Sublime Forum

My feedback after usage

#1

I recently started using Sublime, and I think it’s a great editor.

Here are some issues that I think should be addressed, mostly user interface issues:

  1. The scrollbars are very difficult to see, they are dark gray on dark gray background. I don’t have perfect vision and it’s very difficult to quickly see where to click on the scrollbar because I have to focus on it to see the differences in the shades of dark grays. Make the moveable bar more lighter gray please.

  2. Can’t find any way to associate certain filetypes to a certain syntax. I have to go to View->Syntax and select the correct syntax every time I open files of certain type that isn’t associated to the right syntax by default.

  3. I have used Notepad++ and I just LOVE how powerful the editor is with regards of encoding. You can quickly see in what encoding the open file is by selecing Encoding from the menu, e.g. “ANSI, UTF8”, and you can quickly convert an open file into another encoding format, e.g. from ANSI to UTF8 or UTF8 to ANSI and it converts characters.
    There’s a capability to save a doc with a certain encoding in Sublime, but there’s no way to see what the current encoding is!

  4. Zoom level on the preview scrollbar.

  5. Very difficult to see if a open doc has been modified and not saved. The “x” changes to a filled “o” if it’s been modified, but this is very difficult to spot. The font in the tab should change, like from being normal to being bold, and once you save it should go back to normal weight.

Thanks.

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#2

[quote=“Arni”]
5. Very difficult to see if a open doc has been modified and not saved. The “x” changes to a filled “o” if it’s been modified, but this is very difficult to spot. The font in the tab should change, like from being normal to being bold, and once you save it should go back to normal weight.[/quote]

There are plenty of theme available, try them and maybe you’ll find one that is better suited for you.

The first item in this menu (Open all with…) associate the selected syntax with the current file extension.

[quote=“Arni”]3. I have used Notepad++ and I just LOVE how powerful the editor is with regards of encoding. You can quickly see in what encoding the open file is by selecing Encoding from the menu, e.g. “ANSI, UTF8”, and you can quickly convert an open file into another encoding format, e.g. from ANSI to UTF8 or UTF8 to ANSI and it converts characters.
There’s a capability to save a doc with a certain encoding in Sublime, but there’s no way to see what the current encoding is![/quote]

Reopen with Encoding and Save with Encoding could be used to convert encoding.
I agree that encoding (and line ending) must be displayed in the status bar, I already asked for it long time ago.
Meanwhile you can write a small plugin to display it in the status bar:
Use ST2 menu to create a new plugin and replace the content with:

[code]import sublime_plugin

def DisplayEncoding(view, encoding=""):
view.set_status(‘encoding’, “%s” % ((encoding if encoding else view.encoding()),))

class DisplayEncodingListener(sublime_plugin.EventListener):
def on_load(self, view):
DisplayEncoding(view)

def on_post_save(self, view):
    DisplayEncoding(view)[/code]

Save it to your user folder.

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#3

Would it be possible to extend your plugin a bit, bizoo?

E.g.: Instead of displaying the current encoding on the left side of the status bar text, could it be placed on the right side, where the tab size and the current associated extension are? Don’t know if it’s possible at all… but atm it “interferes” a bit with the status line of the vintage plugin (mh, not interfering, it’s more like “distracting”).

It would be great, when it could display the current line ending as well (Windows / Unix).

Regards,
Highend

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#4

Thanks

I’ve fixed the file extension assocation.

Regarding the scrollbar, I use the Dawn theme, I’ve tried others, but the contrast on the scrollbar doesn’t change, always the same.

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#5

It is what I want too but I pretty sure it’s not possible yet with the available API.
The stacked text on the left of the status bar is really difficult to read :cry:

[quote=“highend”]
It would be great, when it could display the current line ending as well (Windows / Unix).[/quote]

It’s easy to add:

def DisplayEncoding(view, encoding=""): view.set_status('encoding', "%s:%s" % ((encoding if encoding else view.encoding()), view.line_endings()))
but I suggest you look at this plugin:
https://github.com/SublimeText/LineEndings

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#6

Ty, bizoo :smile:

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#7

[quote=“Arni”]1. The scrollbars are very difficult to see, they are dark gray on dark gray background. I don’t have perfect vision and it’s very difficult to quickly see where to click on the scrollbar because I have to focus on it to see the differences in the shades of dark grays. Make the moveable bar more lighter gray please.

  1. Zoom level on the preview scrollbar.

  2. Very difficult to see if a open doc has been modified and not saved. The “x” changes to a filled “o” if it’s been modified, but this is very difficult to spot. The font in the tab should change, like from being normal to being bold, and once you save it should go back to normal weight.
    [/quote]

For (5), if you use a theme like Soda or Phoenix and set the following in your user prefs:

"highlight_modified_tabs": true,

The dot will be coloured as well which makes modified tabs much more obvious.

Regarding scrollbars, you can easily modify the theme yourself to get better visibility if you need it. Open the sublime-theme file for your theme and search for “scroll”; it looks like this in Soda:

    // Standard vertical scroll bar
    {
        "class": "scroll_bar_control",
        "layer0.texture": "Theme - Soda/Soda Dark/standard-scrollbar-vertical.png",
        "layer0.opacity": 1.0,
        "layer0.inner_margin": [2, 6],
        "blur": false
    },

You can play with the other options and can edit the scrollbar png files to increase the contrast, change colour etc.

Re. (4), I presume you refer to the minimap. Configurable zoom level would be nice, but I’ve never felt the need for it to be any different since the point is to get a birds eye of a large part of your file, so you can see the “patterns”, rather than actually have it readable. You might want to post a suggestion on sublimetext.userecho.com/ and search for “minimap” while you’re there since there are some other good minimap requests too.

I agree that Sublime’s status bar should definitely have more API hooks for devs including some position and layout flexibility. There’s a lot of real-estate doing nothing there right now. It could show eg. line endings and encoding, clickable for easy changing; a clock would be nice (I miss that from the Brief days); option to show CWD and full file path, and some of these things clickable to copy to the clipboard or paste straight into the doc. Just some thoughts :smile:

S

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