7 ms·

Kakoune – A Modal Text Editor

144 points by bibyte 8y ago

tombert 8y ago
I saw this about a year ago, since I was curious if there were any editors outside of the Vi(m) family to embrace modal editing. I installed it and then forgot about it. Sadly, even though this looks amazing, I don't see myself using it until most of the plugins I use for Vim have been ported over. Does anyone here use Kakoune as their daily driver? Do you feel it's worth the switch from Vim?
- petepete 8y ago
  I posted it on here some time last year and tried switching from Vim. The only thing stopping me was my inability to configure it to use different indentation settings per file type. I'll definitely try again at some point. I love Vim and have used it for nearly twenty years, but Kakoune's grammar just makes more sense in several ways.
- sevensor 8y ago
  I switched from Vim to Kakoune about two years ago, after nearly 20 years of vi / vim. Being essentially in visual mode all the time clicked for me very fast. Since I don't use plugins, there was nothing holding me back. I still use vi / vim for some of the usual suspects. I haven't bothered to change my $EDITOR, so I always default into vi unless I explicitly invoke kak. (Like right now, w3m invoked vi for me to write this comment.) And then there's visudo, which is far too much of a pain to set up for using kak. And kak doesn't to my knowledge have anything like vimdiff. Also, it doesn't work as well for what I call "interactive sed," where you do a global regex replacement. For ordinary source code editing though, I'm not going back. Selection-oriented editing with multiple cursors is just too much fun.
  - thristian 8y ago
    One of my favourite things about Kakoune is global regex replacement. In Vim, it usually goes like: - Type `:%s/` - Spend 30 seconds thinking up a regex which will hopefully match all the things I want to change, and none of the things I don't - Write it out, hit Enter - Run my tests, or run "git diff", or generally review the changes, and find a bunch of stuff is broken - undo, restart from scratch You can sometimes avoid screwing up the entire file with the "c" flag that asks for confirmation for each change, but it's too easy to get bored and distracted and type "y" too many times. In Kakoune, a global regex replacement goes like: - Type `%s` - Spend five seconds thinking up a regex that approximately matches the things I want to change - Interactively do any additional adjustments that are difficult to express in regex, like the `M` command that extends the selection to the next matching bracket - Cycle through matches with `(` and `)`, checking to see if they're what I expected - If not, I can remove individual selections with Alt-Space, or just hit %s and adjust my regex - Type `c` and actually make the change Because of the whole "multiple cursors" thing, I can get fast feedback on each part of the process, so I can get the result I want much more quickly.
    - gopher_protocol 8y ago
      I'm not arguing that Kakoune's way isn't better (I think it probably is). But you can sort of do this in Vim as well, minus the more advanced interactive adjustments: - :set hlsearch - Type `/` - Spend five seconds thinking up a regex that approximately matches the things I want to change - Hit Enter - Cycle through matches with `n`/`N`, checking to see if they're what I expected - If they're not, press `/` then <Up> and edit the regex - When satisfied, type `:%s//`, enter the replacement you want to make, then `/g<Enter>` to apply the change everywhere
      - Deimorz 8y ago
        You can also just change the command to something like :%s/regex/replacement/gc The "c" modifier makes you confirm each replacement, and you can y/n for each of them.
    - sevensor 8y ago
      Much as I love kak, multiple selections can work against you for this use case. If the file is big enough, and there are enough matches, kak falls over long before vim breaks a sweat. I'm happy to use vim for one thing and kak for another.
    - cesnja 8y ago
