unable to save sessions about haskell-mode

[chrisdone]

It's supposed to do that. So probably this is more of a feature request to remember sessions.

[siodine]

Oh, I thought it might be a bug caused by using Windows. And that's unusual behavior.

(BTW, have you heard of sublime text and SublimeHaskell? Sublime text is already rocketing ahead of emacs in every programming feature except the more complicated semantic stuff like CEDET, and someone was able to knock out support comparable or better to haskell-mode in sublime text with very little code and time. Your time might be better spent improving haskell support in sublime text--something to chew on. http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/community)

[chrisdone]

I've tried Sublime out, I generally liked it, mostly impressed by its speed, though its window management appeared to suck. Its license is also disconcerting. I haven't yet tried extending it. Emacs's main feature is its extensibility and large contributing community. I might try it again tonight.

[siodine]

The sublime WM isn't as good as emacs (there's vertical and horizontal splitting but you can't nest tiles), but you can pull off tabs like chrome and have your native window manager take care of the rest.

The license is disconcerting, but it's only nagware like winrar without it.

Sublime text is also extensible and has a large contributing community. The following link, I think, shows that: http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/community More often I'm finding features on sublime text that are missing in emacs or no where near as polished, and it's pulling me away from emacs. I think the potential for contribution is significantly larger with sublime simply because it uses python as its scripting language, and it's a modern editor by default.

SublimeREPL with haskell support: https://github.com/wuub/SublimeREPL
SublimeHaskell: https://bitbucket.org/holmak/sublime-text-haskell (there's an existing fork of this that's added ghc-mod support, auto-completion, and so on)
sublemacspro: http://grundprinzip.github.com/sublemacspro/ (adds emacs keybindings and such)

http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control <- makes installing all packages and more very easy

[chrisdone]

The sublime WM isn't as good as emacs (there's vertical and horizontal splitting but you can't nest tiles), but you can pull off tabs like chrome and have your native window manager take care of the rest.

Yeah, I don't think any editor has window management as good as Emacs.

http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control <- makes installing all packages and more very easy

Yeah, I just tried that. Quoth wget:

--2012-05-17 20:55:44-- (try:20) http://sublime.wbond.net/Package%20Control.sublime-package
Connecting to sublime.wbond.net|50.116.34.243|:80... failed: Connection timed out.
Giving up.

And

The license is disconcerting, but it's only nagware like winrar without it.

The license is a problem in that I don't have source. That's something I've come to expect and being open source is a feature.

More often I'm finding features on sublime text that are missing in emacs or no where near as polished, and it's pulling me away from emacs.

Like what? I'd expect good support of multiple major modes (with proper parser support) and threads. Those are pretty much the things Emacs sucks at, as far as I know.

I think the potential for contribution is significantly larger with sublime simply because it uses python as its scripting language, and it's a modern editor by default.

That's probably true.

[siodine]

Yeah, I just tried that. Quoth wget:

That outputted from your terminal? You install package manager this way: http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control/installation

Then from inside sublime you can find and install any of the community packages (and have them automatically update).

Like what?

• Hugely better package manager
• Significantly better syntax highlighting.
• Simple project management (drag+drop folder onto sublime, C+p -> "project save"; easier to see with "show open files" than tabs)
• Build systems (without SublimeHaskell building with cabal wasn't available, so I simply added a new build system with two lines of configuration)
• I still prefer SublimeHaskell to haskell-mode (it's missing some of the features from haskell-mode, but the most important stuff more polished)
• I think golang support is better in sublime (not surprising because contribution moves much faster in sublime)
• SublimeClang kind of blows away anything emacs offers for C++ (emacs has some more features such as refactoring, but * they're just so poorly implemented and difficult to get working)
• SublimeLinter is really nice for a host of languages
• Better SuperCollider support
• Better Python support
• And the only thing regarding the interface that emacs has on sublime is the tiling

[chrisdone]

Yeah, I just tried that. Quoth wget:

That outputted from your terminal? You install package manager this way: http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control/installation

Er, that's the instructions I was following. The download host appears to be dead.

[siodine]

I just tried it from inside an ubuntu vm and it works; try the manual install instructions on that page. Here's another link to the necessary file: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=D80D51444C679217!2942&authkey=!AOp1CPau8p2C_pc

[chrisdone]

I was doing the manual instructions. See how the manual instructions feature a link to a download which is hosted on a server named sublime.wbond.net and that is the same host that I mentioned above which would not respond.

