4 ms·

I used vim for 20 years, up until about a month ago when I tried kakoune. It's got a new approach to modal editing that I really dig, which makes me realize th

I used vim for 20 years, up until about a month ago when I tried kakoune. It's got a new approach to modal editing that I really dig, which makes me realize the thing I loved about vim was that for a long time it was the best modal text editor around. I still think vim is a great project, but kakoune takes a refreshing approach that really clicked for me.

exDM69 10y ago
Thanks for the pointer. I am getting more and more frustrated with Vim (and neovim is not what I am looking for) and looking for alternatives. I did try "vis" a while ago and it was alright but not quite there yet. And it was a bit too "sickness" for my taste, e.g. requires shell scripts for completion to ":open". I do intend to try it again some time but I'll also give kakoune a go. https://github.com/martanne/vis https://github.com/martanne/vis
- sevensor 10y ago
  I haven't tried vis, although it too looks like a pretty solid project. > I did try "vis" a while ago and it was alright but not quite there yet. And it was a bit too "sickness" for my taste, e.g. requires shell scripts for completion to ":open". With regard to that particular issue, kak has a great fuzzy-finder. edit: It also apparently integrates with ranger, although I haven't tried that.
  - exDM69 10y ago
    It works very well but is still work in progress. I appreciate that it's "just an editor" and not a half-assed IDE or an application framework. But I think they might have taken it a step too far.
- aeosynth 10y ago
  I've been using `vis` for a while now, and I agree that it used to be overly minimal, but I've submitted enough issues that it now fits my workflow. Once you get past the friction of it not being vim, you can enjoy multiple cursors, a sane scripting language (Lua), sam's structural regex....
hackuser 10y ago
Don't hold back on us: What are the differences? The strengths and weaknesses?
- aeosynth 10y ago
  my take: the main strength and weakness is that kakoune is visual mode by default, so you see the effect of your text object commands without guessing (c3fx? c4fx?). having something always highlighted can be annoying.
- sevensor 10y ago
  Fair question! Grammar: kakoune is heavily oriented towards selections. Things that happen in normal mode operate on the current selection. It's like using visual mode in Vim, except it's always on. It takes a little getting used to, since any cursor move changes the current selection. Part of its selection orientation is excellent support for multiple cursors. Platforms: POSIX only. No support for odd platforms. If you want to use it on Windows, you have to use Cygwin. Packaging: basically non-existant. You pull it from github and build it yourself. Maturity: kakoune doesn't have version numbers as far as I can tell. I've had it crash on me, but it's rare. Community: tiny but vibrant. There's #kakoune on freenode, which the core team seems to monitor pretty actively. Syntax highlighting: yes, and it's more flexible than vim's. You can use it to roll your own colorcolumn, for instance. Code folding and line wrap: these aren't there in kak, and I do miss them, but not enough to go back to vim Tmux integration: awesome in kak, absent in vim. One of my new favorite things. In general, you can have multiple editors attached to the same session. Automation / configuration: There's no such thing as kakscript, which I see as a plus. Nevertheless, you can do a lot of stuff here; I haven't scratched the surface, but there are lots of interesting example kakrc files out there.
  - tux1968 10y ago
    Thanks for pointing out this project. It looks interesting. Just to your point on packaging.. I googled and had it installed and running on Fedora in about 5 minutes after reading your post. There are individual instructions and packages for many distributions listed here: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune#2-getting-started https://github.com/mawww/kakoune#2-getting-started On Fedora it was literally 2 commands to install: $ dnf copr enable jkonecny/kakoune ; dnf install kakoune And then just "kak" to run it and play around a bit :-)
fra 10y ago
Kakoune is neat, but the lack of a windows version makes it a non-starter for me (I need Windows, Linux, OSX to cover my use cases).
- sevensor 10y ago
  If running cygwin doesn't annoy the pants off of you, it works great in MinTTY/tmux.
- flukus 10y ago
  If your running cygwin it's easy to build.

exDM69 10y ago

Thanks for the pointer. I am getting more and more frustrated with Vim (and neovim is not what I am looking for) and looking for alternatives. I did try "vis" a while ago and it was alright but not quite there yet. And it was a bit too "sickness" for my taste, e.g. requires shell scripts for completion to ":open". I do intend to try it again some time but I'll also give kakoune a go. https://github.com/martanne/vis https://github.com/martanne/vis

sevensor 10y ago
I haven't tried vis, although it too looks like a pretty solid project. > I did try "vis" a while ago and it was alright but not quite there yet. And it was a bit too "sickness" for my taste, e.g. requires shell scripts for completion to ":open". With regard to that particular issue, kak has a great fuzzy-finder. edit: It also apparently integrates with ranger, although I haven't tried that.
- exDM69 10y ago
  It works very well but is still work in progress. I appreciate that it's "just an editor" and not a half-assed IDE or an application framework. But I think they might have taken it a step too far.
aeosynth 10y ago
I've been using `vis` for a while now, and I agree that it used to be overly minimal, but I've submitted enough issues that it now fits my workflow. Once you get past the friction of it not being vim, you can enjoy multiple cursors, a sane scripting language (Lua), sam's structural regex....

hackuser 10y ago

Don't hold back on us: What are the differences? The strengths and weaknesses?

aeosynth 10y ago
my take: the main strength and weakness is that kakoune is visual mode by default, so you see the effect of your text object commands without guessing (c3fx? c4fx?). having something always highlighted can be annoying.
sevensor 10y ago
Fair question! Grammar: kakoune is heavily oriented towards selections. Things that happen in normal mode operate on the current selection. It's like using visual mode in Vim, except it's always on. It takes a little getting used to, since any cursor move changes the current selection. Part of its selection orientation is excellent support for multiple cursors. Platforms: POSIX only. No support for odd platforms. If you want to use it on Windows, you have to use Cygwin. Packaging: basically non-existant. You pull it from github and build it yourself. Maturity: kakoune doesn't have version numbers as far as I can tell. I've had it crash on me, but it's rare. Community: tiny but vibrant. There's #kakoune on freenode, which the core team seems to monitor pretty actively. Syntax highlighting: yes, and it's more flexible than vim's. You can use it to roll your own colorcolumn, for instance. Code folding and line wrap: these aren't there in kak, and I do miss them, but not enough to go back to vim Tmux integration: awesome in kak, absent in vim. One of my new favorite things. In general, you can have multiple editors attached to the same session. Automation / configuration: There's no such thing as kakscript, which I see as a plus. Nevertheless, you can do a lot of stuff here; I haven't scratched the surface, but there are lots of interesting example kakrc files out there.
- tux1968 10y ago
  Thanks for pointing out this project. It looks interesting. Just to your point on packaging.. I googled and had it installed and running on Fedora in about 5 minutes after reading your post. There are individual instructions and packages for many distributions listed here: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune#2-getting-started https://github.com/mawww/kakoune#2-getting-started On Fedora it was literally 2 commands to install: $ dnf copr enable jkonecny/kakoune ; dnf install kakoune And then just "kak" to run it and play around a bit :-)

fra 10y ago

Kakoune is neat, but the lack of a windows version makes it a non-starter for me (I need Windows, Linux, OSX to cover my use cases).

sevensor 10y ago
If running cygwin doesn't annoy the pants off of you, it works great in MinTTY/tmux.
flukus 10y ago
If your running cygwin it's easy to build.