News

A new beta of Sublime Text 2, Build 2181, is available now for your enjoyment. The first thing you'll notice is the new icon, by the The Iconfactory.

The icon represents a key on a keyboard, and the color of the key links it with the previous icon.

A selection of the other changes in this beta:

Simplified Settings. Settings were previously split into File Settings and Global Settings. These two sets have now been combined into a single settings file, so you won't need to work out which setting goes where. The first time you run build 2181, your previous user settings will be automatically merged.

Improved Automatic Indentation. Auto indent is now smarter, so when you press enter, the indentation of the new line will be determined correctly more often. It's aware of language features (such as indenting the line following an if statement in C), and will use bracket matching to determine indentation.

Word Highlighting. When selecting a word, other occurrences of that word will be highlighted, for example, to help visualise where variables are used. This can be controlled with the match_selection setting.

Text Rendering Quality. 2181 features several subtle improvements to text rendering, including:

• Windows now uses Consolas by default, and will give better results when using Direct Write.
• Improved sub-pixel positioning on OS X, matching Core Text output.
• Linux now uses Pango, giving better results for unicode text.
• Rendering of rulers, line highlights and misspellings has been improved.

Lots More! Auto Complete has learnt to be less intrusive, file renaming is more intuitive, Vintage mode has been improved, large folder trees are handled better, and there are many other improvements and fixes.

Downloads and the full list of changes are on the Sublime Text 2 page.

Sublime Text 2 Beta 2165 is out now, with the biggest set of improvements yet. Some of the highlights are:

New UI Theme - Headlining 2165 is the new UI theme, by Mike Rundle. This theme brings a sharper look to Sublime Text, and an overall better aesthetic. One of the unique elements of this theme is how it adapts to the color of the file you're editing, with the background color spilling into the tabs.

Speed - Sublime Text 2 has always been quick, and now it's both faster and leaner. Startup times especially are now faster, although keep in mind that the first time you start up after installing or upgrading, it'll take longer than normal as your packages are updated.

Auto Complete - Suggestions are now offered as you type, to complete the current word or insert snippets. Because this uses Sublime Text's fuzzy matching algorithm, you can type just a few key characters to quickly select the word you want to complete: No more typing wow_this_function_name_is_really_long(), wtf<enter> will get you want you want.

If you're feeling adventurous, you may want to enable the auto_complete_commit_on_tab file setting: This will make tab accept the current completion, and enter operate as normal. This removes the ambiguity between accepting the completion vs. entering a newline, and is highly reccomended if you've got the time to learn a new way to do things.

Auto complete isn't for everyone, and can be disabled with the auto_complete file setting. Details are in the Auto Complete documentation.

Menu Refinement - The menu has been updated to better expose helpful functionality, such as Goto Anything (Ctrl+P / Command+P), the various ways to switch between files (the Goto/Switch File menu), and Quick Find commands (in the Find menu).

More! Command+Shift+T / Ctrl+Shift+T will now reopen the last closed file, Vintage mode has receieved many improvments, the API has been expanded, and a whole lot of polish has been applied.

You can download 2165 from http://www.sublimetext.com/2, I hope you enjoy it!

Sublime Text 2 Build 2139 is out! Some of the notable new features in this beta are:

Replace in files - The find in files panel now supports replacing in files. The panel has also been streamlined, with the In Files and In Locations fields combined into a single Where field, that accepts a comma separated list of paths to search, and wildcard patterns to include and exclude files.

Fold arrows - Supplementing the code folding support in the last beta, there are now buttons in the gutter to collapse text using the mouse. By default, the fold buttons will fade from view unless the mouse is over the gutter, however this is configurable using the fade_fold_buttons file setting. The fold buttons, and the space reserved for them in the gutter, can be removed with the fold_buttons file setting.

Side bar keyboard navigation - The side bar can now receive input focus, and be driven using the keyboard. Left click on an already selected row to give the side bar input focus, or press ctrl+0. Pressing enter or escape in the side bar will restore focus back to the file area.