Nevermind, anyway. It's back up now:

--2012-05-17 21:35:25-- (try:16) http://sublime.wbond.net/Package%20Control.sublime-package
Connecting to sublime.wbond.net|50.116.34.243|:80... failed: Connection timed out.
Retrying.

--2012-05-17 21:35:56-- (try:17) http://sublime.wbond.net/Package%20Control.sublime-package
Connecting to sublime.wbond.net|50.116.34.243|:80... failed: Connection timed out.
Retrying.

--2012-05-17 21:36:27-- (try:18) http://sublime.wbond.net/Package%20Control.sublime-package
Connecting to sublime.wbond.net|50.116.34.243|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 62551 (61K)
Saving to: `Package Control.sublime-package'

100%[=========================================>] 62,551 118K/s in 0.5s

2012-05-17 21:36:28 (118 KB/s) - `Package Control.sublime-package' saved [62551/62551]

[chrisdone]

Hugely better package manager

That sounds good.

Significantly better syntax highlighting.

Example? I mean, syntax highlighting is kind of a solved problem. It's like improving on the wheel. Hm?

Simple project management (drag+drop folder onto sublime, C+p -> "project save"; easier to see with "show open files" than tabs)

I don't really do the whole "looking at pictures of folders" thing, but I can see why others would like that. Project save is a trivial non-fundamental thing to write some code for. I don't look at those kind of features that I can trivially implement myself.

Build systems (without SublimeHaskell building with cabal wasn't available, so I simply added a new build system with one line of configuration)

I have Haskell-specific build support which understands the output and ignores and re-formats certain things. (I also have it for Java but that's secret.) Again, this is isn't a kind of fundamental feature for me.

I still prefer SublimeHaskell to haskell-mode

I can't take much away from that.

I think golang support is better in sublime (not surprising because contribution moves much faster in sublime)
SublimeClang kind of blows away anything emacs offers for C++ (emacs has some more features such as refactoring, but * they're just so poorly implemented and difficult to get working)
Better Python support

Don't care about golang or C++. Don't care about Python. But that's good for you, I realise.

SublimeLinter is really nice for a host of languages

I'm not sure highlighting some things in the buffer is a particularly notable feature, but I agree generally linters are nice. But this is a package, not specific to the editor.

Better SuperCollider support

Don't know what that is.

And the only thing regarding the interface that emacs has on sublime is the tiling

Sure. That and the lack of menus. I hate GTK+ style menus. The elegant simplicity of the minibuffer cannot be overstated. But I see Sublime is fast.

We'll see, anyway. I'm going to try this Haskell package out.

[siodine]

"looking at pictures of folders"

Then you just hide the sidebar and tabs and use C+p for a list of buffers with fuzzy completion.

I mean, syntax highlighting is kind of a solved problem. It's like improving on the wheel. Hm?

Solved? The highlighting in emacs is terrible (i.e., it doesn't allow highlighting for a variety of syntatic constructs--it doesn't even have highlighting for numbers). Just compare an emacs theme file to a sublime theme file.

Also, I don't know what your usecase is, so I can't tell you what you'll appreciate most about sublime, or even if you will appreciate it. But you should take this all as evidence that emacs and vim are likely on the decline (relatively) for a variety of reasons. Careful of sunken costs.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe emacs development will explode ahead in the near future and it'll start getting more polished IDE-like features and language support, but it doesn't look like it. It took you years to get this far with haskell-mode and it took another person what looks like a week to get nearly as far in sublime.

[chrisdone]

Then you just hide the sidebar and tabs and use C+p for a list of buffers with fuzzy completion.

Sure, Emacs style.

Solved? The highlighting in emacs is terrible (i.e., it doesn't allow highlighting for a variety of syntatic constructs). Just compare a emacs theme file to a sublime theme file.

Example?

Also, I don't know what your usecase is, so I can't tell you what you'll appreciate most about sublime, or even if you will appreciate it. But you should take this all as evidence that emacs and vim are likely on the decline (relatively) for a variety of reasons.

Probably there will be some decline of use for the non-power users, yeah. I see Sublime taking a portion of the Visual Studio/Eclipse/Netbeans/$X_IDE userbase. Emacs's window management and the powerful "everything is text" paradigm will be hard to part with for Emacs gurus. I don't know much about Vim to comment on that.

Careful of sunken costs.

