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).

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 [atom.io]

Emacs

[Meneth]

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

But does it have...

[loony]

a vi compatible mode?

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.

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

[QilessQi]

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

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

[dotancohen]

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

The new acronym is:
A
Ton
Of
Memory

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: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 [github.com]

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?