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Helix Editor 25.07

helix-editor.com

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Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#21

Post by magackame »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #14
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?

Have you ever used a modal editor? It takes the smallest bit of brain training to adapt, but feels more logical for long form coding. I spend a lot more time reading code than writing. Having more tools to grep/highlight/move text in one mode is quite productive.

People who give vim some time split in two camps:

- how can you use a modal editor!?

- how can you use a nonmodal editor!?

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#22

Post by latexr »

klaussilveira wrote: post #5

Very sad that Helix still doesn't have Sublime-like multi-caret support. All I want is to Ctrl + Click and Shift + Alt + Arrows.

Multi-caret support in Helix is awesome. It’s even the first feature they mention on the homepage.

https://helix-editor.com

You can `C` to extend the caret down, or `s` to enter a multiple regex selection. It even keeps your copied/deleted text per caret.

I do wild things with it all the time, like changing a structured document into a completely different structure.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#23

Post by magackame »

echelon wrote: post #16
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?

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…

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.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#24

Post by latexr »

Xiol32 wrote: post #19

I really wanted to like Helix, and for the most part did, but there is something about the way undo works that just feels incredibly wrong to me. What it wants to undo doesn't always seem logical and always undoes too much. I've lost work because of it in the past.

I agree the undo is sometimes a bit weird, as is the “repeat last command”. However, the rest of it is so nice that I keep Helix as my main editor.

How did you lose work, though, could you not redo?

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#25

Post by echelon »

magackame wrote: post #23
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…

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/replace` supported as an actual feature, though having it limited to just the last message is a bit limiting.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#26

Post by suby »

Xiol32 wrote: post #19

I really wanted to like Helix, and for the most part did, but there is something about the way undo works that just feels incredibly wrong to me. What it wants to undo doesn't always seem logical and always undoes too much. I've lost work because of it in the past.

There are two things that consciously bug me about undo,

* When you press undo, and the content to be undone isn't on the screen, it will jump your screen to the relevant section (good) but also with that same keypress actually undo the content (bad). Other editors, if the content is not on the screen, will not perform the undo action unless the content is actually visible. When I press undo in Helix, I'm always taking a moment to figure out what has actually changed because of this.

* This is a conscious decision by the Helix creator, so it's unlikely to change, but undo is not granular enough. It's chunked per insert mode operation. So you could type the entirety of a tale of two cities while in insert mode, you could be in insert mode for 30 minutes, and then go back to normal mode -- at this point, if you press undo once, the entirety of what you did in insert mode is undone. There is a feature where you can explicitly give the editor a save point for undo, and you're expected to press the key manually at your desired undo points. I really don't like this at all. I have bound some keys such as spacebar to this save point, so I get more granular undo, but this has some consequences such as clearing any selections that are currently present. I couldn't figure out a way to fix this without any side effects unfortunately.

I like Helix a lot, and I have no intention of changing editors, but there are some default behaviors which I think are absolutely baffling, and the undo granularity + expectation that you manually save checkpoints for undo is one of them.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#27

Post by diffrinse »

I terribly need a vim-like with Helix all-in-one comprehensiveness. Neovim distributions are too loosely coupled and always have some odd sharp edge. Vim and its interfaces needs some rethinking anyway, but keep Action-Object modal orientation.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#28

Post by spapas82 »

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 the character under the cursor or "d" to wait for the motion before deleting anything. When this does not happen I get confused and angry. I think this would be a problem with most people that are using vim; it's very difficult to change your habits especially since you can't ever escape from vim because of its ubiquity.

Thankfully, some good people have released evil-helix, a soft fork of Helix which introduces Vim keybindings https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix ; I tried it and it works great so I'll totally recommend it to people that have my problems.

As a final notice, helix (and evil-helix) works great in Windows (cmd). No need to install rust or anything. Get the .exe and you're gtg.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#29

Post by meindnoch »

diffrinse wrote: post #27

I terribly need a vim-like with Helix all-in-one comprehensiveness. Neovim distributions are too loosely coupled and always have some odd sharp edge. Vim and its interfaces needs some rethinking anyway, but keep Action-Object modal orientation.

What is Action-Object modal orientation?

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#30

Post by diffrinse »

diffrinse wrote: post #27

I terribly need a vim-like with Helix all-in-one comprehensiveness. Neovim distributions are too loosely coupled and always have some odd sharp edge. Vim and its interfaces needs some rethinking anyway, but keep Action-Object modal orientation.

Maybe Evil-Helix[0] is what's called for. Still seems like it has lots of edges.

[0]https://github.com/usagi-flow/evil-helix

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