6 ms·

Telescope.nvim: Find, Filter, Preview, Pick

153 points by polm23 5y ago

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Is there a generic name for interfaces that use this paradigm, something that would encompass Mac OS X Quicksilver/Alfred/Launchbar/Spotlight search, Chrome's Omnibox, FZF on the command line, Ctrl T/P in IDEs, etc. I really like it and would like to adopt more things that use it. "Fuzzy finders" maybe? That doesn't really capture the autocomplete, hotkey to launch part of it which makes up the full flow in my mind.
- diatone 5y ago
  If you're happy to ignore that initial part of entering the fuzzy search, "fuzzy search" or "fuzzy find" would have instantly registered in my mind those same examples you brought up. Maybe a qualifier, "on demand" or "by hotkey"?
- iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
  command palette or command bar are terms ive seen used
- strogonoff 5y ago
  Blueprint 3 calls their widget[0] for building this kind of experience “omnibar”. [0] https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#select/omnibar https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#select/omnibar
varbhat 5y ago
Neovim 0.5 is awesome. It has native LSP support, Lua configuration support that it feels like true revolution over past versions. But, getting into optimal setup in neovim/vim involves lot of configuration. Here is mine if you want to refer: https://github.com/varbhat/dotfiles/tree/main/dot_config/nvim https://github.com/varbhat/dotfiles/tree/main/dot_config/nvi...
- jitl 5y ago
  I’ve been meaning to convert my config to Lua. I haven’t tried out the official LSP support; I’ve been using coc.vim (https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim) which supports most of the VSCode plug-in API. Have you tried both? Curious how 0.5’s LSP implementation works for Typescript. (My config is much simpler, a single vim script file: https://github.com/justjake/Dotfiles/blob/new/config/nvim/init.vim https://github.com/justjake/Dotfiles/blob/new/config/nvim/in...)
  - varbhat 5y ago
    Official LSP is lightweight, much faster imo. You can try Typescript's tsserver with neovim-lsp .
    - maddyboo 5y ago
      I’m glad to hear that. I’d heard a lot of good things about coc.nvim so I recently switched to it from languageclient-neovim. I have to say I am not very impressed. I don’t care for the configuration format, it’s not as flexible as I’d like, I don’t like installing npm packages to configure language servers that I already have installed, and it just generally feels sloppy. I guess I’m going to need to break my LSP config yet again as I migrate over to the native client. Hopefully this is the last time…
      - lawn 5y ago
        That was my experience with coc as well. After getting over the initial configuration native LSP has been working great. Also, you can use telescope to search for LSD definitions, references etc.
- afarrell 5y ago
  I’ve found lunarvim to be another good config baseline: https://github.com/ChristianChiarulli/LunarVim https://github.com/ChristianChiarulli/LunarVim Explained here: https://youtu.be/Qm864kVxAss https://youtu.be/Qm864kVxAss
- 5y ago
jitl 5y ago
Hrm, I already do this with FZF in Neovim. Lots of ways to do a thing with vim!
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I'm not sure a direct link to the GitHub readme does this project justice if you're not already familiar with it (though the documentation is pretty good for someone who already knows what it is). On the other hand I'm not sure how to describe it to a newcomer either, but at least I can do the crass "it's like this thing you may be more familiar with" which projects themselves don't like to say on their sites. So if you use FZF on the command line or in Vim, check this out (there's wrappers for the actual FZF algorithm as well, though not by default), CtrlP is maybe the oldest Vim plugin that does this kind of thing and I think the various IDE implementations (which generally focus more on file or code locations than the Vim ones, which use it to enhance the keyboard interface generally) started with Textmate's Ctrl-T though maybe Sublime version is better known. I'm very bullish on this being the best UI workflow for programmers, since we're dealing with a lot of textual information.
- ruph123 5y ago
  So it’s a fancy fuzzy finder? How is it different/better than fzf? Is it more integrated but therefore less flexible (e.g. less UNIXy)? I read some early report on the neovim reddit where people complained that it was slower than fzf. So I did not bother looking into it more, also because no one could really explain it well.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Yes, it's a fancy fuzzy finder for NeoVim. If you're already familiar with and enjoy FZF or CtrlP-like fuzzy finders in Vim interfaces then the tl;dr is "Telescope is to FZF as Neovim is to Vim'. It would be easy to say "they're both the same picture" and that would be very true to a degree but I'd say Telescope looks like the next evolutionary step in this area to me because: - it's written in lua (I know for NeoVim this is like 'X rewritten in Rust' headlines are for the general HN audience, but thought I'd get it out of the way. I do believe this will lead to a faster/bigger development ecosystem and also provide a very Vim-appropriate degree of configurability for people who want to invest some time in coding to tweak their worflow.) - The "speed" issue is mostly about implementing async-aware stuff so nothing blocks. This is a general trend in Neovim and it seems to be going well but people who tried it a while back may have hit issues and not seen the full benefit of this yet as it's an ongoing process. - Like Ripgrep, the fastest search is the smartest search i.e. that doesn't actually search everything, and the configurability and still nascent UI experiments seems likely to lead to some optimums here as people specialize in different things. - It assumes you have a recent (currently unstable nightly) version of Neovim, and takes advantage of that opportunity to make full use of NeoVim core changes at the design stage. You could probably ask the exact same question of "Why do I want Neovim if I'm fine with Vim?" and there's probably many good write-ups of that question that will transitively apply here as well. - Because the basic UI it provides is a sweet spot of 'pretty, usable, fast, easy-to-build-on, configurable' and they're working with this connecting layer in mind it looks like it might absorb/replace a lot of other plugins that are currently reinventing wheels in this regard and let them focus on the bit they actually care about. But yeah, it wouldn't exist without those other things existing before it and I'd be more excited to introduce someone to this whole world of tools, than this one in particular. But anyone using these kind of tools, should try this out, and probably the first impression for those people would be, "Oh that looks cooler" and then shortly after "I'm going to write my own plugin!".
tjdevries 5y ago
Hi everyone, I'm the creator of telescope :) Happy to answer some questions / give my thoughts about telescope here. Thanks!
- shmiga 5y ago
  Thank you, I was searching for this kind of plugin for a while! Great work!
  - tjdevries 5y ago
    Great <3 Hope you enjoy it! It was a lot of fun making it
cturtle 5y ago
First, I'll just say I think Telescope is a fantastic software/plugin and the developers have done a great job. It doesn't fit my needs exactly, but it works as advertised! In my search for a file find plugin for [neo]vim I have come to realize that I really don't like "fuzzy" finders. I'm curious if anyone else shares this opinion as well, since I get the feeling from conversations like this one that FZF and related are overwhelmingly loved.