      I'm not sure what's the library providing the functionality, but regex replace is super nice in the Spacemacs emacs distribution. It takes the same arguments as vim, but shows and highlights the changes your regex will do while you're writing it out.
- TeddyDD 8y ago
  I've been using it as daily driver for a while. I switched when I realized I'm constantly tried to use Kakoune editing commands in Spacemacs... Do you mind listing plugins you miss? That's probably depends on use-case but my impression is most of essential stuff is already available.
  - tombert 8y ago
    I don't mind, but I currently use Fireplace for Clojure, Intero NeoVim for Haskell, and the vim-fsharp plugin. As far as I'm aware, there are no direct ports of those for Kakoune.
    - TeddyDD 8y ago
      Fair point, Kakoune still lacks when it comes to in-depth integration with tools for specific languages. There is good LSP integration but unfortunately LSP alone won't turn editor into IDE.
andrewla 8y ago
I've been trying out Kakoune for a while, using it in parallel with neovim. The differences in keystrokes are tricky but I've found that I can compartmentalize (0, $, and x are dramatically different and in my frequently used category for vim). The biggest gripe I have is that there is no differentiation between selection mode and regular mode, which makes line selection or line deletion more complicated than it has to be -- 'xd' will delete the current line, unless the current line is empty, in which case it will delete the next line. The reason for that makes sense in kakoune's model, which is that when the cursor is sitting on the EOL of the current line, the trailing \n is selected, and 'x' will select until the next \n (to support moving forward if the current line is entirely selected). Otherwise the model is very nice, and the programming model (which is basically "let shell scripts do the heavy lifting") is actually surprisingly nice for implementing extensions.
enricozb 8y ago
Using kakoune for the first time made me understand how much better the vim keybindings could be. I switched the weird begin & end of line navigations (0 and $) to (gl and gr) as they are in Kakoune, and I also added the move view (v* in kakoune) commands to vim. Also my goodness having built-in multiple cursors is fantastic. Kakoune multiple cursors is much much better than the vim plugins for multiple cursors. As other people have said though, there are some plugins that have yet to be ported to kakoune. iirc smooth scrolling (comfortable-motion) and vim-wiki to name the ones that come to my mind.
- angleofrepose 8y ago
  That's a cool idea with gl and gr. I've never used 0 and $ in vim, D or C get me to the end, and I have what is probably an anti-patter in hitting I<esc> or A<esc> to get to beginning or end otherwise. Or its a change inside quotes or parens or db. One funny anti-pattern I just noticed I have recently is when editing the last line I've written in notes I'll open a new line with O then immediately exit to normal mode, only to have the next thing I do be to hit i for insert. I guess my long winded point is that it's easy to have anti-patterns sneak up on you and it's nice to see someone else's re-designed keybindings on a modal style interface to spur reflection on our own setups.
  - anreekoh 8y ago
    I still sometimes have the A<esc> anti-pattern. It's slowly been disappearing since I added gl. The kakoune keybindings were designed with a lot of thought behind them. They seem extremely natural. Also, I meant to say that the my replacements for 0, $, gg, and G are gh, gl, gk, gj. 'g' for 'go' and 'hjkl' for the standard up, down, left, or right.
eindiran 8y ago
I tried Kakoune for a few days a while ago. Mostly I was in a position where I stumbled a lot from things not lining up exactly with Vim, but I also didn't see what advantages I'd get from switching over. Can someone who has used both Vim and Kakoune describe why you might choose to switch?
- sevensor 8y ago
  In my case, I was always in visual mode. The mental gymnastics required to figure out what motion comprehends the text I'm interested in was too distracting otherwise. So when I tried kak, it was easy to pick it up -- like visual mode, but always on. And with what I found to be a very consistent set of keybindings.