Reindent - The reindent command can be used to recalculate indentation for a file, using the auto-indent rules. This can be triggered from the Edit/Line/Reindent menu item, or Reindent Lines in the Command Palette.

There's a lot more in this build than the above, see the full list and download it on the Sublime Text 2 page.

A new beta of Sublime Text 2, Build 2126, is available now. Some of the highlights:

Hot Exit enables Sublime Text to exit immediately without prompting, preserving your changes and unsaved files for the next time you run. This has always been available via the menu, but is now the default behavior when quitting. You can disable this via the hot_exit Global Setting.

The Side Bar has received a tune up: folders expand with a single click, and expand / collapse animations have been disabled. Headings are no longer indented, giving more space for your files, and the side bar will automatically hide when there's nothing to show. Finally, the Open Files section of the side bar is hidden by default, as most users prefer to use the tabs - you can change this in the View/Side Bar menu.

Code Folding has arrived in this beta. Support is there for folding indented blocks, but the underlying implementation supports character level folding, so any text can be folded by first selecting it and then using the fold command. You can see the available commands in the Edit/Code Folding menu. There's API support as well, with the new view.fold() and view.unfold() methods. There's still more functionality to come in the future from Code Folding, notably the ability to fold based on syntactic blocks in addition to indented blocks.

There have been other improvements in almost every area: matching tags are highlighted when editing HTML, Find in Files results are in color, source code word wrapping is smarter, Vintage Mode improvements and lots more. The full list of changes is on the Sublime Text 2 page.

Sublime Text 2 Build 2111 is available now, with new features including indent guides, improved project support, new commands for working with HTML, and last but not least, Vintage Mode, adding support for vi key bindings.

Indent guides help visualize the indent levels, and mark out which ones apply to the caret position - they are helpful in long functions. If you prefer a cleaner look without them, they can be disabled by adding "draw_indent_guides": false to your user file settings, which are accessible from the "Preferences/File Settings - User" menu.

Indent Guides

There are two new commands to help work with HTML:

• Close Tag: Closes the closest unclosed tag. This is bound to Command+Alt+. on OS X, and Alt+. on Windows and Linux
• Expand Selection To Tag: Press once to select the contents of the current tag. Press more times to gradually select more. This is bound to Command+Shift+A on OS X, and Ctrl+Shift+A on Windows and Linux)

Project support has been improved, with projects now split into two files: sublime-project files containing the project definition, and sublime-workspace files containing the session data. The sublime-project files are now suitable for checking into version control.

Existing projects will be converted into the new format when loaded. The projects are more flexible, and include the ability to exclude specfic file patterns, provide file setting overrides, and project specific build systems. Full details on the project format are listed in the Project Documentation

Vintage Mode is another new feature in Build 2111, providing support for vi key bindings. It's disabled by default, follow the instructions in the Vintage Documentation to enable it.

There are many other improvements in 2111, too - the full list is in the changelog, on the Sublime Text 2 page.

Sublime Text 2 Build 2095 is available now. It addresses a few issues with build 2091, which were mostly OS X related - only OS X users will receive update notifications. If you're reading this on Windows or Linux, updating is still recommended.

On another note, if you're using OS X Lion with multiple monitors, you may want to disable Lion-style full screen support so you can still use the other monitor when Sublime Text 2 is in full screen mode. This can be done by adding the line:

"use_simple_full_screen": true

to your global settings, which are accessible from the "Preferences/Global Settings - User" menu item.

Sublime Text 2 Build 2091 is available now, with a raft of new features. Many thanks to everyone who has tested the dev builds during this time.

Firstly, text rendering quality has been improved on OS X and Linux. Text rendering on OS X previously supported sub-pixel anti-aliasing, but not sub-pixel positioning. Build 2091 rectifies this, eliminating the too-wide spacing between characters. Text rendering under Linux has changed to have sub-pixel anti-aliasing enabled by default: it was supported previously, but had to be explicitly turned on.

