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I'm really interested in seeing what the "vim inspired command-mode" is all about. Anyone know where I can see a screencast? (Having said that, I seriously dou

by edanm 16y ago

I'm really interested in seeing what the "vim inspired command-mode" is all about. Anyone know where I can see a screencast? (Having said that, I seriously doubt anyone can pry me from my Sublime Text. Multiple-cursor editing is just a much better model for editing than anything I've ever seen before or since).

CWIZO 16y ago
Watch the screencast. This editor also has multiple-cursor editing.
- edanm 16y ago
  As far as I see, it isn't "true" multiple-cursor editing like Sublime has. At least as far as I could tell from the video. The difference being, in true multi-cursor selections, you actually have several cursors which behave like cursors. So, for example, you can do "ctrl+right", and all the cursors move forward one word. Even if all the words are a different length, the cursors behave correctly. This seems like a small deal but is actually huge. I'm planning to write up a post about it some day, but I'd encourage anyone interested to check out Sublime Text's multiple editing if you have some time.
  - CWIZO 16y ago
    I'd have to check E if it has this feature or not. I must say that I enjoy using it in Sublime very much. Quite frankly, multiple-cursors feature is a deal breaker for me. I'll consider switching to E if it get's SFTP support so I can remove WinSCP from my workflow.
  - naner 16y ago
    I can't imagine a situation where this functionality would be useful. Can you give an example?
    - ghfdrvtsyup 16y ago
      I'm not sure exactly the type of functionality he's talking about, but in a shared session, the ability of two people to modify a file simultaneously would be extremely useful in certain circumstances.
    - sanswork 16y ago
      When one doesn't know how to use regexs for S&R?
      - tene 16y ago
        Then you spend ten minutes learning the basics of a very powerful, widely-used tool that will support your text-editing tasks for many years to come. I've often seen reluctance to actually put in time to learn powerful tools. I plan to be programming and working as a sysadmin for many years to come, and it's obvious to me that the sooner I learn to use more-powerful tools, the greater the benefit is to me over the rest of my programming career. You can get the basics of regular expressions down in an hour or so, and progressively learn more as you encounter it, and that benefit will pay off repeatedly, and yet I've seen many people refusing to learn things like that. Anyone have any insight into this?
        edanm 16y ago
        I think it's a mix. First, learning is hard. Even if it's worth the time, it's still hard. Easier to be lazy and not learn anything, even if you know better. Second, most new tools are not worth learning. More importantly, learning all the tools that make you better is definitely a wrong move. So people are naturally reluctant: they figure if it's really important, they'll learn it eventually when they run into it again (like the proverbial sysadmin who doesn't do anything unless he's asked to do it 4 times).
    - edanm 16y ago
      When I get some time, I'll write it up more fully with some screencasts. For now, I'll try explaining: the way I think of it is, it lets you do the exact same thing as macros, except live. Macros in vim/emacs/others are often touted as a great feature, and they are. In vim for example, formatting a huge column of, say, html text involves formatting one row using the proper keyboard commands, then repeating the action multiple times. But with multiple selection, you can operate on all the rows at once, easily seeing what it is you're doing and how it's affecting all the rows. Maybe even more importantly, it makes it much easier to do activities you wouldn't dream of doing in a macro, since it's much easier and more light-weight. For example, say I have two very similar if statements, one which deals with case "x" and one with case "y". Say I wanted to add a small piece of code to both. I can, with one command, select both "if"s, then just write away that piece of code. Lets say each "if" has a different variable name, I can actually move the cursor up to the variable name, select the name, then paste it every time I need to use it. This is the kind of repetitive task that happens a lot in real-life code, but which you would never use a macro for since it takes to long to make work. With multiple cursors, it works easily. Summary: multiple cursors make macro-like things 20 times more intuitive and much easier in practice, meaning you use them more, meaning you do less repetitive stuff. Hope that helps explain it; for more details, you'll have to wait/check out Sublime yourself.
  - frio 16y ago
    I believe it is "true" multi-cursor (I went from e -> Sublime, and used it semi-frequently), but you'd have to test to confirm (I only used a limited subset of the functionality). Regardless, I really, really love Sublime too. I wish it was available on other platforms.
- Popcorn 16y ago
  Which screen-cast are you referring to? The one on the front page is the old e.