I work on this mode for purely selfish reasons, all these features are for me (I just happen to share them with others if I feel like it). The kind of things I write aren't available in any IDE, nevermind Sublime. I spend a half an hour to a couple hours in an evening and I have new editor features, for whatever language, that I can immediately use in my day job. Emacs has a very high return on investment, I don't think I have to worry about my time or sunken costs. Others would probably do well to heed that advice, though. Curious, do you know Elisp well yourself?

[siodine]

I work on this mode for purely selfish reasons

That changes everything; only brought this up because you have a comparative advantage with this kind of thing and convincing you to work on a better leveraged project (for the future of haskell) was worthwhile. Instead, now, I'll probably be putting time into improving the support. I just see haskell-mode becoming another yi and leksah that no one recommends.

[chrisdone]

only brought this up because you have a comparative advantage with this kind of thing

A comparative advantage of what?

Instead, now, I'll probably be putting time into improving the support.

Of Haskell in Sublime?

I just see haskell-mode becoming another yi and leksah that no one recommends.

If that happens, presumably because Sublime won out, that would be good for the community on a whole, they would have a much better editor that they like! Haskell-mode predates Yi and Leksah by a long while, I think its userbase hasn't really grown or shrunk much. Lots of Haskellers use Vim; actually a tiny bit more than Emacs, both in the poll http://blog.johantibell.com/2011/08/results-from-state-of-haskell-2011.html and my experience at hackathons.

BTW I'm not the maintainer of haskell-mode (nor do I represent the direction of effort), Phil Weaver is. I just maintain a part of it, the new interactive mode and some modules I wrote.

Maybe we should re-poll the community on editors, including Sublime, and ask what they think about this.

Anyway, I need some time to try Sublime properly to pass judgment.

It took you years to get this far with haskell-mode and it took another person what looks like a week to get nearly as far in sublime.

Actually, that's false. I wrote my own haskell-mode in an evening in a page of code. It didn't have clever literate Haskell-mode support and other Haskell idiosyncrasies, so I just moved to haskell-mode. I wrote the REPL mode in a day or so. The backend I wrote in a few days and have been adding to as I go. Actually I haven't added much to the haskell-mode editing itself, more stuff to do with building and the REPL. There's a lot more I could add. I could add debugger support in an evening, or less time. But I don't use the debugger, so I don't. It's not like I'm working my ass off to get the (understandably meager) support that I see in Sublime.

I'm not really sure that you are following the history of the project properly. We've got to here from years of people writing very small things, adding little bits incrementally. Most Emacs users don't learn Elisp. It may look like I'm the main contributor on the commit history, but go back to March and I only just “showed up”. Before that it's Baughn doing various fixes and things, and before that someone else, and a lot of contribution regarding indentation (hard problem), and little modes (Cabal, Core, Literate Haskell, Hsc, etc.).

[chrisdone]

Maybe it's better to take this discussion to the Haskell Reddit, this place is really better left for technical details of tickets.

[chrisdone]

I posted to Reddit. Please respond to my comment there if you don't mind!

[siodine]

A comparative advantage of what?

Adding support for Haskell in an editor.

Of Haskell in Sublime?

Yes.

Maybe we should re-poll the community on editors, including Sublime, and ask what they think about this.

I have no doubt that Sublime isn't nearly as popular with the people that would answer a poll in the Haskell community. However, I'm not so confident with people wanting to try out haskell, or new users. The largest potential source of Haskellers is Windows users, and they typically use IDEs. And that's partly why I think Sublime will eventually win out--it acts as those users expect. That is, Sublime is smart enough to allow emac and vim users to use it as they like with extra effort, rather than forcing the largest body of users to use it in an unfamiliar way and have them use it as they like with extra effort.

I'm not really sure that you are following the history of the project properly.

Clearly I'm not, but even so I doubt reaching feature parity in SublimeHaskell with haskell-mode will require as much effort or code. There's already a SublimeHaskell fork with a lot of the features that haskell-mode and ghc-mod provide (but the main repo owner is slow--time for SublimeHaskellPlus or whatever). Moreover, I can see Sublime being a better and easier to use eclipsefp (which quickly overtook leksah and yet is still a major pain to get working).

And ideally, I'd rather have emacs in Sublime's position, but I don't think the emacs developers are nearly as nimble. I think vim might be in even a worse position than emacs, though. It doesn't seem powerful enough to create the expanding set of time-saving features coming to IDEs (e.g., emacs at least has CEDET).

[josh-j]

You could implement this easily by requiring projectile.el.