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Helix Editor 25.07

helix-editor.com

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Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#151

Post by dcre »

MoreQARespect wrote: post #140
dcre wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem. It's a great result: (paraphrasing) "people arguing about whether code folding is useful or not is pointless. we're going to do it eventually but not right now." What's wrong with that?

It's fine that they dont want to do it or dont want to do it yet. Still, I wasn't especially impressed with "code folding is hard, we might do it one day but don't hold your breath" from an editor that purports to be a replacement for vim or neovim.

Development is a bit slow because there are only a few maintainers, but also because they have a strong vision and are very aggressive about prioritization and rejecting features that don’t fit. This is why Helix is so good and so focused a tool.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#153

Post by [deleted] »

_cwpi wrote: post #84
spapas82 wrote: post #28

Helix is great and includes a lot of stuff out of the box (file pickers, syntax highlighting, linting etc) without any configuration or installing plugins (contrary to vim or neovim). I would definitely use it but the main disadvantage is that some keybindings work differently than vim. I understand that the keybindings may be better that the vim ones but after years of using vim I expect "x" in normal mode to delete…

I'm totally fine with (re)learning new tools, but having given Helix a solid try found the noun-verb model worse; the visual feedback is fun but distracting, particularly when you're moving around reading code. For it you give up things like repeating edits easily (bound as '.' in Vim). There's also a statefulness to Helix's model that isn't present in Vim; whereas in the latter I only have to care about where I _am_…

[deleted]

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#154

Post by latexr »

_cwpi wrote: post #108
zem wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

surprised helix doesn't support the . key - is that incompatible with its interaction model somehow?

Yes, its model is that you make a selection and then act on it. After the action happens there's nothing selected. The editor can't infer your intent in making the selection, so there's no reasonable notion of repeating the last edit. You can separately repeat the last motion or last action, but not the whole edit---which of course isn't as useful. Helix would _ideally_ like you to tell it ahead-of-time everywhere yo…

In that situation, what I do is essentially save a macro (recording the selection and the edit) with `Q` and then `q` becomes my equivalent to `.`

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#155

Post by coffeeindex »

eviks wrote: post #128
coffeeindex wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you also not use any plugins just because they aren't available on another machine? The vast majority of plugins don't fundamentally change how you interact with text.

So? Narrow it down to the most useful minority that do, the question still remains

If you narrow it down to that minority that fundamentally changes how you interact with text, then I think the answer is a pretty easy "Yes".

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#157

Post by iLemming »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #80
90s_dev wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used vim for a few years about 15 years ago, yes. It's not that it's difficult for me, it's that it's unnatural for me. Different people's minds work differently.

It is wild to me that you could use vim for years and not like the modal style. To each their own, I would have bounced to emacs.

For some reason Emacs veterans keep waging wars against modality without acknowledging that Emacs is inherently modal - key chords create temporary modes, transient keymaps maintain states, the minibuffer is a distinct mode, and even fundamental concepts like the mark-active state and recursive editing demonstrate that Emacs has always embraced context-dependent behavior rather than being truly modeless.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#158

Post by iLemming »

eviks wrote: post #125
90s_dev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks very interesting and I'd love to support it, but editors that must be modal are difficult for me to use, personally. Editors that are not modal can be made modal, but can modal editors be made non-modal?

Modal editors can be (in principle) made non-modal by changing keybinds to combos that change modes behind your back, so you'll keep insert mode as your primary one. So strictly speaking, non-modal editors are the ones that force you into only one style But not sure real editors are as capable since some can have adverse actions on mode changes (e.g. resetting your selection or changing undo stack etc)

Yup, I know what you're talking about. Evil-mode in Emacs actually adds so many nice features and simplifies so many things outside of text editing, yet I've never seen anyone who dislikes modal editing actually install evil-mode and keep it disabled by default. Them Emacs veteran "nevervimmers" are missing out.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#159

Post by iLemming »

maplant wrote: post #52
echelon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want to go from modal to non-modal. In fact, I have a hard time editing in web browser textareas and Google Docs because of the muscle memory of vimlike keybindings and how I've associated them with tactile keyboards. (Smartphones and tablets don't give me this problem since they feel different, but laptop/desktop Google Docs editing throws me for a loop.) Once you learn, modal is the way to go. It feels l…

I think it really does come down to taste. I learned how to do modal text editing. I believe it is a fine and efficient way to edit. So is non-modal. So is mouse editing. I still prefer the emacs way of doing things

> I still prefer the emacs way of doing things

Emacs was always modal. Emacs is inherently a modal text editor - keychords are modal, transients are modal, isearch is modal, repeat-mode is modality. The only thing the idea of vim-navigation brings on top of all that is a simple, structured and memorable language/grammar to deal with modality, that's all what it is.

Both approaches are modal; Vi just codified its modality into a more learnable, linguistic system while Emacs distributed its modality across context-sensitive mini-languages.

Emacs has this same power scattered throughout - the kill-ring, rectangle operations, keyboard macros - but Vi's genius was packaging it into a coherent, immediately graspable system that feels less like using a computer and more like speaking a concise language about text.

The best thing about learning that language is that you can apply it anywhere where keyboard input is still relevant - your browser, your terminal, your entire system - e.g. you can control your music, jump between apps, navigate between windows, etc. using only the home row keys.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#160

Post by iLemming »

echelon wrote: post #25
magackame wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you start craving modal interfaces in your browser, file manager, terminal, messenger... Some Google Docs markdown buffer as a modal editor feature (or a plugin) would be cool.

This, though I've always found the Chrome/Firefox vimlike browser plugins to be such second class citizens that they've never stuck with me. I used to use modal tiling window managers on Linux, but since window managers are always second class on Mac/Windows, that never stuck either. I bounce around too frequently for it to work. I just suffice with tmux for now. I was pleasantly surprised to find Discord's `s/search…

> I've always found the Chrome/Firefox vimlike browser plugins to be such second class citizens

Bro, you have no idea - vimium-c is absolutely amazing, I just can't really imagine my life without it. Toggling tab pinning and muting, moving tabs, grouping tabs, quickly finding a tab, extracting a tab into a window, joining windows, etc. - if you even try doing all that without modality, you'd have to keep learning new keybindings and memorize them.

The worst part of that is that keybindings would change. For me - font size change on a browser page works the same way as in my editor, and the terminal, and it is the same in every browser that vimium supports.

You basically need to ask yourself if you really want to keep learning and memorizing various, sometimes absolutely unrelated and difficult to reach key bindings that almost invariably require you holding modifiers, sometimes wasting your mental energy on subtleties between ctrl/alt/cmd/shift+key or you'd rather sit down, spend some time and take a systematic approach that will make your life so much easier.

> window managers are always second class on Mac/Windows, that never stuck either.

I don't use Windows much, but Yabai for Mac is really good. I've procrastinated on trying it for a long time, when I finally tried, it took me literally fifteen minutes to start. Then I hooked up my Hammerspoon config and added some key bindings. I'm very happy about it. Like for example, I've been so annoyed by Zoom that always scatters its windows around all my monitors, now I have "group Zoom windows" feature, and it's really nice.

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