Live data from Hacker News

Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

helix-editor.com

121–130 of 169 posts

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#122
post #2

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33147270

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Helix: A Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33147270 - Oct 2022 (306 comments)

Helix: A post-modern text editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33039390 - Sept 2022 (2 comments)

Helix, Terminal Modal Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30847041 - March 2022 (2 comments)

Helix: a post-modern modal text editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358479 - June 2021 (365 comments)

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#123

It's interesting to me, reading comments in this thread, that this editor mostly seems to appeal to current vim/emacs users. It's like the first choice everyone makes when selecting an editor is deciding whether they want something that runs in the terminal, something that calls itself as an "IDE", or something in between. Am I the only one who cares a lot more about functionality than branding or user interface? The…

I use Emacs. I love seeing people working on new editors, too. NeoVim looks awesome, Helix is cool, I wish Kakoune was still active. BUT I don't understand why we're still writing new full-featured editors like this that only run inside terminal emulators.* We've had GUIs for 40 years! They're good, actually! It's okay to have an interface based on pixels instead of grids of characters!

Yes, of course sometimes doing a bit of in-terminal editing is the best way to get something done, but that should be quick, basic, and exceptional, not something where you need an LSP client and project management.

* EDIT: I see now another thread where someone from the Helix project says they're planning other frontends, which is great! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497529

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#124
post #2

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33147270

That is just "past discussion", not a dupe. A dupe suggests there's a competing conversation happening right now that may be splintering the discussion.

On HN "dupe" means "the story has had significant attention in the last year so. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

That doesn't mean it's a bad submission! it's a good submission, it just has also already happened recently.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#126

Helix is cool if you want a terminal editor. For a GUI editor, I am very interested in https://lapce.dev/ It is perhaps the only editor which for me seems as snappy as Sublime Text.

Lite XL (lite-xl.com) is also extremely fast. Also, because a lot of it is written in Lua, you can very easily extend it yourself; you can just monkey-patch many functions and do what you want! It's kind of immature in some ways, for example, the current release version has some limitations in the native plugin interface (which you need for loading C libraries for Lua, as Lite may use a statically linked version), an…

Does lite xl support language server protocol though?

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#127

Helix is cool if you want a terminal editor. For a GUI editor, I am very interested in https://lapce.dev/ It is perhaps the only editor which for me seems as snappy as Sublime Text.

We're planning to support multiple frontend too. The terminal one is just the main client.

Oh, this is good to know! May I suggest putting that in the FAQ? I looked for this information but didn't see it browsing the docs (perhaps I missed it though).

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lite XL (lite-xl.com) is also extremely fast. Also, because a lot of it is written in Lua, you can very easily extend it yourself; you can just monkey-patch many functions and do what you want! It's kind of immature in some ways, for example, the current release version has some limitations in the native plugin interface (which you need for loading C libraries for Lua, as Lite may use a statically linked version), an…

Does lite xl support language server protocol though?

Yes, there is a plugin for it! https://github.com/lite-xl/lite-xl-lsp

It works quite decently, although again limitations regarding linewrapping apply; the inline lints from lint+ break linewrapping :/

Also, for Lapce I cannot find server integrations other than a few, namely Rust, JS/TS, YAML, C/C++, Go and Dart. No Python, for example. Adding Python support in Lite's LSP is as simple as adding lspconfig.pylsp.setup() to your config (and installing the server), if you already have the plugin set up correctly.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#129

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…

I think the real power is in learning keybindings, either emacs or vim. You'll be able to use those shortcuts everywhere -- your IDE, shell, web browser.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#130
post #60
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tree-sitter and LSP (language server protocol) are both global standards. If you support them then you automatically support any language that has a tree-sitter grammar or implements an LSP.

Is LSP support for Python better than PyCharm's? My assumption has been JetBrains' implementations are better for languages that they support deeply since they have so many more man-hours of polish, but e.g. Rust is going to be better with LSP than JetBrains' plugin implementation.

I have not used the LSP directly, but Python's LSP uses Jedi under the hood, the same code as VS Code's official Python extension - it is very good.

JetBrains put in lots of effort but they are just one company - the power of LSP is that the whole community (including companies like Microsoft) are building a single tool that all IDEs and editors can use. Granted I hit a couple of bugs as it is under heavy development but I think they'll win out in the long term.

Post reply on HN