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

Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

helix-editor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 169 posts

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#51

Post by FractalHQ »

yellowapple wrote: post #44

Having to switch between "normal" and "insert" modes all the time is one of the things that turns me off from vi and its family tree, and is consequently something that turns me off of Helix, too. There are a lot of neat ideas here, though, and I wonder how many could be hacked into other editors like Emacs.

I’m the same way- my MacBook trackpad is closer to my fingers than the escape key! Not to mention, in VSCode I can do anything with the command palette with cmd+P without the need for separate modes and without the need to memorize a million shortcuts.

If I know the first letter or two of the command, then it’s only 3 keystrokes away. For example, “Evaluate Math Expression” is “cmd+shift+p”+”ev”+”enter”. The command palette also provides great additional explorability with the fuzzy searchable menu + descriptions.

This is a far superior workflow because I have access to every possible command in the editor / installed extensions (very easily mapped to my own shortcuts of I want) without the need to memorize anything. I can even reverse-search commands by typing the shortcut and it will tell me the commands bound to that shortcut.

I could be missing something, but Vim and family feels like a huge step backwards in workflow for me.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#52

Post by aldanor »

vitiral wrote: post #25
aldanor wrote: post #20

For anyone who's used to fd/jk/kj/jj/jf or the like in Vim as an alias to ESC to exit insert mode, it looks like Helix is not too usable as of today: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/2612 I would've considered exploring Helix myself if it wasn't for this.

Remap capslock to CTRL when held and ESC when tapped. Good idea for vim too

Looks interesting. I've always remapped capslock to CTRL myself, of course, but haven't thought of remapping tap-capslock to ESC. It looks like you need external software to do this though (like Karabiner Elements on mac, or xcape on linux, etc).

(That being said, if you're used to jk/kj/fd/jj/jf, many years of muscle memory would still take a while to erase...)

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#54

Post by zahllos »

I'm using alacritty all the time, and I'm thinking of switching to starship from powerline because powerline has noticeable startup time (I think it is python-based). Unfortunately neovim+plugins does too, probably as a result of plugins more than neovim.

I tried this and it is much nippier than my current neovim+plugins setup. I'll have to plug in a bunch more language servers to fully compare.

In a way I'm almost hoping they don't add a plugin system. There's something to be said for this all-rust future my terminal suddenly seems to have found itself in: it is quick!

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#56

Post by kekebo »

zahllos wrote: post #54

I'm using alacritty all the time, and I'm thinking of switching to starship from powerline because powerline has noticeable startup time (I think it is python-based). Unfortunately neovim+plugins does too, probably as a result of plugins more than neovim. I tried this and it is much nippier than my current neovim+plugins setup. I'll have to plug in a bunch more language servers to fully compare. In a way I'm almost h…

Alternatively Powerlevel10k[0] makes for a fast powerline implementation, especially with instant prompt enabled.

[0] https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#57

Post by mastax »

Every text editor should support multiple cursors. In fact, every text field should support it. I often copy paste things into vs code just so I can use multiple cursors to edit something.

Also block indents. If you're going to require four spaces for a quote or a code block, don't make me copy paste between an editor just so I don't have to indent each line individually.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#58

Post by marcusbuffett »

This project looks awesome and as someone who’s used vim/neovim my whole career, I’m very excited for a modern modal editor. If it had an easy motion/sneak/leap/hop sort of thing (there’s an open PR), I’d switch right away. I keep checking on it every few weeks. Can’t wait for that and the plug-in functionality.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#59

Post by doix »

tomphoolery wrote: post #30

Long-time Vim/NeoVim user here...about 20 or so years with it being my daily driver for the last 8. As soon as I found Helix, I was unsure whether it would become my new editor, but I've been using it every day for a few months and haven't really looked back. The only thing I still use Vim for is `vimdiff` with Git, but I don't think I need to, just been lazy about configuring Helix to do the same thing. Helix does e…

I used vim as my daily driver probably for the same amount of time as you and couldn't make the switch . The lack of tabs and folding destroyed my workflow.

I like to set my splits up a certain way when I'm working on something specific and then make a new tab when I change context. Then I just change tabs to context-switch quickly.

I also immediately fold all when I open a file to get an "overview" and then slowly dig in deeper.

Both currently impossible in helix (at least last time I checked).

A lot of my muscle memory also doesn't work, specifically with shift+v and selecting/moving sections around quickly.

I got used to the different order of things fairly quickly, but I'm not convinced it's actually more efficient.

I also found the random pop-ups with hints really annoying and distracting. I'm guessing there's probably a config to disable them but I haven't looked into it.

Re: Helix: Post-Modern Text Editor

#60

Post by theptip »

rjh29 wrote: post #38
BossingAround wrote: post #7

Interesting language support [1]. I might try it for some of my Python/Node projects (though it's hard to see a Python IDE that better than PyCharm). [1] https://docs.helix-editor.com/lang-support.html

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.

Post reply on HN