8 ms·

Edit: A text-editor mixing vi and Acme

106 points by caslon 6y ago

tekknolagi 6y ago
Pity it requires X11. I figured it would be a terminal application.
- caslon 6y ago
  Acme is inherently graphical. Moving to a terminal application would be a regression, in this particular case. Then again, X11 is also a regression, in Acme's case.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    Watching the video, this "Edit" editor does look like could work in a terminal. The split screens that come up don't look much different than what you see with tmux, for example. Edit: He mentions it's been updated since the video to use multiple actual windows.
    - caslon 6y ago
      Acme doesn't work in a terminal. Acme is a window manager that can edit text, use multiple fonts simultaneously, revolves around the mouse and has near-perfect synchronicity with the underlying system. Edit's long-term goals list is more or less "become more like Acme."[1] It would be incredibly unfortunate to sacrifice the ability to become more like Acme by shooting yourself in the foot and making it terminal-based, and anyone really in the market for acme with vi characteristics or vice versa probably would realize why the paradigm doesn't work in a purely-TUI manner. [1] https://c9x.me/edit/ideas.txt https://c9x.me/edit/ideas.txt
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    Acme uses devdraw for graphics, and devdraw, on macOS anyway, doesn't require X11.
    - caslon 6y ago
      This was the point, yes. Though Aqua/whatever Mac is calling their thing now is also a downgrade.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  Works also on other graphical systems. Acme itself talks the plan9 graphical protocol which. There is an implementation of that protocol in the plan9 from userspace port (https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man1/devdraw.html https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man1/devdraw.html). I'm using it on macos where it's a native application with retina support and native macos fonts, native macos clipboard etc. IIIRC there is a web implementation too but last time I tried it it didn't work. YMMV
  - butterisgood 6y ago
    Got a link to the web devdraw? That sounds terribly interesting.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      there is https://github.com/sirnewton01/9webdraw https://github.com/sirnewton01/9webdraw but I was too lazy to try to build that with plan9port
- MisterTea 6y ago
  Plan 9 abandoned the ancient concept of the typewriter interface and instead uses a graphical 2d engine called devdraw. With that you can mix and match text with graphics in the same window. We emulate typewriter interfaces in the vt program which is a graphical program that implements a vt terminal. Its 2021, use graphics. Most people want a typewriter interface because they want/need to edit files in an ssh session on a remote server. Plan 9 doesn't do remote teletype control and instead imports/exports resources. Of course plan 9 has ssh but it is split into three separate programs: an ssh client that performs the regular teletype interface to a unix machine, sshnet which imports the remote systems tcp stack, and sshfs which mounts a remote file tree locally. If I wanted to edit text files on a remote unix machine, I'd just mount the file tree locally using sshfs and run sam or acme locally. Bring the resources to you and use your local tool set. Then you don't have to worry if the remote machine has x installed because you don't care.
1MachineElf 6y ago
Speaking of Plan 9 and Vim, readers may also find interesting the Vis editor: https://github.com/martanne/vis https://github.com/martanne/vis
- caslon 6y ago
  A tutorial, if you don't know what it means by being influenced by "sam": http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf
- gbrown_ 6y ago
  Structural regular expressions seem pretty great. If Vis ever gets some Vim features that allow operating across multiple buffers (quickfix et al) I'd probably switch.
  - boogies 6y ago
    Like https://repo.or.cz/vis-quickfix.git https://repo.or.cz/vis-quickfix.git? (More plugins: https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/Plugins https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/Plugins)
    - gbrown_ 6y ago
      That would cover some of my wants but not all of them. Whilst I like the idea of structural regular expressions they're not a big enough of a motivation for me add anything I'd miss to Vis when Vim is "good enough". That said I'm less and less impressed with Vim as time goes on so that will likely change at some point.
      - tharne 6y ago
        I think that's the biggest challenge for a project like this. If it's going to break backward compatibility, it's hard to attract new users even if it's clearly an improvement over vim. Ironically, that was the whole issue with Plan9. It was better, just not a big enough improvement to justify replacing something that was widely viewed as "good enough".
moeris 6y ago
If you want the ability to pipe commands more natively, Kakoune does that. It also improves on vi's commands syntax, and allows multiple selections. I switched to Kakoune after trying to find something more Acme-like for the terminal. In fact, I still use all the scripts that I wrote for Acme. To insert the results of a command, you can use `! <command>`. To pipe, highlight and use `| <command>`. You don't get mouse chording, but I find I don't miss it too much.
- b3n 6y ago
  > It also improves on vi's commands syntax I've never used Kakoune, but reading about it I'm not sure it's an improvement. One powerful vi feature is the dot command, and having verbs act on selections doesn't allow for that in the same way.
  - chongli 6y ago
    I have used Kakoune. I tried it out pretty extensively for a few weeks. I could not get comfortable with it. I've used vi and vim for two decades now. Kakoune seems like it would appeal to people who have moderate exposure to vi/vim but not mastery. From the mastery standpoint, Kakoune seems like a big step down from the vi model. Too many of its commands/selections seemed to give priority to the edge case over the central one. Most of the text editing I've ever done with vi is of the garden-variety "navigate to this line and insert/delete/change one thing". Kakoune makes this more difficult by creating multiple cursors/selections as a side effect of its movement/navigation tools. It's like Kakoune is trying to tell me "no, you want to edit stuff all over the place!" I also think the promise of Kakoune, that you can use selections to see what will happen before you type the command to actually make the change, is violated when there are selections outside of the visible portion of the file. Furthermore, with vi/vim I tend to type commands so quickly that the visual nature of Kakoune would only slow me down, and so at that point the advantage of selections is greatly diminished.
    - rrose 6y ago
      I used to use multiple cursors in sublime before i switched to vim, and 99% of the time the thing i wanted to accomplish with multiple cursors could be done easily with :s/pattern/replacement/ or some variant of that. Then I switched to neovim and got :set inccommand, which visually shows you the replacement as you type it, which feels like it accomplishes what multiple cursors/multiple selections is trying for
tux1968 6y ago
Even though a few people hinted this had to do with Plan 9, I had to look up that Acme refers to a window-system, shell, and editor environment. Here's a link to save you a search if you're in the same boat: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/
- caslon 6y ago
  For a more accurate screenshot than a scan of a picture on a paper that had a screenshot in black-and-white on it: http://acme.cat-v.org/_imgs/obsd_acme.png http://acme.cat-v.org/_imgs/obsd_acme.png Though a screen shot really can't sum up what makes acme so wonderful. Try Russ Cox's A Tour of the Acme Editor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M
anthk 6y ago
Two much context switching, <ESC> + mouse. This is bad :p I prefer a Go clone of Acme, edwood, albeit it's damn slow if you build the plan9port-less port without SSSE3. https://github.com/rjkroege/edwood https://github.com/rjkroege/edwood
yiyus 6y ago
The killer feature of acme (and, previously, sam) are structural regular expressions. As far as I see (and I admit I did not take a deep look), this is more a simple vi-like editor that runs inside an acme-like window manager.

