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Kakoune Code Editor

kakoune.org

161–170 of 176 posts

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought that creating/adapting a colour scheme is a onetime activity when you start using the editor for your language. Do you update the colour scheme regularly?

I used color schemes as an example, perhaps it was a bad one. I don't update it regularly, no. As others have said, the appeal of Kak is orthogonality and accessibility. The keybindings are sensibly organized, there is exhaustive autocomplete and on screen documentation, and the configuration language is simple. It is ridiculously easy to write plugins for, because you can use shell scripting, or create a program in…

Sorry if it looks like I was being flippant. I wasn't. I had some colleagues in the past that did adjust their colour scheme almost monthly. I think it was when syntax highlight first came onto the scene back in the mid 90s.

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#162
I run across this editor from time to time, but I'm in my 50's, and I'm pretty sure emacs will continue to be good enough for me through retirement, and I just don't feel like learning a new one. I even know enough vi(m) to get around; surely I won't need more than BOTH of those in the next 10-15 years.

IDE's, sure, but for editing... nah. Most of the IDEs even have passable emacs keybindings, or the ability for me to make one (or use a FOSS one that someone quicker than I am has already done).

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used color schemes as an example, perhaps it was a bad one. I don't update it regularly, no. As others have said, the appeal of Kak is orthogonality and accessibility. The keybindings are sensibly organized, there is exhaustive autocomplete and on screen documentation, and the configuration language is simple. It is ridiculously easy to write plugins for, because you can use shell scripting, or create a program in…

Sorry if it looks like I was being flippant. I wasn't. I had some colleagues in the past that did adjust their colour scheme almost monthly. I think it was when syntax highlight first came onto the scene back in the mid 90s.

Oh you're fine! I didn't think you were being flippant. I've been using One Darker (One Dark with a darker background) for two years and don't have any plans to change anytime soon. Here's the source for the theme if you're interested. It has gotten a little bit more complex than I described in my post, due to supporting various plugins, but it's still pretty easy to understand.

https://github.com/raiguard/one.kak/blob/main/colors/one-dar...

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#164
post #123
post #64

Finally, a full rank editor. Needless to say the best part is the orthogonal design. Emacs and others compared to this have zero determinants in their favour.

Emacs is the best editor with kakoune keybinds, but I'm not letting you play Cunningham's law on me.

No, I was making a maths joke on count of the "orthogonal design" on their website. Orthogonal matrices are full rank and have non zero determinants, but I think it was perhaps a bit too well disguised.

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#165
post #12

Check out helix [0] for a kakoune inspired editor with some nice modern features included by default. [0]: https://helix-editor.com/

Helix is my daily driver and it's got such nice defaults I haven't even bothered configuring it. For modern code editing it's just faster. Everything's built in natively.

I made two changes: switched my theme to everforest-dark and reduced scroll-lines from 3 to 1.

I was very happy to see that second option as it still hasn’t been implemented in neovim [0].

[0]: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/12355

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#166
post #67
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind I read "wd" as "select word, delete selection" which matches well with the visual feedback Kakoune gives you.

> which matches well with the visual feedback Kakoune gives you. Do you really need this feedback though? I can understand this when yanking, but if I'm going to delete the word... The whole action take much less that a second and then I proceed with my task. Well, to each their own I guess

The benefits pile up quickly when you want to do something even slightly more complicated. Hit w a bunch of times until the selection looks right, rather than count words. Tweak either end of the selection to catch spaces or punctuation.

You can do all this in Vim, I'm sure, but it's less mental effort in kak, because to a much greater extent you can see the results of your actions before they happen. And it's no slower if you do happen to know exactly what you're doing, because it's almost the same keystrokes in different order.

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#167
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get Kakoune to segfault?

Kakoune is built in C++. So bugs will sometimes manifest as segfaults. You could be doing some normal editing, press a sequence of editing commands that might trigger some code that may subtly wrong. Sometime later, when C++ code tries to write to memory that it shouldn't have, you will segfault. In that respect this is true for any C/C++ application. Kakoune keeps fixing these issues as they come up.

> tries to write to memory that it shouldn’t have

To elaborate what I mean here is maybe the program tried to write to an address not mapped to its address space etc. This happens due to bugs in the program e.g. not calculating the offset into an array properly and so forth. There are many ways to mess up when using C/C++!

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#168
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to use it enough to see if I could switch to it from (neo)vim. I liked a lot of the ideas in it, and in some ways I liked it more than vim, but it was missing some functionality that I just couldn't live without. Some things could be solved by plugins that just didn't exist yet, but others, I couldn't even see a way a plugin could be implemented. In particular, there isn't any way to get a diff mode comparabl…

I don't understand the new line thing at the end. I haven't used a utility or app in -decades- that cared about whether you have a blank final line.

Literally cat

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#169
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone for several week long stretches of using it but never fully converted. What winds up happening is that I get to a point in a project where I really need to focus on the code and not the editor, switch back to vim, and don't get around to switching back for another few months. The editing model is better than Vim's and if I didn't have 20 years of vim muscle memory I probably would have switched over by now.

I disagree that the editing model is better than vim. It’s fancier and makes for flashier demos but I don’t think it’s better. For one thing, it places the emphasis on editing in the large . That is, its default operating mode is to leave multiple cursors all over the buffer when you’re trying to jump around your file. You have to build a habit of pressing an extra key to dismiss the multiple cursors so you don’t ina…

When I last looked at Kakoune, it struck me as “Vim with training wheels,” in the best sense of the term. In other words, it has (all of?) vim’s keyboard commands, but with more visual feedback to show what they are doing live. I envisioned myself learning with Kakoune and eventually migrating to vim once they became ingrained. Or, at the very least, becoming proficient in vim so that I could use it more confidently when needed.

Has that been anyone’s experience?

Re: Kakoune Code Editor

#170
post #62
post #12

Check out helix [0] for a kakoune inspired editor with some nice modern features included by default. [0]: https://helix-editor.com/

Very intrigued, waiting for the wasm-plugins though. There are a few plugins I cannot work without. It's nice they have tree-sitter and lsp out of the box, but I can't live with things like hop[0] [0] https://github.com/phaazon/hop.nvim

I got curious about this and found https://github.com/danr/kakoune-easymotion which I'm going to give a try.

I haven't tried helix in a while, sometimes they have chosen not-quite default-kakoune like bindings which trips me up for certain kinds of selections.

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