by edanm 16y ago

CWIZO 16y ago

Watch the screencast. This editor also has multiple-cursor editing.

edanm 16y ago
As far as I see, it isn't "true" multiple-cursor editing like Sublime has. At least as far as I could tell from the video. The difference being, in true multi-cursor selections, you actually have several cursors which behave like cursors. So, for example, you can do "ctrl+right", and all the cursors move forward one word. Even if all the words are a different length, the cursors behave correctly. This seems like a small deal but is actually huge. I'm planning to write up a post about it some day, but I'd encourage anyone interested to check out Sublime Text's multiple editing if you have some time.
- CWIZO 16y ago
  I'd have to check E if it has this feature or not. I must say that I enjoy using it in Sublime very much. Quite frankly, multiple-cursors feature is a deal breaker for me. I'll consider switching to E if it get's SFTP support so I can remove WinSCP from my workflow.
- naner 16y ago
  I can't imagine a situation where this functionality would be useful. Can you give an example?
  - ghfdrvtsyup 16y ago
    I'm not sure exactly the type of functionality he's talking about, but in a shared session, the ability of two people to modify a file simultaneously would be extremely useful in certain circumstances.
  - sanswork 16y ago
    When one doesn't know how to use regexs for S&R?
    - tene 16y ago
      Then you spend ten minutes learning the basics of a very powerful, widely-used tool that will support your text-editing tasks for many years to come. I've often seen reluctance to actually put in time to learn powerful tools. I plan to be programming and working as a sysadmin for many years to come, and it's obvious to me that the sooner I learn to use more-powerful tools, the greater the benefit is to me over the rest of my programming career. You can get the basics of regular expressions down in an hour or so, and progressively learn more as you encounter it, and that benefit will pay off repeatedly, and yet I've seen many people refusing to learn things like that. Anyone have any insight into this?
      - edanm 16y ago
        I think it's a mix. First, learning is hard. Even if it's worth the time, it's still hard. Easier to be lazy and not learn anything, even if you know better. Second, most new tools are not worth learning. More importantly, learning all the tools that make you better is definitely a wrong move. So people are naturally reluctant: they figure if it's really important, they'll learn it eventually when they run into it again (like the proverbial sysadmin who doesn't do anything unless he's asked to do it 4 times).
  - edanm 16y ago
    When I get some time, I'll write it up more fully with some screencasts. For now, I'll try explaining: the way I think of it is, it lets you do the exact same thing as macros, except live. Macros in vim/emacs/others are often touted as a great feature, and they are. In vim for example, formatting a huge column of, say, html text involves formatting one row using the proper keyboard commands, then repeating the action multiple times. But with multiple selection, you can operate on all the rows at once, easily seeing what it is you're doing and how it's affecting all the rows. Maybe even more importantly, it makes it much easier to do activities you wouldn't dream of doing in a macro, since it's much easier and more light-weight. For example, say I have two very similar if statements, one which deals with case "x" and one with case "y". Say I wanted to add a small piece of code to both. I can, with one command, select both "if"s, then just write away that piece of code. Lets say each "if" has a different variable name, I can actually move the cursor up to the variable name, select the name, then paste it every time I need to use it. This is the kind of repetitive task that happens a lot in real-life code, but which you would never use a macro for since it takes to long to make work. With multiple cursors, it works easily. Summary: multiple cursors make macro-like things 20 times more intuitive and much easier in practice, meaning you use them more, meaning you do less repetitive stuff. Hope that helps explain it; for more details, you'll have to wait/check out Sublime yourself.
- frio 16y ago
  I believe it is "true" multi-cursor (I went from e -> Sublime, and used it semi-frequently), but you'd have to test to confirm (I only used a limited subset of the functionality). Regardless, I really, really love Sublime too. I wish it was available on other platforms.
Popcorn 16y ago
Which screen-cast are you referring to? The one on the front page is the old e.