106 points by caslon 6y ago

tekknolagi 6y ago

Pity it requires X11. I figured it would be a terminal application.

caslon 6y ago
Acme is inherently graphical. Moving to a terminal application would be a regression, in this particular case. Then again, X11 is also a regression, in Acme's case.
- tyingq 6y ago
  Watching the video, this "Edit" editor does look like could work in a terminal. The split screens that come up don't look much different than what you see with tmux, for example. Edit: He mentions it's been updated since the video to use multiple actual windows.
  - caslon 6y ago
    Acme doesn't work in a terminal. Acme is a window manager that can edit text, use multiple fonts simultaneously, revolves around the mouse and has near-perfect synchronicity with the underlying system. Edit's long-term goals list is more or less "become more like Acme."[1] It would be incredibly unfortunate to sacrifice the ability to become more like Acme by shooting yourself in the foot and making it terminal-based, and anyone really in the market for acme with vi characteristics or vice versa probably would realize why the paradigm doesn't work in a purely-TUI manner. [1] https://c9x.me/edit/ideas.txt https://c9x.me/edit/ideas.txt
- butterisgood 6y ago
  Acme uses devdraw for graphics, and devdraw, on macOS anyway, doesn't require X11.
  - caslon 6y ago
    This was the point, yes. Though Aqua/whatever Mac is calling their thing now is also a downgrade.
ithkuil 6y ago
Works also on other graphical systems. Acme itself talks the plan9 graphical protocol which. There is an implementation of that protocol in the plan9 from userspace port (https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man1/devdraw.html https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man1/devdraw.html). I'm using it on macos where it's a native application with retina support and native macos fonts, native macos clipboard etc. IIIRC there is a web implementation too but last time I tried it it didn't work. YMMV
- butterisgood 6y ago
  Got a link to the web devdraw? That sounds terribly interesting.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    there is https://github.com/sirnewton01/9webdraw https://github.com/sirnewton01/9webdraw but I was too lazy to try to build that with plan9port
MisterTea 6y ago
Plan 9 abandoned the ancient concept of the typewriter interface and instead uses a graphical 2d engine called devdraw. With that you can mix and match text with graphics in the same window. We emulate typewriter interfaces in the vt program which is a graphical program that implements a vt terminal. Its 2021, use graphics. Most people want a typewriter interface because they want/need to edit files in an ssh session on a remote server. Plan 9 doesn't do remote teletype control and instead imports/exports resources. Of course plan 9 has ssh but it is split into three separate programs: an ssh client that performs the regular teletype interface to a unix machine, sshnet which imports the remote systems tcp stack, and sshfs which mounts a remote file tree locally. If I wanted to edit text files on a remote unix machine, I'd just mount the file tree locally using sshfs and run sam or acme locally. Bring the resources to you and use your local tool set. Then you don't have to worry if the remote machine has x installed because you don't care.

