> There are many such projects, like Atom.io, whose support ends this year. I can't imagine this project will continue much further, even if I hope so.
I think I get what you mean here: over time there have been many editors that might have contributed ideas to others, yet didn't quite make it themselves, due to either competition, failing to capture a significant market share, or any number of other factors.
In my eyes, this is especially prevalent in regards to browser based (e.g. Electron) editors.
Atom, which you mentioned, fits into this category: https://atom.io/
There was also Brackets, which similarly fell by the wayside: https://brackets.io/
Here, Visual Studio Code largely got a large market share and quickly displaced other options in the eyes of most developers: https://code.visualstudio.com/
Even in regards to native editors, there are many smaller projects.
Here, however, there are more platform-specific options, and many older projects that are still going strong: Sublime Text, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs and so on. Not all of those are open source, though.
That said, while using a lesser known editor always comes with the risk that it'll be deprecated and won't see language integrations/features/plugins that you need, an editor's popularity isn't the only measure of success.
Some people don't mind using niche projects, because they feel comfy or fit their workflows well and that's good enough.
> The only real open source project that is up today is Visual Studio Code, but that will continue to be maintained, I hope.
I wouldn't say that the larger projects are the only "real" ones, though. Admittedly, it is also reasonable to generally go for the larger projects, if you want a more stable long term experience, though.
I think I get what you mean here: over time there have been many editors that might have contributed ideas to others, yet didn't quite make it themselves, due to either competition, failing to capture a significant market share, or any number of other factors.
In my eyes, this is especially prevalent in regards to browser based (e.g. Electron) editors.
Atom, which you mentioned, fits into this category: https://atom.io/
There was also Brackets, which similarly fell by the wayside: https://brackets.io/
Here, Visual Studio Code largely got a large market share and quickly displaced other options in the eyes of most developers: https://code.visualstudio.com/
Even in regards to native editors, there are many smaller projects.
CudaText: https://cudatext.github.io/
Geany: https://www.geany.org/
Lite: (which this post is about)
Here, however, there are more platform-specific options, and many older projects that are still going strong: Sublime Text, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs and so on. Not all of those are open source, though.
That said, while using a lesser known editor always comes with the risk that it'll be deprecated and won't see language integrations/features/plugins that you need, an editor's popularity isn't the only measure of success.
Some people don't mind using niche projects, because they feel comfy or fit their workflows well and that's good enough.
> The only real open source project that is up today is Visual Studio Code, but that will continue to be maintained, I hope.
I wouldn't say that the larger projects are the only "real" ones, though. Admittedly, it is also reasonable to generally go for the larger projects, if you want a more stable long term experience, though.