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Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

nyxt.atlas.engineer

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Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#181

Post by Faark »

bharrison wrote: post #97
p-e-w wrote: post #70

Looks like Nyxt, a browser "inspired by Vim", inherits Vim's showstopper bug: Being unusable on many non-US keyboards, at least with the default bindings. The 'switch-buffer-previous' command is bound to C-[, which cannot be pressed e.g. on QWERTZ layouts because the [ character requires AltGr. This is like sending around text files encoded in Windows-1252 and expecting things to just work. Sorry folks, but it turns…

True, Hackers hate changing settings. Imagine if those precious keystrokes wasted on setting a keyboard layout could instead be utilized usefully. Say, to post some cloying, whiny critique of someone else's work, wherein one might go so far as invoking their diety in the hopes it might stem the tide of what, I guess, must be a massive recent influx of vi(m)-keybinding-based projects.

Having settings is nice, but I'm not gonna spend a lot of time configuring something that I'm not yet sure will even be useful to me. Power users of / users already invested in your product will use settings to great effect, sure. But defaults matter, if you target anyone else.

Actually, you probably understand that on a deeper level. Since we are not talking about a product where "you can configure vim bindings in the settings". Its just that you personally appear to like this default and seem offended by others preferring sth else.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#182

Post by mst »

dirkg wrote: post #117
p-e-w wrote: post #70

Looks like Nyxt, a browser "inspired by Vim", inherits Vim's showstopper bug: Being unusable on many non-US keyboards, at least with the default bindings. The 'switch-buffer-previous' command is bound to C-[, which cannot be pressed e.g. on QWERTZ layouts because the [ character requires AltGr. This is like sending around text files encoded in Windows-1252 and expecting things to just work. Sorry folks, but it turns…

Vim style keybindings and navigation is massively overhyped as is vim itself. Cue endless debates about how Vim is the best ever ...... I'm sick and tired of everyone telling me that their neovim setup with a tiling window manager with million customized rc files is somehow better than vscode with a mouse (which mind you still has plenty of keyboard shortcuts) with sane windows. /rant

There's a class of fanboys who will be telling you about that because they're Really Excited that they got it Just How They Wanted It.

Most of us think "we like it, some people don't, great if it's an option, probably shouldn't be the only option anywhere else."

The one-upmanship (over VSCode in your case but all editor wars get a dishonourable mention) is bullshit but, like, random strangers on the internet tell people with crippling depression "hey, you should do , it fixed -my- depression" so I think you have to just accept that "when something works really well for a human, sometimes they get overexcited and start trying to turn the something into a silver bullet that it isn't" is something that will always happen.

Note: The people doing the arseholish one-upmanship are not in any way forgiven by this, and the "everyone telling you" that you describe would aggravate me as well, but as with the Rust Evangelism Strike Force, you just have to nod and smile (and sometimes point and laugh) at the zealots and look at the technology for yourself.

Note 2: I use the original 1970 Bill Joy vi. Other people I know use VSCode. 'better' is relative, and what works best for any given person/project varies wildly - everything before this note is about the dynamics of people discussing such choices.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#183

Post by mst »

dicytea wrote: post #25

Did a quick run with it and turned on vi mode from the settings menu. The first thing I found awkward about it is that prompt fields are always initiated in normal mode. So if you want to execute a command with : or interact with an element using f , you have to manually activate insert mode first before being able to enter text into the prompt. I'm sure there's a way to change this since the entire thing is in Lisp,…

if it's a fresh field, I think I might turn out to prefer them always initialised the same way for the sake of my muscle memory.

Now, that may not be true of -me- in practice, but it's definitely possible for whoever did implement that part to genuinely prefer it that way.

Of course, if the implementer wasn't a vi user, who fucking knows, vi is kinda baroque as fuck if you run face first into it without preparation so "the person who picked that default was trying to do vi users a solid but had to guess at some bits" is totally viable too.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#184

Post by vindarel »

xkcd1963 wrote: post #12

Can it be run on a server?