honkycat 8y ago
I have been interested in Kakoune before, and I have never been able to nail this answer down: Does Kakoune feature IDE-style omnicompletion? Like Elixir module name and function completion.
- andrewla 8y ago
  To some degree; your best bet is LSP integration but so far things have been a little flakier than I like because my environment is strange. But given the architecture of their extensibility model I'm extremely optimistic.
- sevensor 8y ago
  I believe kak supports LSP, although I haven't tried. By default, it offers you completions from all of your open buffers.
smacktoward 8y ago
Me personally, I'm more of a Larry Tesler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler) kind of guy: > [Tesler's] career forms a link from the pioneering work of Doug Engelbart, Stu Card and Tim Mott, to the emergence of a dominant design for the PC, as described by Bill Atkinson, Cordell Ratzlaff and Paul Bradley. When he was at Apple, Larry Tesler had a license plate saying “NO MODES.” (from http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler)
- abraae 8y ago
  Also a rule from the CEO in the book "Soul Of A New Machine", who commanded his engineers "No mode switch".
- majewsky 8y ago
  > NO MODES That's a lie though. All GUIs have modes all over the place. For example: - When I click into a text field, I go into Insert mode. - When I tab away from the text field, I'm in some sort of Select mode. These are clearly different modes because keys will do different things depending on the situation (e.g. [Space] in Select mode will click the focused button, but in Insert mode will insert text into the focused text field).
jsf01 8y ago
The way I use vim is predomenantly as a plugin to give modal editing powers to my editor of choice (Sublime, Atom, VSCode, etc.) I would love to be able to try out Kakoune in that way. Do any such plugins exist?
- Arcuru 8y ago
  Last I looked (maybe a year ago) there were none. I have the same concern you do, I could use it directly but I need to use other environments often enough that I'd constantly be switching back and forth.
hirundo 8y ago
From the screenshots, apparently they decided that what's really missing from modal editors was Clippy!? Oh, wait: https://github.com/gbigwood/Clippo https://github.com/gbigwood/Clippo
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  __ / \ _____________ | | / \ @ @ | I make Vim | || || | much more | || || <--| friendly | |\_/| | and easy. | \___/ \_____________/
snazz 8y ago
Is there an Evil mode equivalent for using these keybindings in Emacs? In fact, can Evil be extended to support Kakoune bindings? I’d like to try out the paradigm without losing my current productivity.
- celeritascelery 8y ago
  > In fact, can Evil be extended to support Kakoune bindings? Of course. I just don’t think it has been done yet. Was tempted to try it myself.
  - celeritascelery 8y ago
    EDIT: Here is reddit discussion about it https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/926a9n/kakoune_editing_model_in_emacs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/926a9n/kakoune_editi...
- clircle 8y ago
  I can't tell from the readme. What keybindings are available in Kakoune that aren't in Vi/Evil?
  - snazz 8y ago
    In its most basic form, the order is reversed so that the selection is specified before the action, like visual mode in Vim but on all the time and a little more powerful. It feels much more interactive than the vi design.
    - clircle 8y ago
      That actually sounds pretty neat.
asdkhadsj 8y ago
Been using Kakoune for .. no idea, a year+ now after many years in Vim. It's great. It has some things I dislike (like reliance on shell for idiomatic plugins), but overall the meat of Kakoune - ie the selection based editing is something I cannot live without. These days I tire of Terminal programming and have been wanting to escape it for more rich UIs, but while I have been searching I am confident my end choice must support modal editing and selection behavior akin to Kakoune - so I can replicate the UX of Kakoune. As it stands I imagine my choice will be Xi Editor, once it gets better support for modal editing and multiple cursors.
