People are feature-crazed. When they see that they can get something bigger and better, they will at all costs. I can’t really complain as I, too, began using the dev builds before I knew half of the features existed…

On that same note, people should be required to have a license if they want to use the dev version. Or have a test. If people want a dev version, make them write at least one page of documentation for you . That way everyone wins.

Oooh, I hope I can get an invite.

I suspect a lot of the stress comes from redundancy… when multiple people have the same issue, they all seem to post on the forum and elsewhere about it. Guillermooo has done an awesome job with docs some far. For the past week or so he’s been pushing updates left and right. We (mostly Guillermooo ) are in the process of setting up templates for the doc site and the new “Knowledge Base” which will allow Sublime users to easily contribute and newcomers to overcome the initial ST learning curve (so people don’t keep hoarding the forum, filling it will silly questions).

Ahhh… the good old days. Still wouldn’t kill you to smile once in a while. Lighten up. But I’m young, so what do I know?

just some random ideas…

I think the situation can be improved if there were some people moderating the forums. ( volunteers ) You know, a more open community that drives by itself.

Volunteers, stick threads, remove spam, move, organize, close threads and point people to the right locations ( educating users ).
Also, I think we can be a little more organized if we have more subforums. Example “sublime builds”, “sublime bugs”," sublime features"," sublime support", “packages development”, “theme development”, “packages releases”, “sublime API”, “sublime docs”

In a similar way a real bug tracker will help a lot. Moderated by volunteers too, allowing to organize, close, request information, confirming, mark as dup, some netiquette allowing people to contribute in an organized way instead of having the stupid +1 post or a useless comment as in forum threads.

Also, this will allow to see status of bug/features request. For example “confirmed” target release “sublime 4”, this is important because people have an answer and they will not ask again, they may vote the bug/feature and or contribute with some idea. IF they do’t have nothing productive to say the better shutup.

I think This will allow to remove some pressure… and keep you focused on things you consider are important. If you are not happy, creating and improving this very nice piece of software… we as a community are doing it very wrong.

I like the ideas of above post such pushing devs release to people that already paid for the software.

@COD312 Hey man! You’re a lot smarter than you lead others to believe, but you do bring up some good points.
The problem with a pay wall for access to development releases could be that it may have an affect on plugin development. I don’t have evidence to this point but it may be worth considering when making your decision.

@tito I am familiar with trac and jira (just putting that out there) hehe. And a bug tracker would be pretty great for us users. But, it may complicate development for jps - something else to consider too.

Make sure to take care of yourself jps. Get some blood work done (vitamin levels, CBC, CMP) and make sure you’re healthy. Seriously. If something were to happen to you, where would that leave Sublime Text?

I paid for a license to support the development of this cross-platform editor. It’s a nice little bonus that I can watch it’s progress with dev builds if I chose to.

I’m really grateful for it, and don’t want to be a dumb-ass about bugs and features, it’s just that there’s no way to tell what priority a bug or feature has using these forums. If I search for a feature I want, and add a +1 post to an existing thread, it’s because I want show interest in that feature… If you’re using a forum for keeping track of feature requests then it makes sense that a feature/bug with the most posts would be a bigger priority, right?

Oh, and I love the latest build. Mmmm

[quote=“kabadesu”]I paid for a license to support the development of this cross-platform editor. It’s a nice little bonus that I can watch it’s progress with dev builds if I chose to.

I’m really grateful for it, and don’t want to be a dumb-ass about bugs and features, it’s just that there’s no way to tell what priority a bug or feature has using these forums. If I search for a feature I want, and add a +1 post to an existing thread, it’s because I want show interest in that feature… If you’re using a forum for keeping track of feature requests then it makes sense that a feature/bug with the most posts would be a bigger priority, right?

Oh, and I love the latest build. Mmmm [/quote]

Just want to +1 this. I love all the dev builds and I’m completely capable of going back to stable or a previous dev build if there’s a bug. Fixing the triple-click bug so fast was awesome, but really not necessary if it stressed you out, the workaround worked fine.

Cheers,
Martin

[quote=“kabadesu”]I paid for a license to support the development of this cross-platform editor. It’s a nice little bonus that I can watch it’s progress with dev builds if I chose to.

I’m really grateful for it, and don’t want to be a dumb-ass about bugs and features, it’s just that there’s no way to tell what priority a bug or feature has using these forums. If I search for a feature I want, and add a +1 post to an existing thread, it’s because I want show interest in that feature… If you’re using a forum for keeping track of feature requests then it makes sense that a feature/bug with the most posts would be a bigger priority, right?

Oh, and I love the latest build. Mmmm [/quote]

There’s a page used for feature requests at sublimetext.userecho.com/. As for bugs, I think the forums work fine.

