Feature wishlist

Originally compiled from this discussion.

Most desired features may be implemented as LightTable plugins. Although some facilities require LT's core modification or adding hook into LT's core.

General

• shell/console plugin <discussion>
• inline editing functionality similar to Brackets http://brackets.io/
• Remote browsing/editing over SSH (like Emacs tramp)
• A SQL plugin for interacting with databases
• JsLint and JsMin <discussion> (why not JSHint?)
• MDN definition lookup (general documentation lookup plugin?)
• Theme editor
• Checkers/hinters for supported languages. Something like flycheck? General linting plugin with hooks in language modes?
• Macros (the ability to store the sequence of keystrokes, replay it and, may be, save it as ClojureScript code)
• Bookmark facility (the ability to bookmark a line in a file and save it in a workspace)
• Merge mode (merging/diffing files inside LT)
• Editorconfig plugin
• Rectangles
• Plugin for fossil
• Print a given tab to a printer
• Scrollbar search highlighter
• Ability to cut-and-paste an Instarepl session (code + results) to a text file
• Beautify code (see issue #617)
• Code bubbles / function view
• Recover unsaved Instarepl sessions
• Semantic highlighting
• Extend/shrink selection by semantic units like expand-region
• Autoformat/beautify code (issue, see ClangFormat, universalindent, sublime code formatter)
• Keyboard macros as supported by both vim and emacs.
• Visualize recursive processes – see this issue
• Ubuntu Unity command integration – see this issue
• Detect file type from shebang line (#!) – see this issue
• Handle file encodings – see this issue
• Built-in workspace keyboard navigation (consider also modeling on Emacs dired): https://github.com/bfabry/workspace-nav/issues/7
• jsx support (syntax highlighting and error checking, for example) per the data-flow js framework hosted at Facebook, React
• If there is a highlighted region of text, do operations within only that region (along the lines that Emacs does). This is very useful for search-and-replace within a given code block (conditional) or code scope (function).
• Command for jumping to previous/last-active tab see #460
• Navigate and interact via keyboard for all the things (e.g. connections); see #1106
• List commands in command bar by category; see this issue
• Font settings per editor (file type) - see this issue
• light skin - see this issue
• Disable autocompletion for numbers and inside comments – see this issue

Done

• Keyboard based directory browser (like dired in Emacs and/or Vim's NERDtree)
• Paredit-like functionality for supported languages (select syntax form, expand selecton)
• Git plugin (like magit?). <discussion>
  • Reuse some code from ungit project?

Inspired by

All of us came to LightTable from some other environment. Let's describe its killer features you can't live without so someone consider porting it to LT.

Emacs

• A kill ring/mark ring.
• Orgmode - see sacha
• occur

Vim

• A plug-in to move around at lightning fast. EasyMotion

SublimeText

• minimap sidebar closed bug report
• ctrl-d to select text matching selection with multiple cursors (only thing I miss)
• Go to definition anywhere in project with fuzzy complete
• Saved state (When you open LightTable every tab, tabset, and even cursor position will be like it was the last time you used it)

Jetbrains/Eclipse/Netbeans, etc

• Find usages (IntelliJ)
• Jump to source definition (including for libs and core)
• recently open files panel
• Smart renaming of function, variables etc. (replaces all occurrences intelligently, not just string-replace)
• Support for namespaces (phpStorm; can resolve class-names relative to the current namespace)
• Support for phpdoc-annotations (phpStorm; so that the editor knows which kind of object a certain variable is, can show autocompletes, ..)

Language plugins

• C#
• R: someone interested in this?
• Lua: same as above? + löve2D rendering context and live coding
• C/C++ <discussion>
• Java
• TypeScript
• Fortran
• Meteor
• Puppet