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I'm not sure I'm convinced by the composability argument. Isn't composable the default for text editors? Emacs (and most text editors) let you select a portion

I'm not sure I'm convinced by the composability argument. Isn't composable the default for text editors? Emacs (and most text editors) let you select a portion of text (Emacs calls this marking a region) and then decide what to do with it: delete it, cut it (Emacs calls this killing), convert to upper case, etc. Vim mostly uses the other order: Commands first, motion or text object later (except in visual mode where it's like other editors: Select something first, command later). So you just need to implement a bunch of selection commands to get Vim-style composability. I think lots of these modern text editors like sublime or atom come with select word, select parenthesized expression, select paragraph, etc. If the editor is extensible you can define new selection commands and compose them with the existing commands that operate on a region, just like Vim. Emacs certainly has a bunch of marking commands. The extra commands you mentioned in Emacs (kill-word, kill-line, etc.) are just for convenience: Shortcuts for common cases. In Vim you can delete to the end of the word with dw. In Emacs you could also do a 2 keystroke solution: do mark-word, delete-region (you could use backspace, Control D or delete for that second second thing since they "operate on the region of the selection is active", so C-@ <backspace> would do it). Unlike Vim you also have the option of a single chord with the convenience command kill-word.

alwillis 10y ago
This is the best article I've seen that describes the huge advantage of composability: Why Atom can't replace Vim: https://medium.com/@mkozlows/why-atom-cant-replace-vim-433852f4b4d1#.myhl1trb0 https://medium.com/@mkozlows/why-atom-cant-replace-vim-43385...
- omaranto 10y ago
  I think I understand the advantage of composability. What I was saying is that it is not unique to Vim. Vim uses "command; motion-or-textobject" in normal mode where most editors use "select-what-you-want; command" (which is what Vim does in visual mode). If your editor has a good stock of selection commands (some have select word, line, paragraph, parenthesized expression, etc. -- I don't use atom but Emacs and Textadept have all those and more, like select LaTeX environment) and a good stock of commands that operate on the selection (like delete, cut, wrap in parenthesis, uppercase, etc.), I'd say you have composable editing. I don't think the link you have addresses my point at all.
  - alwillis 10y ago
    It seems pretty clear to me that it does indeed address your point. That you can build up sophisticated actions just by knowing the primitives and text objects is the point, right? And not having to memorize different commands and different selections. From the article: But now let’s look at delete commands. Let’s say you want to delete a word, delete to the end of the line, delete to the end of the file, or delete to the end of a paragraph. Emacs only has two of these functions: kill-word and kill-line. Atom has the same two, more or less: deleteToEndOfWord() and deleteLine(). Vim, though, is different. Vim only has one command: d, which is “delete.” What does it delete? You name it, literally. The d command gets combined together with those commands for movement: dw deletes to the next word, d$ to the end of the line, dG to the end of the file, and d} to the end of the paragraph. This is where Vim’s composability leads to its power. Emacs and Atom don’t have commands for deleting to the end of a file or a paragraph — even when they have commands to move to those places. But in Vim, if you can move to a location, you can delete to that location. And composability is about more than just power, it’s also about learnability and consistency. The command for copying text in Vim is y. Do you know how to copy to the end of the line/file/paragraph? Of course you do: It’s y$, yG, and y} respectively. The command for increasing the indent is >, so you instantly know >$, >G, and >}. Convert to lowercase is gu, so… sure enough: gu$, guG, gu}.
    - omaranto 10y ago
