> What tech are those using,
Qt
> and could you build something Atom-like with it without undue pain?
I've never written a text editor so I'd rather not speak by lack of experience, but LimeText's main frontend is written with Qt's QML.
There's a project called Lime Text which aims to be an open source clone of Sublme Text. I haven't tried it, but probably will in a few months. It looks like it's under active development from their Github page.
Edit: I see they're using a thing call Bountysource. Haven't seen this before. Looks like you can put bounties on features. We could donate this way.
Have you checked out Lime? The developer basically calls it an "open-source software successor to Sublime Text." It's still a ways back in development but it seems like a good project to support.
Using ST3 for LaTeX exclusively here. With plugins like latexing and latex-cwl it's still the best editor i've ever used. Tried out Atom multiple times, but the auto-complete feature there tries to complete command in languages I don't even know and i haven't found where to disable this.
So even though ST3 development might stand still, it's still the best editor out there.
So long i'll be patiently waiting for http://limetext.org/ to get a stable release for windows.
I really like lime, a FOSS clone of Sublime, but development has slowed on it and it's not packaged for all distros (it's not even in the AUR)
Atom is what I've used lately, and it's really good, but I still find myself just using gedit for a lot of stuff, and vim for quick edits without leaving the terminal.
It seems that separating the interface from the back-end logic of an application is the new trend, even for hardcore desktop applications as shown by the rise of XAML and QML. This way you can easily create both desktop as well as web applications that use the same back-end and libreoffice is already doing the same for its suite.
In case any of you are curious, there is already an open-source text editor based on Sublime called Lime Text. I believe the creators tried to reverse engineer ST to make it, although I don't really know much about it.
Sublime has a propietary core, but being Python based, most of its default functionalities can be hacked or changed a lot (this doesn't change its nature, but makes it a little better than a simple blob).
By the way this doesn't change the main concern, but I really love its architecture and the way it can be extended changing the configuration or with few lines of python (everything dynamically loaded/updated); not to mention the fact that there are thousands of extensions, throught Package Control
So, I think that more than complaining, we should jump on the boad of its open source succcessor: <strong>Lime Text</strong>. Lime has the goal of becoming a SublimeText compatible text-editor, supporting multiple interfaces (both terminal, HTML and QML UI) and the same architecture (and plugins) of Sublime. All it needs is our help to grow.