This is why I tried creating my own simple "text editor" within my experimenta live IDE, so that I would not be limited by anyone's API or closed source and could create something more unusual.
Is it a better approach? It's really hard to say, and definitely not obvious. I had to re-create a lot of existing functionality just so that I could more easily modify it. And clearly I cannot compete with the advanced functionality of a dedicated modern text editor.
So far it hasn't led to me anything beyond what one could've probably achieved by hooking things up to an existing API, as demonstrated by this project (perhaps aside from live editing on a type-a-character level rather than on-save level), but I'm keeping my eyes open. Perhaps I'll get lucky and come up with something that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. That was my motivation.
>This is why I tried creating my own simple "text editor" within my experimenta live IDE, so that I would not be limited by anyone's API or closed source and could create something more unusual.
Which is self defeating. By not being limited by ST's (or anyone's) API, you are limited by your own capabilities and time. You now have to right the editor AND the extra stuff.
As such you have, what you say a "simple text editor".
I'm actually working on something like this for myself; In the future I hope to support sublime plugins. Entirely haml/coffee, built with node-webkit and ace-editor. Based off of TextDrive a chrome app.
Currently there is a more advanced editor (brackets). But I want total control of the stack. I'm tired of closed source editors (sublime), or overly complex c-based editors (textmate, vi, etc). I think it can be done just as well with web technologies. I also don't like remote editors (cloud9), I want it local.
Light Table takes an entirely difference approach. I'm just going for a simple editor, no-integrated-repl-thingie.
Is it a better approach? It's really hard to say, and definitely not obvious. I had to re-create a lot of existing functionality just so that I could more easily modify it. And clearly I cannot compete with the advanced functionality of a dedicated modern text editor.
So far it hasn't led to me anything beyond what one could've probably achieved by hooking things up to an existing API, as demonstrated by this project (perhaps aside from live editing on a type-a-character level rather than on-save level), but I'm keeping my eyes open. Perhaps I'll get lucky and come up with something that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. That was my motivation.