dang 8y ago
Discussed in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028
andrewla 8y ago
I like that there's a push now for these reconsiderings of older systems that are still in common use. Vi/vim has been around forever, and has survived all sorts of other editors emerging as competitors. Kakoune is an interesting concept because most post-vi editors have abandoned modality, and Kakoune embraces it wholeheartedly in an attempt to capture the essence of what makes vi powerful and attractive for a certain type of user, but trying to ditch some of the historical ed/ex syntax and thought patterns that make vi weirdly inconsistent. I don't think kakoune is quite there -- I think the multi-selection gimmick is not strong enough to be worth being first-class (especially the way that search-and-replace works), too many common operations are chorded, and there's no selection "mode" -- you have to remember to keep pressing 'J' as long as you want to grow the selection; one 'j' and you're lost. In programming languages I think we're seeing this happening also; C has remained a prominent language despite its age and the number of C-killers that have emerged over the years, and now we're seeing a resurgence of projects that are really trying to preserve something at the heart of C that has made it attractive for so long, but that even the most jaded systems programmer can see are not ideal, like the fact that types precede names in variable declarations, or the lack of a keyword for function or variable declaration that make it hard to grep, or the superfluous parens in ifs and fors that are obviated by mandatory blocks, or the default pass-through behavior in switch statements. Previous attempts, like C++ and D, have diverged too much from the simplicity of "I can imagine what the assembly code for this function will look like based on the compiler in my head", Rust has some attraction, but nim and zig and Jai and v are all emerging to nuzzle into that niche by restricting their feature set.
- F-0X 8y ago
  >even the most jaded systems programmer can see are not ideal, like the fact that types precede names in variable declarations, Honestly, I find it shocking anybody can hold this opinion. I hate that every single new language insists on types being on the right. I searched for a reason why this is, and typically the results are along the lines of type inference being easier to implement. I'd prefer to take no inference at all and have my types on the left, where they belong. I'm totally serious. Types on the right are a readability disaster.
jonstaab 8y ago
I've been using Kakoune for about a year, after a year of vim, after several years of Sublime. It has its warts, but it's way above and beyond anything I've used before. Whenever I use another editor I feel freakishly slow now. The big non-editing related thing it did for me was to make me appreciate the unix way — it really does one thing really well, leaving window management to tmux, and plugins to shell scripting, while maintaining its own client-server architecture to decouple various components. I'm not a huge fan of tmux or bash for scripting, but the open-endedness of kakoune's architecture on top of the great editing model really makes it a safe choice to invest in.
SebiH 8y ago
For me, the advantage of vim no longer lies within the original vim editor, but in its ubiquity -- I can have all the advantages of Sublime Text, VS Code or whatever and still use (mostly) the same keybindings thanks to various vim plugins. I'd consider switching if there was a viable plugin for my current main editor or, better yet, something similar that NeoVim is trying to achieve (i.e. running actual vim as background process for these plugins instead of emulating).
celeritascelery 8y ago
I found this analysis interesting https://github.com/noctuid/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/editing.org#why-not-kakoune https://github.com/noctuid/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/editin...