1MachineElf 6y ago

Speaking of Plan 9 and Vim, readers may also find interesting the Vis editor: https://github.com/martanne/vis https://github.com/martanne/vis

caslon 6y ago
A tutorial, if you don't know what it means by being influenced by "sam": http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf
gbrown_ 6y ago
Structural regular expressions seem pretty great. If Vis ever gets some Vim features that allow operating across multiple buffers (quickfix et al) I'd probably switch.
- boogies 6y ago
  Like https://repo.or.cz/vis-quickfix.git https://repo.or.cz/vis-quickfix.git? (More plugins: https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/Plugins https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/Plugins)
  - gbrown_ 6y ago
    That would cover some of my wants but not all of them. Whilst I like the idea of structural regular expressions they're not a big enough of a motivation for me add anything I'd miss to Vis when Vim is "good enough". That said I'm less and less impressed with Vim as time goes on so that will likely change at some point.
    - tharne 6y ago
      I think that's the biggest challenge for a project like this. If it's going to break backward compatibility, it's hard to attract new users even if it's clearly an improvement over vim. Ironically, that was the whole issue with Plan9. It was better, just not a big enough improvement to justify replacing something that was widely viewed as "good enough".

moeris 6y ago

If you want the ability to pipe commands more natively, Kakoune does that. It also improves on vi's commands syntax, and allows multiple selections. I switched to Kakoune after trying to find something more Acme-like for the terminal. In fact, I still use all the scripts that I wrote for Acme. To insert the results of a command, you can use `! <command>`. To pipe, highlight and use `| <command>`. You don't get mouse chording, but I find I don't miss it too much.

b3n 6y ago
> It also improves on vi's commands syntax I've never used Kakoune, but reading about it I'm not sure it's an improvement. One powerful vi feature is the dot command, and having verbs act on selections doesn't allow for that in the same way.
- chongli 6y ago
  I have used Kakoune. I tried it out pretty extensively for a few weeks. I could not get comfortable with it. I've used vi and vim for two decades now. Kakoune seems like it would appeal to people who have moderate exposure to vi/vim but not mastery. From the mastery standpoint, Kakoune seems like a big step down from the vi model. Too many of its commands/selections seemed to give priority to the edge case over the central one. Most of the text editing I've ever done with vi is of the garden-variety "navigate to this line and insert/delete/change one thing". Kakoune makes this more difficult by creating multiple cursors/selections as a side effect of its movement/navigation tools. It's like Kakoune is trying to tell me "no, you want to edit stuff all over the place!" I also think the promise of Kakoune, that you can use selections to see what will happen before you type the command to actually make the change, is violated when there are selections outside of the visible portion of the file. Furthermore, with vi/vim I tend to type commands so quickly that the visual nature of Kakoune would only slow me down, and so at that point the advantage of selections is greatly diminished.
  - rrose 6y ago
    I used to use multiple cursors in sublime before i switched to vim, and 99% of the time the thing i wanted to accomplish with multiple cursors could be done easily with :s/pattern/replacement/ or some variant of that. Then I switched to neovim and got :set inccommand, which visually shows you the replacement as you type it, which feels like it accomplishes what multiple cursors/multiple selections is trying for

tux1968 6y ago

Even though a few people hinted this had to do with Plan 9, I had to look up that Acme refers to a window-system, shell, and editor environment. Here's a link to save you a search if you're in the same boat: http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/acme/

caslon 6y ago
For a more accurate screenshot than a scan of a picture on a paper that had a screenshot in black-and-white on it: http://acme.cat-v.org/_imgs/obsd_acme.png http://acme.cat-v.org/_imgs/obsd_acme.png Though a screen shot really can't sum up what makes acme so wonderful. Try Russ Cox's A Tour of the Acme Editor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M

anthk 6y ago

Two much context switching, <ESC> + mouse. This is bad :p I prefer a Go clone of Acme, edwood, albeit it's damn slow if you build the plan9port-less port without SSSE3. https://github.com/rjkroege/edwood https://github.com/rjkroege/edwood

yiyus 6y ago

The killer feature of acme (and, previously, sam) are structural regular expressions. As far as I see (and I admit I did not take a deep look), this is more a simple vi-like editor that runs inside an acme-like window manager.