153 points by polm23 5y ago

Is there a generic name for interfaces that use this paradigm, something that would encompass Mac OS X Quicksilver/Alfred/Launchbar/Spotlight search, Chrome's Omnibox, FZF on the command line, Ctrl T/P in IDEs, etc. I really like it and would like to adopt more things that use it. "Fuzzy finders" maybe? That doesn't really capture the autocomplete, hotkey to launch part of it which makes up the full flow in my mind.

diatone 5y ago
If you're happy to ignore that initial part of entering the fuzzy search, "fuzzy search" or "fuzzy find" would have instantly registered in my mind those same examples you brought up. Maybe a qualifier, "on demand" or "by hotkey"?
iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
command palette or command bar are terms ive seen used
strogonoff 5y ago
Blueprint 3 calls their widget[0] for building this kind of experience “omnibar”. [0] https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#select/omnibar https://blueprintjs.com/docs/#select/omnibar

varbhat 5y ago

Neovim 0.5 is awesome. It has native LSP support, Lua configuration support that it feels like true revolution over past versions. But, getting into optimal setup in neovim/vim involves lot of configuration. Here is mine if you want to refer: https://github.com/varbhat/dotfiles/tree/main/dot_config/nvim https://github.com/varbhat/dotfiles/tree/main/dot_config/nvi...

jitl 5y ago
I’ve been meaning to convert my config to Lua. I haven’t tried out the official LSP support; I’ve been using coc.vim (https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim) which supports most of the VSCode plug-in API. Have you tried both? Curious how 0.5’s LSP implementation works for Typescript. (My config is much simpler, a single vim script file: https://github.com/justjake/Dotfiles/blob/new/config/nvim/init.vim https://github.com/justjake/Dotfiles/blob/new/config/nvim/in...)
- varbhat 5y ago
  Official LSP is lightweight, much faster imo. You can try Typescript's tsserver with neovim-lsp .
  - maddyboo 5y ago
    I’m glad to hear that. I’d heard a lot of good things about coc.nvim so I recently switched to it from languageclient-neovim. I have to say I am not very impressed. I don’t care for the configuration format, it’s not as flexible as I’d like, I don’t like installing npm packages to configure language servers that I already have installed, and it just generally feels sloppy. I guess I’m going to need to break my LSP config yet again as I migrate over to the native client. Hopefully this is the last time…
    - lawn 5y ago
      That was my experience with coc as well. After getting over the initial configuration native LSP has been working great. Also, you can use telescope to search for LSD definitions, references etc.
afarrell 5y ago
I’ve found lunarvim to be another good config baseline: https://github.com/ChristianChiarulli/LunarVim https://github.com/ChristianChiarulli/LunarVim Explained here: https://youtu.be/Qm864kVxAss https://youtu.be/Qm864kVxAss
5y ago