Build 2091 also introduces support for some of OS X Lion's features. Overlay scroll bars are now in there, albeit without support for over-scroll yet. Lion full screen support has been added too, although old style full screen support is a just setting away. There have also been a couple of key binding changes for OS X, to make full screen (now ^⌘F), find (⌘F now shows the find panel only), and replace (⌥⌘F) match the Lion defaults.

Some of the more general feature highlights:

• Blinking carets! This has been a long time coming, but is finally here. As with many things in Sublime Text, there's a setting to control it, too. Using the caret_style file setting, you can disable blinking altogether, or change a different fading style ('phase' can be fun).
• File name disambiguators. If you have multiple files open with the same name, a short suffix will be appendend to the file name in the side bar and tabs to help you determine which one is which.
• Tab labels have been reworked. They now fade, rather than elide, and will adapt better to the available size, shrinking the horizontal margins when space is tight. The end result is a more efficient use of space, so you can better see which files are open. There's also a setting, show_tab_close_buttons, to hide the close buttons on the tabs.
• New windows have their sizes and settings copied from the current window, compared to earlier builds where their settings came from the new_window_settings global setting.

The above list is just a small sample of what's new or improved in build 2091 - the full change list is on the Sublime Text 2 page.

Just a quick update on OS X Lion: Sublime Text 2 is compatible with Lion - as far as I'm aware everything is working as it should. Sublime Text 2 doesn't yet take advantage of the new functionality in Lion, however I'm working on changing this for the next build, which will be out within two weeks. First up will be support for overlay scroll bars and Lion style full screen. Integration with Versions, Auto Save and Resume should come eventually, but won't be ready for the next build.

Since the first public Alpha at the end of January, there have been 12 new releases, and many more dev builds. On average, that's a new version every two weeks for the past five months. During this time, Sublime Text 2 has made great strides in functionality, and a correspondingly large increase in users. Sublime Text 2 has long outgrown its Alpha tag, so it's time to put a Beta label on instead.

There's a new release to mark the occasion, and it's got a bigger change list than any previous version. A couple of the highlights are:

Command Palette

The Command Palette provides a quick way to access commands that don't warrant a key binding, and would usually be hidden away in a menu. For example, turning Word Wrap on or off, or changing the syntax highlighting mode of the current file. It uses the same fuzzy matching as Goto Anything does, meaning most commands are accessible with just a few key presses.

The command palette can be triggered via Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows and Linux, or Command+Shift+P on OS X.

Distraction Free mode

Distraction Free mode is full screen, with an extra emphasis on your content. All user interface chrome is hidden, leaving you with nothing but the file you're working on. It's a great help when you want to ignore everything else and just write. Distraction Free mode is accessible from the View menu.

Now that Sublime Text 2 is in Beta, I'm planning to reduce the number of releases to around one a month, to avoid frequent update prompts. If you prefer living on the edge, the dev channel typically has a new build every 2 or 3 days.

Traditionally, the Beta tag has been used on software to indicate it's feature complete, and is going through testing before the final release. That's not the case with the Sublime Text 2 Beta, which is ready to use, but subject to change. New releases will be coming out, and they'll be adding new functionality and changing how things work.

People use Sublime Text 2 every day to get real work done - if you haven't tried it yet, now is a great time.

Download

A new version of the Sublime Text 2 alpha, 20110129, is out now. This primarily addresses compatibility with Linux distributions other than Ubuntu, but I've snuck in some extra features for everyone:

• OS X: Command+1 will select the first tab, Command+2 the second, and so on.
• Various Goto Anything improvements, mostly notably, symbol browsing will start at the symbol closest to the cursor, and spaces are ignored when searching through files. Previously, a space would only match against a file name with a space in it.
• Syntax highlighting for the Go programming language.
• More!

The full list of changes is on the Sublime Text 2 page. Release announcements are generally posted on the forum, rather than the blog, so I'll be posting them there (and on twitter) after this release.