      Well, maybe the author of that post just hasn't noticed the similarity between: Vim normal mode grammar: command motion-or-textobject Other editor's grammar: select-a-region command (Also, Vim visual mode grammar: select-a-region command) Emacs has lots of command that can select a region. They tend to be called mark-something. There are commands for selecting words, sentences, paragraphs, function definitions, S-expressions (the name comes from Lisp but they're defined to be something useful in every language, usually something like "any delimited construct in the language --strings, blocks, array literals, etc."). Once you select something you can apply many actions to it: you can delete it, uppercase it, rot13 it, sort the lines in it, wrap it in parenthesis, etc. Maybe what tripped the author up is that additionally Emacs has other commands like kill-word, kill-line that are shortcuts for common combinations of a motion and a command. The author is correct in saying that these convenience commands are not composable, but they're nice shortcuts to have (and by the way, contrary to what the author says Emacs does have a kill-paragraph command). So you to delete a word you can do: Vim: dw Emacs composable style: M-@ C-D (that is, mark-word delete- region[^1]) Emacs shortcut: M-D (kill-word) Atom composable style: Option-Shift-f backspace Atom shortcut: Option-d (I got the Atom ones by Googling, I don't if they are right, but if they're not, I'm pretty sure correct ones exist: Atom has both a composable way and a shortcut.) Vim propaganda should stop saying other editors lack composable commands. Even notepad.exe lets me use any of its paltry motion commands[^2] available to select something and then use a generic delete command to delete whatever I selected. "Composability" is the default mode of operation of most text editors. Vim propaganda should focus instead on the very real advantages than Vim's command model has. For example: - dot repeats the whole command/motion pair. This is fabulous! - Vim has counts so you can delete 9 words just as easily as 3 words. (Emacs also has them, but lots of editors don't, and they're superhandy.) - Vim has lots of little variations of the motions and textobjects so you can pick exactly what you need, other editors tend to have fewer. For example, for words, Vim has w, e, aw, iw (and probably others I'm forgetting) which are related but a little bit different. (Also, personally I think Vim bloggers should recognize that those non-composable commands like kill-word are nice optional shortcuts, that are actually a tiny advantage other editors have over Vim. Try playing VimGolf in Emacs --using the nice vimgolf Emacs package, because of course Emacs has a package for that-- and you'll see what I mean.) ---- [^1] OK, techinically C-D is delete-forward-char in the default keybindings, but when a region is active it acts as delete-region. [^2] It's limited to character, word and line, I think. But people forget even the lowly notepad.exe has word motions (all text widgets on Windows do).
frederikvs 10y ago
Can you point me to some documentation from atom or sublime, where they explain which kinds of selections you can make? I wasn't aware that certain editors seem to have many modes of selection, and a quick web search doesn't reveal very much. I'd like to be able to make a comparison with vim's text objects and movements. My gut feeling tells me that vim will still have more "targets" for a command, and more accurate ones, but I'm biased. But the "select text and then apply command", as I understand it, still has a major drawback compared to vim's way of working : the dot-command. In vim, you go "daa" (delete an argument - i.e. delete the argument, including the comma which separates it, if you have the vim-angry plugin). Then you move to another argument, you just press dot, and the same thing happens. Also, does the selection thing accept counts?
- omaranto 10y ago
  I should stop talking about editors I don't use. Let me focus on Emacs with some comments about Textadept (I've never used Atom and only tried Sublime Text for a day). 1. Yes, the ability to repeat with dot is advantage of the Vim model. Emacs just repeats the command part not the marking part too, not as useful as dot in Vim! 2. In Emacs every command accepts counts, just like Vim. Textadept doesn't offer counts, I believe. I think counts are probably an advantage of Vim and Emacs over most(?) other editors. 3. About Vim having more motions & text objects: Probably, but Emacs is close. Without extra packages you have: words, symbols and S-expressions (the names come from Lisp but these do something sensible in most languages: Symbol is usually identifier and S-expression is something like delimited expression: A string, a parenthesized expression, a block in curly braces or brackets, etc.), lines, sentences, and paragraphs. Texts packages add other targets like LaTeX environment. One thing definitely lacking in Emacs is that Vim usually offers two variants that differ slightly at the ends (like w vs e, or i( vs a(), those minor variations are pretty useful. My point is just the saying other editors don't have the ability to combine commands with different things to operate on is obviously false, and claiming is unlikely to convert anytime to Vim. Instead Vim bloggers should focus on how Vim makes the basic composability idea even better with things like counts, repeatability of composed commands, and richer set of selection commands.
  - 10y ago

