Friday, May 20, 2016

LiClipse 3.0.3 (providing back to Open Source: multiple languages/TextMate bundles in Eclipse).

LiClipse 3.0.3 is now released... The main things on LiClipse itself is that the base platform was upgraded to Eclipse 4.6 RC1 and EGit was upgraded (it had a critical issue in the Git Staging View).

Now, what I really wanted to talk about is that with this release, the LiClipse editor component was open sourced!

The editor component in this case is the component which allows LiClipse to support multiple languages out of the box (either through its own language or through the TextMate grammar).

So, the features which are now available as Open Source (EPL) are:

  • Syntax Highlighting (LiClipse, TextMate or SublimeText based).
  • Code completion.
  • Outline view and Quick Outline.
  • Text-based mark occurrences.
  • LiClipse Languages view:
    • Enables exploring installed languages.
  • LiClipse Partitions view:
    • Enables inspecting the partitioning of the editor.
    • Useful to debug how LiClipseText is parsing a language.
  • Use LiClipseText as a base for other editors:
  • Languages may be created and experimented with on-the-fly, without restarting Eclipse.
The home page with more details on the project is: http://liclipse.com/text.

So, what does this mean for LiClipse itself and its current users?

First, LiClipse (the commercial counterpart) still exists and provides advanced features not in LiClipseText:
  • Bundling of LiClipseText (along with PyDev, EGit, ColorTheme, AnyEdit and StartExplorer) as a standalone with native installers.
  • Enhancements to the theming (allowing theming of the IDE along with the editor and a nice dark theme).
  • Multiple cursors.
  • Linting for JavaScript, XML and HTML editors.
  • Code formatting for HTML, XML.
  • Vertical Indent Guides.
  • Improved text search capabilities (with Lucene index-based searching, support for external folders, open editors and additional filtering on results page).
  • HTML preview for the RST, Markdown and HTML editors.
  • Debugging of Django Templates in PyDev.
  • Launching of files opened with LiClipseText.
My hope is that users that can will still upgrade to it (to get the advanced features and to help in keeping the LiClipseText and PyDev development going on) or will donate to keep its development going forward...

And the main benefit here (both for existing users or new users) is that the LiClipse editor (LiClipseText) being EPL makes it hackable by anyone ;)

4 comments:

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  2. Great work Fabio! Can't wait to take a peek.

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  3. May I suggest to rename LiClipse to "pydev" and open source everything? Don't even count on eclipse?!

    Sharing without profiting is the culture of the Python society. So, not to think about profiting may be the only way to get profit.

    I am looking forward to a completely open-sourced and free LiClipse.

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    1. Well, as is in the post, most of my work is actually open sourced (if you install Eclipse, PyDev and LiClipseText, you get most of it)...

      Unfortunately, from my experience so far, what you're saying isn't exactly 100% true (unfortunately, most people just use open source without giving back anything, in which case doing what you're suggesting would just make me stop supporting it altogether, as LiClipse resources fund a good part of the things I do as open source in PyDev and now LiClipseText).

      So, although I'd really like to make everything open source as you're saying (I'm really a strong supporter of the idea and do lots of open source work), I don't think it's really feasible for me to open source it all.

      Cheers,

      Fabio

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