aziz
Elixir package for Sublime Text 4
I’m happy to finally present to you the best Sublime Text package for Elixir, templates and more! 
ElixirSyntax – The most powerful Elixir for the most Sublime experience.
In this latest v2.2.0 release I have added support for HEEx and Surface!
@princemaple is the original maintainer of the project. 
I started making lots of contributions in 2019. Over 6 months in the making, the package has undergone a complete rewrite by me and was first released in April this year. After many more improvements and heavy polishing I decided it’s ready to be announced to the wider public.
Q&A
This is crazy good! Why did you do this?
I spend up to 7 work hours in the editor each day.
I like my tools to be finely honed in order to be efficient and to enjoy my craft.
Why use ST4 with this plugin?
It all comes down to personal preferences. My top reasons for using ST are:
- Speed of: startup, typing, rendering, searching, plugins
- Low memory usage
- Git integration
- Easy-to-use GUI
Is it perfect?
By no means, no. Neither is Sublime Text nor the package. ST4 has received great updates and a much better syntax highlighting engine is one of them. However, the engine still has limitations and some fundamental issues remain. The syntax definition language in YAML with regular expressions is also not the best possible way to define a computer language grammar.
What about the elixir-tmbundle package?
Josè based it off of a Ruby package and I think it served its purpose well. There’s a ticket on Github discussing my efforts.
I incidentally met José last week at ElixirConf and we talked about this stuff. He promised he’d try out my package soon. I hope you will now, José! 
What about alternative editors?
There are plenty and I have tried many. Even if some of them are incredible I just can’t use them for one reason or another. Mainly for the top reasons I mentioned above.
I’m following the tree-sitter project with great interest and hope that it will be combined with a great editor in the near future. I will consider switching from ST as soon as that happens (note: ST won’t be using tree-sitter). I know there are projects like NeoVim and others but nothing stable and attractive afaics.
Can I somehow highlight code for my slides?
Of course! Just select some code, open the console panel (Ctrl+`) and enter view.export_to_html(view.sel()).
I have seen so many slides with Elixir code in them and the highlighting was just not the best it could be. I hope speakers take notice and create more beautiful slides from now on in the future. 
Enjoy!
First Post!
frigidcode
Most Liked
aziz
Hey, everyone! I can finally announce version 4 of this plugin:
However, I’d also like to inform you that this will be the last version I’m going to release, except perhaps for minor bug-fix releases.
ST has served me well over the years, but I’m excited about Zed and plan on switching to it completely eventually. Zed isn’t quite there yet, but it’s in active development and becoming more and more usable with each release. Some of the reasons I wish to switch to Zed are:
- ST’s syntax highlighting “technology” is a dead-end and absolutely no fun to work with (I actually feel burnt out now when I look at it).
- Zed is pretty much on par with ST when it comes to speed and memory consumption.
- Updates for ST are too infrequent and don’t bring any cool noticeable improvements like I’ve seen in Zed.
- Longstanding annoying issues aren’t fixed. They are minor but maddening when they happen, like randomly not being able to comment out code with a shortcut anymore. Or when switching from file to project search, it messes up the search text. And then the search history itself is often confusing to me. I just don’t want to report bugs anymore. I feel they will go under and not be fixed for ages to come.
- My favourite is when I format the current file with a shortcut that calls
mix format, ST loves to just jump up several pages. (It seems this is affected by how many files are open.) - The search results view sucks. In Zed the results are syntax highlighted and you can even edit the code right there!
- ST isn’t good at providing features that depend on the existence of a proper syntax tree. Like increasing the selection to a larger syntax node. While it works in simple cases, try expanding the selection to an HTML attribute value and then further to include the name…
Anyway, I hope the plugin has been useful to many developers so far and wish you continued happy and productive coding with the tool of your choice! 
knoebber
Thank you @aziz !
I have tried emacs, neovim, and vscode for LiveView dev, but all of them had small issues that annoyed me in different ways 
Your package has been a joy so far! My only problem is that sublime text doesn’t have great vim emulation as far as I can tell (I’m using vintage), but I’m trying my best to learn the “sublime way”. Here’s a screenshot if anyone else is curious what it looks like:
Last Post!
aziz
You’re welcome, @distefam!
It’s a shame that Zed has this text rendering issue on LoDPI screens. It doesn’t really seem that bad on my external monitor. The text could certainly be sharper, but it’s almost unnoticeable.
I’ve successfully avoided VSCode the whole time, so I hope Zed will not go down a similar road. I think they do place importance on keeping things lean, tidy and fast. There are already some complex features like the AI assistant or Collaboration, but I think they don’t get in your way at all.
I didn’t think it possible so soon but I’m already using Zed daily for work. Of course, it’s not as polished as ST but the ability to properly select syntax nodes alone along with other nice things is enough to make me happy and tolerate minor annoyances. 
Popular in Dev Env & Tools
Other popular topics
Latest on Elixir Forum
Sponsor Spotlight
Develop your skills with books, videos, and courses.
Categories:
Sub Categories:
Forums
Popular Tags
- #ecto
- #liveview
- #troubleshooting
- #learning-elixir
- #deployment
- #library
- #erlang
- #testing
- #genserver
- #mix
- #absinthe
- #remote-other
- #otp
- #plug
- #how-to-question
- #macros
- #postgres
- #channels
- #elixirconf
- #exunit
- #discussion
- #code-sync
- #javascript
- #podcasts
- #onsite
- #dialyzer
- #docker
- #authentication
- #umbrella
- #full-time-contract
- #podcasts-by-brainlid
- #ecto-query
- #elixir-ls
- #phoenix_html
- #iex
- #blog-post
- #graphql
- #genstage
- #ai
- #websockets
- #supervisor
- #elixirconf-us
- #advent-of-code
- #distillery
- #processes
- #api
- #forms
- #metaprogramming
- #security
- #hex
Our Sponsors
Build Elixir applications with speed and confidence.
Supporting innovation across the BEAM ecosystem.
We build reliable cloud platforms for business-critical systems.
Catch errors, track performance, monitor hosts and more.
Error tracking for Elixir devs who love to ship. Start your free account.
Develop your skills with books, videos, and courses.
Producing high quality Elixir screencasts since 2017.
Enabling companies to succeed by building software people love.
The team behind Membrane, Popcorn, LiveDebugger. Available for hire.
Courses that'll move you from confusion to "Aha, now I get it!"