alwillis 10y ago

This is the best article I've seen that describes the huge advantage of composability: Why Atom can't replace Vim: https://medium.com/@mkozlows/why-atom-cant-replace-vim-433852f4b4d1#.myhl1trb0 https://medium.com/@mkozlows/why-atom-cant-replace-vim-43385...

omaranto 10y ago
I think I understand the advantage of composability. What I was saying is that it is not unique to Vim. Vim uses "command; motion-or-textobject" in normal mode where most editors use "select-what-you-want; command" (which is what Vim does in visual mode). If your editor has a good stock of selection commands (some have select word, line, paragraph, parenthesized expression, etc. -- I don't use atom but Emacs and Textadept have all those and more, like select LaTeX environment) and a good stock of commands that operate on the selection (like delete, cut, wrap in parenthesis, uppercase, etc.), I'd say you have composable editing. I don't think the link you have addresses my point at all.
- alwillis 10y ago
  It seems pretty clear to me that it does indeed address your point. That you can build up sophisticated actions just by knowing the primitives and text objects is the point, right? And not having to memorize different commands and different selections. From the article: But now let’s look at delete commands. Let’s say you want to delete a word, delete to the end of the line, delete to the end of the file, or delete to the end of a paragraph. Emacs only has two of these functions: kill-word and kill-line. Atom has the same two, more or less: deleteToEndOfWord() and deleteLine(). Vim, though, is different. Vim only has one command: d, which is “delete.” What does it delete? You name it, literally. The d command gets combined together with those commands for movement: dw deletes to the next word, d$ to the end of the line, dG to the end of the file, and d} to the end of the paragraph. This is where Vim’s composability leads to its power. Emacs and Atom don’t have commands for deleting to the end of a file or a paragraph — even when they have commands to move to those places. But in Vim, if you can move to a location, you can delete to that location. And composability is about more than just power, it’s also about learnability and consistency. The command for copying text in Vim is y. Do you know how to copy to the end of the line/file/paragraph? Of course you do: It’s y$, yG, and y} respectively. The command for increasing the indent is >, so you instantly know >$, >G, and >}. Convert to lowercase is gu, so… sure enough: gu$, guG, gu}.
  - omaranto 10y ago
    Well, maybe the author of that post just hasn't noticed the similarity between: Vim normal mode grammar: command motion-or-textobject Other editor's grammar: select-a-region command (Also, Vim visual mode grammar: select-a-region command) Emacs has lots of command that can select a region. They tend to be called mark-something. There are commands for selecting words, sentences, paragraphs, function definitions, S-expressions (the name comes from Lisp but they're defined to be something useful in every language, usually something like "any delimited construct in the language --strings, blocks, array literals, etc."). Once you select something you can apply many actions to it: you can delete it, uppercase it, rot13 it, sort the lines in it, wrap it in parenthesis, etc. Maybe what tripped the author up is that additionally Emacs has other commands like kill-word, kill-line that are shortcuts for common combinations of a motion and a command. The author is correct in saying that these convenience commands are not composable, but they're nice shortcuts to have (and by the way, contrary to what the author says Emacs does have a kill-paragraph command). So you to delete a word you can do: Vim: dw Emacs composable style: M-@ C-D (that is, mark-word delete- region[^1]) Emacs shortcut: M-D (kill-word) Atom composable style: Option-Shift-f backspace Atom shortcut: Option-d (I got the Atom ones by Googling, I don't if they are right, but if they're not, I'm pretty sure correct ones exist: Atom has both a composable way and a shortcut.) Vim propaganda should stop saying other editors lack composable commands. Even notepad.exe lets me use any of its paltry motion commands[^2] available to select something and then use a generic delete command to delete whatever I selected. "Composability" is the default mode of operation of most text editors. Vim propaganda should focus instead on the very real advantages than Vim's command model has. For example: - dot repeats the whole command/motion pair. This is fabulous! - Vim has counts so you can delete 9 words just as easily as 3 words. (Emacs also has them, but lots of editors don't, and they're superhandy.) - Vim has lots of little variations of the motions and textobjects so you can pick exactly what you need, other editors tend to have fewer. For example, for words, Vim has w, e, aw, iw (and probably others I'm forgetting) which are related but a little bit different. (Also, personally I think Vim bloggers should recognize that those non-composable commands like kill-word are nice optional shortcuts, that are actually a tiny advantage other editors have over Vim. Try playing VimGolf in Emacs --using the nice vimgolf Emacs package, because of course Emacs has a package for that-- and you'll see what I mean.) ---- [^1] OK, techinically C-D is delete-forward-char in the default keybindings, but when a region is active it acts as delete-region. [^2] It's limited to character, word and line, I think. But people forget even the lowly notepad.exe has word motions (all text widgets on Windows do).

frederikvs 10y ago

Can you point me to some documentation from atom or sublime, where they explain which kinds of selections you can make? I wasn't aware that certain editors seem to have many modes of selection, and a quick web search doesn't reveal very much. I'd like to be able to make a comparison with vim's text objects and movements. My gut feeling tells me that vim will still have more "targets" for a command, and more accurate ones, but I'm biased. But the "select text and then apply command", as I understand it, still has a major drawback compared to vim's way of working : the dot-command. In vim, you go "daa" (delete an argument - i.e. delete the argument, including the comma which separates it, if you have the vim-angry plugin). Then you move to another argument, you just press dot, and the same thing happens. Also, does the selection thing accept counts?

omaranto 10y ago
I should stop talking about editors I don't use. Let me focus on Emacs with some comments about Textadept (I've never used Atom and only tried Sublime Text for a day). 1. Yes, the ability to repeat with dot is advantage of the Vim model. Emacs just repeats the command part not the marking part too, not as useful as dot in Vim! 2. In Emacs every command accepts counts, just like Vim. Textadept doesn't offer counts, I believe. I think counts are probably an advantage of Vim and Emacs over most(?) other editors. 3. About Vim having more motions & text objects: Probably, but Emacs is close. Without extra packages you have: words, symbols and S-expressions (the names come from Lisp but these do something sensible in most languages: Symbol is usually identifier and S-expression is something like delimited expression: A string, a parenthesized expression, a block in curly braces or brackets, etc.), lines, sentences, and paragraphs. Texts packages add other targets like LaTeX environment. One thing definitely lacking in Emacs is that Vim usually offers two variants that differ slightly at the ends (like w vs e, or i( vs a(), those minor variations are pretty useful. My point is just the saying other editors don't have the ability to combine commands with different things to operate on is obviously false, and claiming is unlikely to convert anytime to Vim. Instead Vim bloggers should focus on how Vim makes the basic composability idea even better with things like counts, repeatability of composed commands, and richer set of selection commands.
- 10y ago