144 points by bibyte 8y ago

I saw this about a year ago, since I was curious if there were any editors outside of the Vi(m) family to embrace modal editing. I installed it and then forgot about it. Sadly, even though this looks amazing, I don't see myself using it until most of the plugins I use for Vim have been ported over. Does anyone here use Kakoune as their daily driver? Do you feel it's worth the switch from Vim?

petepete 8y ago
I posted it on here some time last year and tried switching from Vim. The only thing stopping me was my inability to configure it to use different indentation settings per file type. I'll definitely try again at some point. I love Vim and have used it for nearly twenty years, but Kakoune's grammar just makes more sense in several ways.
sevensor 8y ago
I switched from Vim to Kakoune about two years ago, after nearly 20 years of vi / vim. Being essentially in visual mode all the time clicked for me very fast. Since I don't use plugins, there was nothing holding me back. I still use vi / vim for some of the usual suspects. I haven't bothered to change my $EDITOR, so I always default into vi unless I explicitly invoke kak. (Like right now, w3m invoked vi for me to write this comment.) And then there's visudo, which is far too much of a pain to set up for using kak. And kak doesn't to my knowledge have anything like vimdiff. Also, it doesn't work as well for what I call "interactive sed," where you do a global regex replacement. For ordinary source code editing though, I'm not going back. Selection-oriented editing with multiple cursors is just too much fun.
- thristian 8y ago
  One of my favourite things about Kakoune is global regex replacement. In Vim, it usually goes like: - Type `:%s/` - Spend 30 seconds thinking up a regex which will hopefully match all the things I want to change, and none of the things I don't - Write it out, hit Enter - Run my tests, or run "git diff", or generally review the changes, and find a bunch of stuff is broken - undo, restart from scratch You can sometimes avoid screwing up the entire file with the "c" flag that asks for confirmation for each change, but it's too easy to get bored and distracted and type "y" too many times. In Kakoune, a global regex replacement goes like: - Type `%s` - Spend five seconds thinking up a regex that approximately matches the things I want to change - Interactively do any additional adjustments that are difficult to express in regex, like the `M` command that extends the selection to the next matching bracket - Cycle through matches with `(` and `)`, checking to see if they're what I expected - If not, I can remove individual selections with Alt-Space, or just hit %s and adjust my regex - Type `c` and actually make the change Because of the whole "multiple cursors" thing, I can get fast feedback on each part of the process, so I can get the result I want much more quickly.
  - gopher_protocol 8y ago
    I'm not arguing that Kakoune's way isn't better (I think it probably is). But you can sort of do this in Vim as well, minus the more advanced interactive adjustments: - :set hlsearch - Type `/` - Spend five seconds thinking up a regex that approximately matches the things I want to change - Hit Enter - Cycle through matches with `n`/`N`, checking to see if they're what I expected - If they're not, press `/` then <Up> and edit the regex - When satisfied, type `:%s//`, enter the replacement you want to make, then `/g<Enter>` to apply the change everywhere
    - Deimorz 8y ago
      You can also just change the command to something like :%s/regex/replacement/gc The "c" modifier makes you confirm each replacement, and you can y/n for each of them.
  - sevensor 8y ago
    Much as I love kak, multiple selections can work against you for this use case. If the file is big enough, and there are enough matches, kak falls over long before vim breaks a sweat. I'm happy to use vim for one thing and kak for another.
  - cesnja 8y ago
    I'm not sure what's the library providing the functionality, but regex replace is super nice in the Spacemacs emacs distribution. It takes the same arguments as vim, but shows and highlights the changes your regex will do while you're writing it out.
TeddyDD 8y ago
I've been using it as daily driver for a while. I switched when I realized I'm constantly tried to use Kakoune editing commands in Spacemacs... Do you mind listing plugins you miss? That's probably depends on use-case but my impression is most of essential stuff is already available.
- tombert 8y ago
  I don't mind, but I currently use Fireplace for Clojure, Intero NeoVim for Haskell, and the vim-fsharp plugin. As far as I'm aware, there are no direct ports of those for Kakoune.
  - TeddyDD 8y ago
    Fair point, Kakoune still lacks when it comes to in-depth integration with tools for specific languages. There is good LSP integration but unfortunately LSP alone won't turn editor into IDE.

andrewla 8y ago

I've been trying out Kakoune for a while, using it in parallel with neovim. The differences in keystrokes are tricky but I've found that I can compartmentalize (0, $, and x are dramatically different and in my frequently used category for vim). The biggest gripe I have is that there is no differentiation between selection mode and regular mode, which makes line selection or line deletion more complicated than it has to be -- 'xd' will delete the current line, unless the current line is empty, in which case it will delete the next line. The reason for that makes sense in kakoune's model, which is that when the cursor is sitting on the EOL of the current line, the trailing \n is selected, and 'x' will select until the next \n (to support moving forward if the current line is entirely selected). Otherwise the model is very nice, and the programming model (which is basically "let shell scripts do the heavy lifting") is actually surprisingly nice for implementing extensions.

enricozb 8y ago

Using kakoune for the first time made me understand how much better the vim keybindings could be. I switched the weird begin & end of line navigations (0 and $) to (gl and gr) as they are in Kakoune, and I also added the move view (v* in kakoune) commands to vim. Also my goodness having built-in multiple cursors is fantastic. Kakoune multiple cursors is much much better than the vim plugins for multiple cursors. As other people have said though, there are some plugins that have yet to be ported to kakoune. iirc smooth scrolling (comfortable-motion) and vim-wiki to name the ones that come to my mind.

