Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor • Hacker News Board

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#101

Post by JNRowe » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 8:24 AM UTC

xvilka wrote: post #76

JNRowe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like you, I think I'm probably the target audience for this. One of the things that stops me from using neovim - regardless of any changes I'd like - is the removal of gvim. I like my gvim candy; SVG icons in sign columns, better modifier support in maps, drag and drop when in command line, $things_ive_forgot_i_use. Likewise, I also believe the idea of onivim is worth a licence fee, even it turns out I can't get…

There are external NeoVim GUIs though, for example Neovide[1]. [1] https://github.com/Kethku/neovide

Yeah, I've tried a few. I can't quite put my finger on what is wrong, but the ones I've tried just don't feel right.

gnvim¹ was the most usable for me. However, it isn't without problems for my use case. To use my earlier example, switching would mean patching fonts or using overrides in fonts.conf to fake the use of icons in signs.

I did take another look just now², and there a few more for me to try out ;)

¹ https://github.com/vhakulinen/gnvim ² https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Related-projects

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#102

Post by cassepipe » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 8:46 AM UTC

skavi wrote: post #6

How fast does this feel compared to VS Code? I went into the whole onivim -> revery -> reason rabbit hole and the native code compilation is compelling, but Flutter does the same thing and is pretty slow.

Startup time is almost instantaneous. It's very responsive and works well on an old machine with only 4Go Ram. Not ready to abandon the terminal yet but if I ever do, this will be my choice.

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#103

Post by WiiManic » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

rudedogg wrote: post #85

nine_k wrote: post #20

What's most interesting for me here is Revery, the GUI framework. React-like, cross-platform, native-code, MIT-licensed. Yes, it's not using native widgets (so no built-in accessibility), but that might be fine in many cases.

Is it still running through javascript? I get confused by all the different interpretations of native.

Its written mostly in ReasonML (syntax for OCaml) with a bunch of C-libs wrapped in OCaml (Skia/Harfbuzz/SDL2 etc), so it compiles properly to native in the same way that normal OCaml code would.

The only JS in Revery is for some utility scripts and some aroud an option to compile to JS (which isn't functional at the moment, but the idea being you could compile to JS if you wished, with stubs to fill in the blanks for API calls that would normally hit Skia etc).

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#104

Post by chimen » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 9:31 AM UTC

I've been trying to figure out what are they using (in terms of npm packages / projects) to re-create that vscode ui. Any ideas?

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#105

Post by WiiManic » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

JonathonW wrote: post #52

phelipetls wrote: post #18

It's unfortunate that some VS Code extensions, e.g. remote development extensions, can't be used in Onivim 2 due to license restrictions[1]. [1]: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/196#issuecomment...

Can any VS Code extensions be used in Onivim 2? Despite appearances, Onivim isn't a VS Code fork, it doesn't use Electron, and it's not written in Javascript-- it just happens to take substantial inspiration from VS Code's UI.

We host the VSCode extension host, which is how Oni2 can use VSCode extensions.

I.e, the whole front end and core editor is native code (ReasonML/C), and then there is a nicely typed interface where we communicate with a node instance to run VSCode extensions. We broadly end up with Oni2 Ext Host Extension.

We have to implement the Oni2 side for each thing, so parse the message sent, and how to action on that and render it, but it lets us run VSCode extensions, still in a native editor.

There are some caveats, like the license issue mentioned, the largest being that extensions that heavily depend on rendering custom components / web pages aren't possible, just since Revery has no browser etc to render anything like that with.

We've focused on language ones to start though, and that has meant we support a decent selection of langauges as adding one feature unblocks loads of extensions.

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#106

Post by tuananh » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

chimen wrote: post #104

I've been trying to figure out what are they using (in terms of npm packages / projects) to re-create that vscode ui. Any ideas?

the source code is available here https://github.com/onivim/oni2

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#107

Post by chimen » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

tuananh wrote: post #106

chimen wrote: post #104

I've been trying to figure out what are they using (in terms of npm packages / projects) to re-create that vscode ui. Any ideas?

the source code is available here https://github.com/onivim/oni2

Saw it but didn't find anything. I guess it's a complete re-implementation of the UI. The comments seem to suggest that as well.

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#108

Post by toastal » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

mihaifm wrote: post #95

arp242 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LunarVim and Kakoune (kak) have TreeSitter, for really, really good syntax highlighting. While Vim's regexp-based syntax highlights certainly has limitations even in fairly simple cases, and I would love to see something better, the downside of these things is that people get carried away and add colours to everything. A little bit of colour is very helpful. Ten different colours seemingly chosen at random is not.…

Fully agree on the color issue. Most color schemes in any editor today look like rainbows, very distracting for day to day usage. I ended up building my own color scheme for vim using only 4 colors.

I've used lapis256 for ages because it's built on subtle differences in the shades of blue instead of so much hue contrast.

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#109

Post by endofunky » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

anongraddebt wrote: post #93

TheFreim wrote: post #34

What does this offer that evil-mode emacs, or even vscode, has to offer...?

evil-mode emacs isn't as snappy, vscode is harder to wrangle for a really pure-like vim setup. Someone else in this thread mentioned nvim, and while I like nvim a lot, i like the vscode extension ecosystem also prefer a gui vim editor (ive tried many). long story short, i really like the product roadmap for onivim2, even though it isn't quite feature-full/polished enough to make as my daily driver. i've been a monthl…

This perhaps used to be true if evil-mode was around in the 90s. I've used to use vim and eventually made the switch to emacs about 10 years ago, initially using viper and then becoming an early adopter of evil-mode - and it never felt less snappy than native vim, except for rare occasions when executing complex macros to do things that can't be achieved using regular expression. And the new native compilation makes any perceivable performance difference even more unlikely.

Re: Onivim 2 is a retro-futuristic modal editor

#110

Post by toastal » Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #22

romwell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to seeing it displace Electron.

Not soon: however I like ML-style languages, it's JS / TS what has the mass market adoption now. It's not even the language, it's not much harder to learn than TS. It's the smaller library ecosystem of Reason / OCaml.

But they get a simpler, sounder type system in OCaml as a result which should make maintenance easier for them. Given that they want this style of programming the ergonomics should be a lot easier than TypeScript as well.