I expect you can run it in headless mode (new --headless switch), start a Swank server (the backend of Slime, the backend of the most used CL "language server"), and connect to the Lisp process from home, through a SSH tunnel. And control the browser from the Lisp REPL, or a Lisp script, like we would with any running Common Lisp program.

https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/debugging.html#re...

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#185

Post by do-me »

Awesome project! From the website I wasn't quite able to tell where exactly and how AI comes into play. I think apart from fuzzy searching headings a semantic search functionality for the whole text would be a really nice default feature. I implemented frontend-only semantic search with transformers.js here: geo.rocks/semanticfinder. The implementation is very straightforward and it would be easy to integrate in the browser, maybe as a plugin or similar.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#186

Post by mattigames »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #145
mattigames wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if Vim had the very same problem for US keyboard layouts it would have never become the standard choice for "hackers" (e.g. in a parallel universe where Vim was created by a Japanese for Japanese keyboards), so yeah, in general hackers hate when their tools don't work out of the box, hackers expect the very basics of any tool to work out of the box, changing settings should be a step to accommodate it to your liking,…

> if Vim had the very same problem for US keyboard layouts it would have never become the standard choice for "hackers" Not necessarily, since it’d just be a matter of popularizing Vim + the community’s preferred shortcuts as a starter instead. > in general hackers hate when their tools don't work out of the box Indeed we do. However, we don’t give up on something if it doesn’t work. We simply hack at it until it wor…

> Not necessarily, since it’d just be a matter of popularizing Vim + the community’s preferred shortcuts as a starter instead.

There isn't that many software dev tools were a small variation in key bindings (or some similar small change) became ubiquious and propelled the popularity by adapting it to the local needs of American developers/IT (keyboard layout in this case), it's a chicken and egg problem because if Vim wasn't that popular there wouldn't be much interest in creation preferred shortcuts, so I conclude that what you suggested is not what would have happened.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#187

Post by 8organicbits »

do-me wrote: post #185

Awesome project! From the website I wasn't quite able to tell where exactly and how AI comes into play. I think apart from fuzzy searching headings a semantic search functionality for the whole text would be a really nice default feature. I implemented frontend-only semantic search with transformers.js here: geo.rocks/semanticfinder. The implementation is very straightforward and it would be easy to integrate in the…

The code references stochastic modeling[1] for predicting the users next command. There may be other places too.

https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt/pull/2593

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#188

Post by doctor_eval »

gsinclair wrote: post #161
doctor_eval wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand. Many of the common bindings in Vim use modifiers. How do you navigate back a word without a modifier? Do you just exit editing mode like in the old days? Do you just forgo this and arrow back? In case it’s not clear from my tone, I’m totally sympathetic to relieving injury, and whatever works, works. I just don’t understand how Vim bindings help, and am genuinely curious.

Navigating back a word while in insert mode is just unnecessary. The purpose of insert mode is to insert text, and that’s it. This occupies a very small proportion of total editing time.

> Navigating back a word while in insert mode is just unnecessary.

Speak for yourself! I do it all the time. Navigating by word is my primary means of moving through a line.

Maybe that’s why I’m happy to be free of vi. It was my primary editor for at least 10 years. And I’m happy to see the back of it.

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#189

Post by deafpolygon »

akho wrote: post #155
deafpolygon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Windows that makes it unsuitable? In fact, the majority of "hacking" and the proliferation of "hacking culture" over the history has been done on Windows - not any flavor of UNIX like many would have you believe. Don't gatekeep.

What’s a “hacking culture”?

I did quote it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture

Re: Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

#190

Post by deafpolygon »

xigoi wrote: post #174
deafpolygon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Windows that makes it unsuitable? In fact, the majority of "hacking" and the proliferation of "hacking culture" over the history has been done on Windows - not any flavor of UNIX like many would have you believe. Don't gatekeep.

> What about Windows that makes it unsuitable? It's proprietary and user-hostile, with things like tracking and forced updates.

I agree that aspect is unpalatable for some, but it does not exclude the usefulness of the OS to hack on things with.
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