angleofrepose 8y ago
That's a cool idea with gl and gr. I've never used 0 and $ in vim, D or C get me to the end, and I have what is probably an anti-patter in hitting I<esc> or A<esc> to get to beginning or end otherwise. Or its a change inside quotes or parens or db. One funny anti-pattern I just noticed I have recently is when editing the last line I've written in notes I'll open a new line with O then immediately exit to normal mode, only to have the next thing I do be to hit i for insert. I guess my long winded point is that it's easy to have anti-patterns sneak up on you and it's nice to see someone else's re-designed keybindings on a modal style interface to spur reflection on our own setups.
- anreekoh 8y ago
  I still sometimes have the A<esc> anti-pattern. It's slowly been disappearing since I added gl. The kakoune keybindings were designed with a lot of thought behind them. They seem extremely natural. Also, I meant to say that the my replacements for 0, $, gg, and G are gh, gl, gk, gj. 'g' for 'go' and 'hjkl' for the standard up, down, left, or right.

eindiran 8y ago

I tried Kakoune for a few days a while ago. Mostly I was in a position where I stumbled a lot from things not lining up exactly with Vim, but I also didn't see what advantages I'd get from switching over. Can someone who has used both Vim and Kakoune describe why you might choose to switch?

sevensor 8y ago
In my case, I was always in visual mode. The mental gymnastics required to figure out what motion comprehends the text I'm interested in was too distracting otherwise. So when I tried kak, it was easy to pick it up -- like visual mode, but always on. And with what I found to be a very consistent set of keybindings.

honkycat 8y ago

I have been interested in Kakoune before, and I have never been able to nail this answer down: Does Kakoune feature IDE-style omnicompletion? Like Elixir module name and function completion.

andrewla 8y ago
To some degree; your best bet is LSP integration but so far things have been a little flakier than I like because my environment is strange. But given the architecture of their extensibility model I'm extremely optimistic.
sevensor 8y ago
I believe kak supports LSP, although I haven't tried. By default, it offers you completions from all of your open buffers.

smacktoward 8y ago

Me personally, I'm more of a Larry Tesler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Tesler) kind of guy: > [Tesler's] career forms a link from the pioneering work of Doug Engelbart, Stu Card and Tim Mott, to the emergence of a dominant design for the PC, as described by Bill Atkinson, Cordell Ratzlaff and Paul Bradley. When he was at Apple, Larry Tesler had a license plate saying “NO MODES.” (from http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/LarryTesler)

abraae 8y ago
Also a rule from the CEO in the book "Soul Of A New Machine", who commanded his engineers "No mode switch".
majewsky 8y ago
> NO MODES That's a lie though. All GUIs have modes all over the place. For example: - When I click into a text field, I go into Insert mode. - When I tab away from the text field, I'm in some sort of Select mode. These are clearly different modes because keys will do different things depending on the situation (e.g. [Space] in Select mode will click the focused button, but in Insert mode will insert text into the focused text field).

jsf01 8y ago

The way I use vim is predomenantly as a plugin to give modal editing powers to my editor of choice (Sublime, Atom, VSCode, etc.) I would love to be able to try out Kakoune in that way. Do any such plugins exist?

Arcuru 8y ago
Last I looked (maybe a year ago) there were none. I have the same concern you do, I could use it directly but I need to use other environments often enough that I'd constantly be switching back and forth.

hirundo 8y ago

From the screenshots, apparently they decided that what's really missing from modal editors was Clippy!? Oh, wait: https://github.com/gbigwood/Clippo https://github.com/gbigwood/Clippo

quickthrower2 8y ago
__ / \ _____________ | | / \ @ @ | I make Vim | || || | much more | || || <--| friendly | |\_/| | and easy. | \___/ \_____________/

snazz 8y ago

Is there an Evil mode equivalent for using these keybindings in Emacs? In fact, can Evil be extended to support Kakoune bindings? I’d like to try out the paradigm without losing my current productivity.

celeritascelery 8y ago
> In fact, can Evil be extended to support Kakoune bindings? Of course. I just don’t think it has been done yet. Was tempted to try it myself.
- celeritascelery 8y ago
  EDIT: Here is reddit discussion about it https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/926a9n/kakoune_editing_model_in_emacs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/926a9n/kakoune_editi...
clircle 8y ago
I can't tell from the readme. What keybindings are available in Kakoune that aren't in Vi/Evil?
- snazz 8y ago
  In its most basic form, the order is reversed so that the selection is specified before the action, like visual mode in Vim but on all the time and a little more powerful. It feels much more interactive than the vi design.
  - clircle 8y ago
    That actually sounds pretty neat.

