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Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

helix-editor.com

151–160 of 169 posts

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#151
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really great that your workflow works for you, and you enjoy working that way! It seems like you've spent time getting used to this workflow, and now get to reap the benefits. Be careful though, just because you are used to doing something in a specific way, doesn't mean that your way of doing it is superior!

This comment comes off as extremely patronizing. All they were saying is that vim is a step backwards in workflow , for them .

They are saying that their workflow is superior to the Vim workflow, which is what I was referring to. Didn’t mean to come off as patronizing

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#152
post #21

I'm a long time user of vim/nvim and have learnt so many great techniques from "practical vim". Helix looks good, and the speed is impressive. It does seem very code-centric though, movements seem based with this in mind. I also find it inconsistent that some movements cannot be combined with actions but others can. Having said that, there are certainly some ways that vim could be reimagined. I find beginning and end…

In my experience, as another longtime user of vim and now using helix as my daily driver, it does take a bit of getting used to. But once you grok the whole idea of "selection first, then action", it becomes a bit easier to deal with. Honestly I think Helix is a better editor for those who are looking for the features of Vim but don't want to learn its esoteric syntax. I had to learn Vi/Vim in order to work with Free…

That's really interesting, thank you for the perspective. I'm amazed so many long in the tooth vim/nvim have moved over!

I do think the movement could be better arranged in nvim/vim - but that's really just an issue of remapping keys I guess. hjkl are in a great place, the equivalent of home/end/pageup/down are odd and not ergonomic.

I compiled helix on a 1Ghz single core processor, and it runs incredibly fast on that. Very impressive.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#154
post #131
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a config that maps more to vim, try this https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim/raw/master/config.toml

Why is it not the default?

Helix primarily follows the Kakoune model instead of Vim's. It can be confusing to switch from Vim, but Helix's model tends to be more intuitive if one does not already have Vim muscle memory.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#155

I'm a huge fan of Helix, use it everyday. LSP works out of the box(if you install it with a package manager, otherwise you need to do a bit of config) .My configuration file has 5 lines or so, great defaults. No need for overly complicated configuration, or installing dozens of plugins, etc.. Did I mentioned is crazy fast? Opens in ms, and everything feels very snappy. The only thing I noticed, when I use it with tmu…

What language(s) do you program in?

Mostly Rust and C++, I do some typescript/html web stuff once in a while.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#156
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I am at the last line of a part of a function, that I would like to delete - maybe some debug output. In VIM, I will look at the relative line numbers and immediately see that I would like to delete up to the number 8. Then I simply write d8 or d8h, and I am done. As far as I can tell - I may be wrong - in Helix, I would have to first do 8 and then 9xd. Note the number 9 in there. This is due to the fact that in…

Legit. You can do nicer than that in Helix’s defaults, but you're right that it won't match d-8-up’s concision: instead of 8-up-9-x-d ("8-move up-9-select whole lines below-delete"), you can do v-9-up-x-d, ("select-9-this line and above-the whole lines-delete"). If you're asking about what helix can do in general, though, as opposed to just the defaults, you can configure it to: - use relative line numbering - map a…

Thank you for the great answer. I did not know that. I will try it out.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I am at the last line of a part of a function, that I would like to delete - maybe some debug output. In VIM, I will look at the relative line numbers and immediately see that I would like to delete up to the number 8. Then I simply write d8 or d8h, and I am done. As far as I can tell - I may be wrong - in Helix, I would have to first do 8 and then 9xd. Note the number 9 in there. This is due to the fact that in…

In Helix, you can use `maf` to mark the outer function and then press `d` to delete it.

Agreed, but more often, I find myself in a situation, where I just want to delete, comment, or yank a few lines of a function, so I find that going by relative line numbers is a lot more flexible and useful for me.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment comes off as extremely patronizing. All they were saying is that vim is a step backwards in workflow , for them .

They are saying that their workflow is superior to the Vim workflow, which is what I was referring to. Didn’t mean to come off as patronizing

> They are saying that their workflow is superior to the Vim workflow

Yes, for our specific tastes. We're well aware that people have different tastes and might prefer Vim's or Helix's workflow; you can spare us the lecture.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#159

Am I the only one that doesn't have any strong preference for some editor? I am always super impressed by all the comments stating how much of a night/day difference editors make to them. I have to say that I have tried many (VSC, neovim, Emacs and Spacemacs mostly) in the last five years but at the end of the day I feel like none makes such a difference to me so I just default to whatever my colleagues use to make c…

Do you have strong opinions about what operating system you use? Makes me wonder what the most common area of the stack people's choices are for where their choice is strongly preferred in their computing experience.

Also, I imagine that team size and existing diversity of choice plays a role as well.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#160
post #131
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a config that maps more to vim, try this https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim/raw/master/config.toml

Why is it not the default?

Because it's not the same as vim, they've made some fundamentally different choices and their default binds reflect that. I genuinely think helix stands to be better, it lacks the community and thus the extensions of vim/neovim as well as decades of experience, so it's hard to replace it, but for me it's managed to nevertheless.
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