jitl 5y ago

Hrm, I already do this with FZF in Neovim. Lots of ways to do a thing with vim!

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I'm not sure a direct link to the GitHub readme does this project justice if you're not already familiar with it (though the documentation is pretty good for someone who already knows what it is). On the other hand I'm not sure how to describe it to a newcomer either, but at least I can do the crass "it's like this thing you may be more familiar with" which projects themselves don't like to say on their sites. So if you use FZF on the command line or in Vim, check this out (there's wrappers for the actual FZF algorithm as well, though not by default), CtrlP is maybe the oldest Vim plugin that does this kind of thing and I think the various IDE implementations (which generally focus more on file or code locations than the Vim ones, which use it to enhance the keyboard interface generally) started with Textmate's Ctrl-T though maybe Sublime version is better known. I'm very bullish on this being the best UI workflow for programmers, since we're dealing with a lot of textual information.

ruph123 5y ago
So it’s a fancy fuzzy finder? How is it different/better than fzf? Is it more integrated but therefore less flexible (e.g. less UNIXy)? I read some early report on the neovim reddit where people complained that it was slower than fzf. So I did not bother looking into it more, also because no one could really explain it well.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Yes, it's a fancy fuzzy finder for NeoVim. If you're already familiar with and enjoy FZF or CtrlP-like fuzzy finders in Vim interfaces then the tl;dr is "Telescope is to FZF as Neovim is to Vim'. It would be easy to say "they're both the same picture" and that would be very true to a degree but I'd say Telescope looks like the next evolutionary step in this area to me because: - it's written in lua (I know for NeoVim this is like 'X rewritten in Rust' headlines are for the general HN audience, but thought I'd get it out of the way. I do believe this will lead to a faster/bigger development ecosystem and also provide a very Vim-appropriate degree of configurability for people who want to invest some time in coding to tweak their worflow.) - The "speed" issue is mostly about implementing async-aware stuff so nothing blocks. This is a general trend in Neovim and it seems to be going well but people who tried it a while back may have hit issues and not seen the full benefit of this yet as it's an ongoing process. - Like Ripgrep, the fastest search is the smartest search i.e. that doesn't actually search everything, and the configurability and still nascent UI experiments seems likely to lead to some optimums here as people specialize in different things. - It assumes you have a recent (currently unstable nightly) version of Neovim, and takes advantage of that opportunity to make full use of NeoVim core changes at the design stage. You could probably ask the exact same question of "Why do I want Neovim if I'm fine with Vim?" and there's probably many good write-ups of that question that will transitively apply here as well. - Because the basic UI it provides is a sweet spot of 'pretty, usable, fast, easy-to-build-on, configurable' and they're working with this connecting layer in mind it looks like it might absorb/replace a lot of other plugins that are currently reinventing wheels in this regard and let them focus on the bit they actually care about. But yeah, it wouldn't exist without those other things existing before it and I'd be more excited to introduce someone to this whole world of tools, than this one in particular. But anyone using these kind of tools, should try this out, and probably the first impression for those people would be, "Oh that looks cooler" and then shortly after "I'm going to write my own plugin!".

tjdevries 5y ago

Hi everyone, I'm the creator of telescope :) Happy to answer some questions / give my thoughts about telescope here. Thanks!

shmiga 5y ago
Thank you, I was searching for this kind of plugin for a while! Great work!
- tjdevries 5y ago
  Great <3 Hope you enjoy it! It was a lot of fun making it

cturtle 5y ago

First, I'll just say I think Telescope is a fantastic software/plugin and the developers have done a great job. It doesn't fit my needs exactly, but it works as advertised! In my search for a file find plugin for [neo]vim I have come to realize that I really don't like "fuzzy" finders. I'm curious if anyone else shares this opinion as well, since I get the feeling from conversations like this one that FZF and related are overwhelmingly loved.