asdkhadsj 8y ago

Been using Kakoune for .. no idea, a year+ now after many years in Vim. It's great. It has some things I dislike (like reliance on shell for idiomatic plugins), but overall the meat of Kakoune - ie the selection based editing is something I cannot live without. These days I tire of Terminal programming and have been wanting to escape it for more rich UIs, but while I have been searching I am confident my end choice must support modal editing and selection behavior akin to Kakoune - so I can replicate the UX of Kakoune. As it stands I imagine my choice will be Xi Editor, once it gets better support for modal editing and multiple cursors.

dang 8y ago

Discussed in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028

andrewla 8y ago

I like that there's a push now for these reconsiderings of older systems that are still in common use. Vi/vim has been around forever, and has survived all sorts of other editors emerging as competitors. Kakoune is an interesting concept because most post-vi editors have abandoned modality, and Kakoune embraces it wholeheartedly in an attempt to capture the essence of what makes vi powerful and attractive for a certain type of user, but trying to ditch some of the historical ed/ex syntax and thought patterns that make vi weirdly inconsistent. I don't think kakoune is quite there -- I think the multi-selection gimmick is not strong enough to be worth being first-class (especially the way that search-and-replace works), too many common operations are chorded, and there's no selection "mode" -- you have to remember to keep pressing 'J' as long as you want to grow the selection; one 'j' and you're lost. In programming languages I think we're seeing this happening also; C has remained a prominent language despite its age and the number of C-killers that have emerged over the years, and now we're seeing a resurgence of projects that are really trying to preserve something at the heart of C that has made it attractive for so long, but that even the most jaded systems programmer can see are not ideal, like the fact that types precede names in variable declarations, or the lack of a keyword for function or variable declaration that make it hard to grep, or the superfluous parens in ifs and fors that are obviated by mandatory blocks, or the default pass-through behavior in switch statements. Previous attempts, like C++ and D, have diverged too much from the simplicity of "I can imagine what the assembly code for this function will look like based on the compiler in my head", Rust has some attraction, but nim and zig and Jai and v are all emerging to nuzzle into that niche by restricting their feature set.

F-0X 8y ago
>even the most jaded systems programmer can see are not ideal, like the fact that types precede names in variable declarations, Honestly, I find it shocking anybody can hold this opinion. I hate that every single new language insists on types being on the right. I searched for a reason why this is, and typically the results are along the lines of type inference being easier to implement. I'd prefer to take no inference at all and have my types on the left, where they belong. I'm totally serious. Types on the right are a readability disaster.

jonstaab 8y ago

I've been using Kakoune for about a year, after a year of vim, after several years of Sublime. It has its warts, but it's way above and beyond anything I've used before. Whenever I use another editor I feel freakishly slow now. The big non-editing related thing it did for me was to make me appreciate the unix way — it really does one thing really well, leaving window management to tmux, and plugins to shell scripting, while maintaining its own client-server architecture to decouple various components. I'm not a huge fan of tmux or bash for scripting, but the open-endedness of kakoune's architecture on top of the great editing model really makes it a safe choice to invest in.

SebiH 8y ago

For me, the advantage of vim no longer lies within the original vim editor, but in its ubiquity -- I can have all the advantages of Sublime Text, VS Code or whatever and still use (mostly) the same keybindings thanks to various vim plugins. I'd consider switching if there was a viable plugin for my current main editor or, better yet, something similar that NeoVim is trying to achieve (i.e. running actual vim as background process for these plugins instead of emulating).

celeritascelery 8y ago

I found this analysis interesting https://github.com/noctuid/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/editing.org#why-not-kakoune https://github.com/noctuid/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/editin...