Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Helix Editor 25.07

helix-editor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 167 posts

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#31

Post by aquova »

suby wrote: post #26
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 taki…

> Other editors, if the content is not on the screen, will not perform the undo action unless the content is actually visible.

Really? What editor does this? Vim/Neovim definitely will undo the change with a single 'u' press, and every GUI editor I've ever used will undo the change immediately with a single ctrl+z.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#32

Post by diffrinse »

meindnoch wrote: post #29
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 ?

Yeah that's not a good way of describing, its more like Verb-Direction-Subject, e.g. `d3f(` means "delete up to the 3rd opening paren"; `2f.` means "move cursor to the 2nd found '.' character"; but there are exceptions when the subject is implicit, like `5j` means "Move down 5 physical lines".

Helix reverses bindings so that subject is first and verb is second

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#33

Post by aquova »

90s_dev wrote: post #10
homebrewer wrote: post #6

Helix is the most interesting editor I've seen in a while. Very sane configuration — my config includes just one line to change the default theme to something with more contrast. No "AI" shit pushed down your throat, and it takes the vim idea of applying actions to blocks of code, and swaps them around — you first select the code, and then apply an action to it. So you get visual feedback before doing the action and…

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?

Sure, you can leave it in insert mode the entire time. I'm not sure that's really what you want though, as you'd effectively turn the editor into a basic notepad app.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#34

Post by mmcromp »

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…

For me, the issue isn't that I'm unwilling to learn new things. It's that I cannot use these keybindings anywhere else. Almost all online editors and workstations have some sort of vim keybindings. When I ssh into a Linux machine I can trust it has vim editor. It's like qwerty keyboard, I'm sure that there's better layouts but I just cannot discard the flexibility of being able to jump on most machines and be 99% productive almost instantly.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#35

Post by [deleted] »

suby wrote: post #26
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 taki…

[deleted]

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#36

Post by suby »

aquova wrote: post #31
suby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 taki…

> Other editors, if the content is not on the screen, will not perform the undo action unless the content is actually visible. Really? What editor does this? Vim/Neovim definitely will undo the change with a single 'u' press, and every GUI editor I've ever used will undo the change immediately with a single ctrl+z.

Ah, thanks for the correction. I'm wrong on how common this is.

I just tested CLion, VS Code, and Sublime Text. I thought all three behaved as described, but only CLion did. I wish it was more common though, I find it a lot more intuitive and clear on what's happening.

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#37

Post by jtrn »

MoreQARespect wrote: post #4

Does it do code folding yet?

Here is the forum post that convinced me NOT to continue getting into Helix. It says all I need about the project health. And given the development since then, I am more confident that it’s a bad horse to bet on. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1840#issuecomme...

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#39

Post by varbhat »

Congrats!

I am happy for helix but i don't think it's a good fit for me.

I use Neovim. It does what i want it to do. It's one of the best available options. But, i am not completely satisfied with it. I personally want an editor with following:

* Modern codebase. Written from scratch.

* VIM Keybindings: I have muscle memory of Vim. I would like to use Vim Keybindings in my editor. I don't want to use any other keybindings even if they are proclaimed to be better. It must walk like vim and quack like vim.

* Good defaults. I hate configuring a lot. Neovim requires configuring a lot and need not always provide good defaults if it provided. Helix might have gotten this right.

* Based on Treesitter. Better they run Treesitter parsers as a WASM in WASM runtime just like how Zed and latest Neovim do.

* Extension System. But, I don't really favor lua, js or scheme. They just aren't my cup of tea. Maybe make it a wasm module with only necessary functions exposed to it. And configuration of those plugins in non turning complete configuration language.

* TUI and optional GUI

* LSP,DAP and Snippets support built-in(along with auto complete/suggestions, UI for Testing and Debugging)

* Oil.nvim like FS as buffer built-in

* Telescope/FZF-lua style Search built-in

* Git integration built-in (Maybe magit/neogit like GIT UI is welcome)

* Flash.nvim style Treesitter based Code AST Manipulation and Jump-to by label built-in

* Macros and Multi cursors

* Optional Cursor Style AI integration (Chat UI)

Re: Helix Editor 25.07

#40

Post by latexr »

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…

As someone who used vim (and then neovim) for some two decades, I didn’t find it hard to adapt to helix, and now vastly prefer it.

I did edit several modal behaviours but always stick to helix logic.

Things like the multiple selections and LSP support out of the box make it super worthy, aided by its fantastic help that when you press a multi-step character it shows a little hint of possible next options, including your own custom actions.

I do on occasion need to use bare vim setups, and while some commands have been remapped in my head, I still remember enough for quick edits.

Post reply on HN