Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
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Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#2From the description, the architecture is nicely modern.
It's also interesting to see a project that seems young to already be version 22.
What I tried to find and could not was some built-in language, more expressive than the one used to describe syntax highlighting. This means that extensibility is at best not a priority,
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#3From the description, the architecture is nicely modern. It's also interesting to see a project that seems young to already be version 22. What I tried to find and could not was some built-in language, more expressive than the one used to describe syntax highlighting. This means that extensibility is at best not a priority,
It's just date based versioning, so 22.08 is August, 2022.
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#4Previous discussion: "Helix: a post-modern modal text editor"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358479 (657 points | 1 year ago | 365 comments)
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#5Helix is great! The out-of-the-box LSP for C++ is a major strength, no config needed for me compared to 100% of all other editors I've used. The context-aware popups are nice too, and the overall UI is snappy and fresh. Highly recommend if you are a fan of modal editing and willing to try something new.
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#6From the description, the architecture is nicely modern. It's also interesting to see a project that seems young to already be version 22. What I tried to find and could not was some built-in language, more expressive than the one used to describe syntax highlighting. This means that extensibility is at best not a priority,
FWIW, the maintainers have been exploring various extensibility solutions. For e.g., I remember seeing a PR to allow a WASM-based plugin system, though I think it was abandoned because of the tradeoffs it posed.
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#7Tried it a year ago or so and liked it. Offers smart defaults.
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#8See also Lapce, an editor also written in Rust although it's trying to compete more with VSCode rather than Vim.
Also, RIP OniVim 2, it was great having been written in a similarly fast ReasonML/OCaml but the creator ran out of funding and had to get a job. A shame, it even had compatibility with VSCode extensions.
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#9Looks very interesting. But what do the “plans for a GUI” mean for the terminal version?
Re: Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust
#10I fully expect Helix to replace Vim, Neovim, and Kakoune for most users in the long run.
Helix is built from the ground up around Tree-Sitter and LSP. This means you get the best syntax highlighting available, and IDE-like functionality, with zero configuration required other than installing the appropriate language server.
Those are by far the most important features for a text editor to have, and crucially, they are fully integrated into Helix, but are an afterthought in (Neo)vim and Kakoune. The quality difference is obvious the moment you try it side by side. Nothing else really matters. Vim's and Kakoune's syntax highlighting is terrible, and while Neovim can now use Tree-Sitter as well, there always seem to be some additional hoops the user needs to jump through in order to get it to work. Not so with Helix.
Regrettably, Helix has inherited Vim's worst design flaw, namely being unusable with non-English keyboard layouts, but all other Vim derivatives share this flaw as well so I don't see that stopping Helix from steamrolling the competition once it matures and the word spreads.