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I switched from vi to acme a few years ago after watching this video, and I'm still happy with my choice. It took me a while to figure acme out, but it has some

I switched from vi to acme a few years ago after watching this video, and I'm still happy with my choice. It took me a while to figure acme out, but it has some killer features like: - files and command line sessions are both just windows. You can split, move them, and EDIT (including output from CLI commands) anything you want. This feels much more natural than having a dedicated run section in the editor or using a separate terminal (that obviously can't be split next to a file window). - a really short list of commands it supports (very little to memorize). But since it's so easy to interact with acme through the filesystem, you can easily customize your own workflow. For example I wrote https://github.com/mjibson/aw https://github.com/mjibson/aw which is a web interface to Go's guru. But there are at least 2 other acme interfaces to guru, both with different methods of interaction, depending on what the author preferred. Overall I like this a lot more than memorizing a pile of vi shortcut keys. - manipulating text is pretty fast with the mouse + acme's chords and the esc key. - right click to search or go to file:line is much more powerful than you expect.

thatmiddleway 9y ago
"using a separate terminal (that obviously can't be split next to a file window)" Tmux can do that pretty easily!
- henesy 9y ago
  Tmux isn't vi/vim, though. Part of the Plan 9 perspective is realizing that the terminal emulator as we know it today is a hack and should be discounted. This is an example of it, using Tmux to try to stuff functionality that shouldn't be/isn't in the emulator or program in the emulator into the emulator.
- mjibson 9y ago
  As described by the other commentator, this isn't quite the same. My normal workflow is 2 command line windows and ~3-4 open files. Doing this in tmux while trying to maintain the ability to move and split windows at will means that's 3-4 instances of vim. Not a great experience if I want to save all. Also, moving windows in tmux/screen has, for me, always been a huge pain of remembering a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. In acme I just click and drag stuff.
  - jeromenerf 9y ago
    Tmux in vim can be made quite convenient for an acme user : - tmux mouse support gets better every release, so you can actually select, send or exec, there is no chording though. - vim has remote features, so you don't need multiple vim instances. Yoy can "send" to a running vim instance. Vim splits are pretty powerful, buffers being independent. - neovim has :term support too, i would not recommend it Acme found a nice usability sweet spot, mixing an editor with shell and a tiling wm. Tmux and vim can imitate some interesting behaviour such as 3-click to open, but the general behaviour isn't as consistent.

thatmiddleway 9y ago

"using a separate terminal (that obviously can't be split next to a file window)" Tmux can do that pretty easily!

henesy 9y ago
Tmux isn't vi/vim, though. Part of the Plan 9 perspective is realizing that the terminal emulator as we know it today is a hack and should be discounted. This is an example of it, using Tmux to try to stuff functionality that shouldn't be/isn't in the emulator or program in the emulator into the emulator.
mjibson 9y ago
As described by the other commentator, this isn't quite the same. My normal workflow is 2 command line windows and ~3-4 open files. Doing this in tmux while trying to maintain the ability to move and split windows at will means that's 3-4 instances of vim. Not a great experience if I want to save all. Also, moving windows in tmux/screen has, for me, always been a huge pain of remembering a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. In acme I just click and drag stuff.
- jeromenerf 9y ago
  Tmux in vim can be made quite convenient for an acme user : - tmux mouse support gets better every release, so you can actually select, send or exec, there is no chording though. - vim has remote features, so you don't need multiple vim instances. Yoy can "send" to a running vim instance. Vim splits are pretty powerful, buffers being independent. - neovim has :term support too, i would not recommend it Acme found a nice usability sweet spot, mixing an editor with shell and a tiling wm. Tmux and vim can imitate some interesting behaviour such as 3-click to open, but the general behaviour isn't as consistent.