I don’t want to see the dev builds go to private nightlies because I have a lot of fun testing them out and seeing what’s new. It’s the same reason why I run experimental ICS builds on my Android phone and keep Chrome Canary (for testing) as well as Chrome Dev (as my primary channel).

I don’t know. I might be weird. But yeah, obviously the dev builds shouldn’t be used in something like a package repository as the primary sublime-text package… Only as a separate channel for those who like to play with new things like I do.

Thanks for draggable text. <3

[quote=“C0D312”]

Thanks for that!

Agreed. The idea is obviously to spread as much knowledge as I’ve acquired over the past couple of years so we have a large base of intermediate users who can learn by themselves and help others. Doing so in forum posts has an inmediate effect, but info gets lost in noise quite fast, so I’m less active in the forum but try to identify recurrent problems and document them. I’d be curious to learn how many beginners actually take the time to skim through the docs, though. I don’t think they are that many. There are actually a couple of hurdles to get to the docs in the first place…

In any case, I think a few people are doing a great job of helping out here now, which is great, because sublimator isn’t posting 100 times a day any more.

Look like a good first step before going to something private:

• Limit users testing Dev Build.
• Registered users are probably more involved in testing/debugging ST2 and giving feedback.
• Bonus: increase number of people that register ! Everybody want to try new features ASAP…

I must say that I would be heartbroken if I couldn’t test the dev builds. Some updates aren’t relevant for how I use the editor but I get excited whenever I see a new dev build is available

@jps I also agree that it would help if you had more support with the defect/enhancement request triage. If I don’t look at the forum for 2 days it is hard to catch up on what has happened and it must seem like an insurmountable task for you. I’m sure there are lots of people who would be willing to lend a helping hand, me included.

btw, by private, I don’t mean truly private, just that at least reading the relevant dev build thread is a pre-requisite to getting the dev build. I’m not sure there’s a reasonable way to implement such a thing (especially without disabling auto updating on OS X), but restricting them to registered users at least will be a start.

Anybody who is registered and with a purchased license would narrow down all the people who forget this is a development build.

Jon, your work is absolutely incredible. Inspiring to myself, at which the rate you push builds for us. However your health and happiness in releasing these builds should come first. Don’t forget that

• 2^80

People everywhere don’t understand a Dev build… I see people posting on the Chrome dev releases that “it’s buggy” and “fix it”. Duh.

Perhaps there’s something to be said about making only beta builds public, and dev builds an option for registered users only. And a board here at the forum for discussing dev builds only, open only to those people? Just a thought.

I beta test software for several developers, big and small, and understand the importance of test builds AND giving the kind of feedback devs need for those builds. There are obviously several people on this forum who get it, too.

If you download a dev build, it might not work – only do it if you feel like testing, taking note, and giving detailed feedback on bugs. If you want to just do work with ST2, the latest beta is pretty solid, and I use it every day with no problems.

Anyone else notice a funny wrapping problem? (This was in 2182, too.)

Start with:

........

Select it, wrap at 80 characters. It disappears.

Then try:

.........................................................................................x...

Select it, wrap at 80 characters. It turns into:

.........................................................................................x .......................................................................................... .......................................................................................... ..........................................................................................

Thems there were the days You even answered emails back then

[quote=“tito”]I think the situation can be improved if there were some people moderating the forums. ( volunteers ) You know, a more open community that drives by itself.

Volunteers, stick threads, remove spam, move, organize, close threads and point people to the right locations ( educating users ).[/quote]

There are volunteers who stick threads, answer questions and remove spam right now. There is not much moving or organizing that happens.

Jumping in and helping out where you can is probably the best approach. guillermooo has always done the most work in terms of writing documentation and I see recently he has been moving it all into GitHub. The more people that can contribute to that and point people in that direction, the better off we become. Forums are good for conversation, but are not an ideal tool for curated, and up-to-date information.

Out of necessity the hosting of the community documentation and the hosting of the package system will probably always be done by an individual due to security, but the docs and almost every single package are open source and anyone can jump in and help out by answer questions, improving them or fixing bugs.

I’ve seen many closed-source projects using github issue tracker (like codekit or chocolat), maybe Jon could create one on his github account as it would be more efficient and organized than a forum…

I am relieved to hear this. I think you should surely reduce your stress…but the selfish side of me really does love the dev builds; I would hate to lose those, but I would certainly understand.

I really appreciate and can’t wait to use the drag & drop feature! I am choosing not to grab the DEV build as to hopefully not create more noise and stress.

Btw, I think what you are able to do is simply amazing.

noooooooooooooooo, i love your dev builds

You could make the download link for a dev build redirect to a white page with a big red warning at the top, and then a download link and a link to the beta?