantly CPU usage, and wiped it from the hard drive. It might be useful if you have a computer that is less than a few years old. But for now, I think I'll stick to editors that were written in a nice, fast, CPU-friendly compiled language.

Emacs

[Meneth]

Reminds me of Emacs; a decent operating system. All it lacks is a good text editor.

Re:100 year language

[TheRaven64]

As for Dart, it's really just JS rebranded under Google afaik.

The only part of this that's correct is the Google part. Dart is StrongTalk with curly braces. The object model, type system, and core functionality are exactly like StrongTalk, the lead developer on both projects is the same, and the VM is based on the StrongTalk VM (open sourced under a BSD license by Sun).

But does it have...

[loony]

a vi compatible mode?

Re:But does it have...

[erapert]

It does, actually: http://blog.atom.io/

mac only?

[rogoshen1]

Hmm currently only available for Mac..

On one hand, smacks of hipsterism. on the other.. as a windows user, now i know how it feels.

Re:mac only?

[ilikenwf]

Just use Komodo...it's less likely to spy on you by default, as it's based on Mozilla...more mature, too.

Re:mac only?

[Evardsson]

I don't know about other folks but Mac has never been the assumed default for any program I ever download, especially editors aimed at developers.

(emphasis mine)

I think maybe they only provide the Mac binaries because us Mac users are (in their opinion) too stupid to build from source?

https://github.com/atom/atom

You will see all the requirements in the readme there for building on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Have we, as developers, collectively forgotten how to build from source?

Re:mac only?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Seconded for Komodo. At work and home I use it for practically everything, the exception being when I have to spend time in .net land.

"...we spend most of our day in a text editor..."

[QilessQi]

Man. And I thought my cubicle was cramped...

Komodo Anybody?

[ilikenwf]

I'm here at work using it right now...anyway, Komodo runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and is based on Mozilla...it has also been free and around for quite a while...extensibility? Yep...

I don't get why everyone reinvents the wheel when they could instead make something that already exists, but is more complete better.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[dotancohen]

Komodo doesn't support Google Analytics, and it would be difficult to convince people to install it as a plugin.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[Jesus_666]

Having used both programs, there is one big difference between them (apart from the fact that one is an IDE and the other one is "just" a fancy editor): Atom seems to be easier to extend. The entire UI in Atom is an HTML document. If you want to change how things work you can mess with the stylesheet and voila, it works differently. Or you just outright replace part of the DOM. You even get the Chromium developer tools so you can see how everything works in detail.

In principle it should be possible to implement graphical editors for just about everything on top of Atom as long as you write them in JavaScript. It's kind of like emacs in that regard.

Re:Komodo Anybody?

[dotancohen]

Not sure if serious or trolling.

That means that I've done a good job.

Re:Why is usage data in quotes?

[buchner.johannes]

Should be with the users consent though, that a program starts sending data. For games, this consent probably comes with accepting the EULA.

Well at least

[marcello_dl]

At least the advantage is honestly described: web technologies are familiar to a lot of people, so the environment doesn't pose a high barrier for entry.

If the accent had been instead on being a "web platform", I'd feel compelled to ask how much of it is compatible/portable to other browsers. Chromium and node.js are sure open source but much in control of a single company, did they choose to mess with it, forks would happen but they would be painful. Other projects are sure in control of a single company but they either have already forks like java, mysql, or have a company that is too little to start thinking like the average evil megacorp.

Prime Example of Software Bloat

[TyIzaeL]

• Notepad++: 7.3MB
• Sublime Text: 7.6MB
• BBEdit: 12.5MB
• Atom - 67MB

"web-based"

[Anonymous Coward]

if it runs in a browser, why is it OS X only? someone missed the point.

Re:"web-based"

[Evardsson]

Or you could download the source (https://github.com/atom/atom) and build it locally. (I can verify that it builds and runs in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS). I think maybe the package managers for various *nix have gotten too simple, too many of us have forgotten how to do the configure, make, make test, make install dance.

Yet another editor

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Why would anyone need this when we have vi/vim?

Re:Yet another editor

[Shados]

This one is targeted more to people who would use something like Sublime Text. A bit more graphical than GVIM and stuff.

Also, in this particular case, everything is in CSS/Html/Javascript running on Node with Chromium. Want to change the color of your modified files (git) in the treeview? Its just a CSS selector away. Want to add a right click menu that does something completely custom? Javascript. Want to add a new screen? HTML.

Considering a lot of people who would use this editor do front end web development or node.js stuff, its a lot more palatable for modding (as can be seen by the insane amount of packages that are already out even though its currently Mac-only and was in closed beta... its that easy to write a plugin for without needing to learn anything new)

A replacement for Sublime Text

[spiralx]

A lot of the reason behind developing Atom is that Sublime Text has become very popular in the last few years with people wanting something between a text editor and an IDE, however Sublime Text is not open source, has a pretty poor extension API, has basically no documentation at all, and the developer ignores 99.9% of attempts to communicate with him. This situation isn't ideal, hence the development of Atom as an open source alternative - when it gets up to spec I'll probably switch over myself.