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Kakoune Code Editor

mushufasa 5y ago
Does anyone use this daily? this gets posted a few times a year to HN but tbh it looks like someone just re-invented vi. Which seems kindof like creating a new religion. It can be done, but even the best televangelist isn't going to hold a candle to the spread of the catholic church.
- chc4 5y ago
  Several of my coworkers use it instead of Vim. It seems pretty nice, and I've been tempted to try jumping ship now too.
- jzm2k 5y ago
  I've used it daily for ~6 months now. Before that I had used Vim for close to 8 years and tried many different editors during that time but I always went back to using it. I feel Kakoune truly is an improvement over Vim and I highly suggest you try it if you like modal editing.
- grayrest 5y ago
  I've gone for several week long stretches of using it but never fully converted. What winds up happening is that I get to a point in a project where I really need to focus on the code and not the editor, switch back to vim, and don't get around to switching back for another few months. The editing model is better than Vim's and if I didn't have 20 years of vim muscle memory I probably would have switched over by now.
  - chongli 5y ago
    I disagree that the editing model is better than vim. It’s fancier and makes for flashier demos but I don’t think it’s better. For one thing, it places the emphasis on editing in the large. That is, its default operating mode is to leave multiple cursors all over the buffer when you’re trying to jump around your file. You have to build a habit of pressing an extra key to dismiss the multiple cursors so you don’t inadvertently start inserting text in multiple places without realizing it. This is the wrong approach! Vim puts primary emphasis on quickly getting around and making small edits one at a time. Editing in the large can be accomplished easily with the substitute ex command or search and repeat (via n and .) or macros recorded with q. For any programmer, the vast majority of their time is going to be spent editing in one place at a time. When they need to do something bigger, vim has them covered. If they’re finding they need to do some more sophisticated refactoring they probably want an IDE (or at least an LSP plug-in for vim of which there are many).
    - TeddyDD 5y ago
      > That is, its default operating mode is to leave multiple cursors all over the buffer when you’re trying to jump around your file. That's not true, motion commands don't create new selections. Search will create a new selection only if you explicitly ask for that by pressing shift N.
    - andrewflnr 5y ago
      You can do the Vim approach just fine, and I usually do. I write prose in kak for goodness' sake, I don't usually have multiple cursors for that. The only time I accidentally get extra selections, besides old muscle memory triggering that feature in search with shift-N, is when I accidentally click in the terminal, which was going to mess me up with any editor. But occasionally it's very nice to actually have that multiple selection feature. For instance, suppose you have a search and replace that you only want to do on certain instances of your search, in a context dependent way. You could just use n and . repeatedly. However, I find it nicer to examine each selection, drop the inappropriate ones individually, recheck my work, then do all the edits at once. This also eliminates (granted, by defining it away) the problem of changing your mind halfway through the search process about what change you want to make. When you change your mind, your cursor is either still live in all the places, or you're done, in which case at least there's only one thing to search for again, not the half that were changed and the half you hadn't reached yet.
      - gnubison 5y ago
        > is when I accidentally click in the terminal, which was going to mess me up with any editor. Well, most terminal editors don’t capture the mouse at all — this is what I personally prefer (let the terminal emulator handle it) and as a bonus it fixes this problem.
    - filoeleven 5y ago
      When I last looked at Kakoune, it struck me as “Vim with training wheels,” in the best sense of the term. In other words, it has (all of?) vim’s keyboard commands, but with more visual feedback to show what they are doing live. I envisioned myself learning with Kakoune and eventually migrating to vim once they became ingrained. Or, at the very least, becoming proficient in vim so that I could use it more confidently when needed. Has that been anyone’s experience?
- raiguard 5y ago
  I've been using Kakoune as my daily driver for almost a year. The thing that made me fall in love was the simplicity, both in daily usage and in extensibility. The biggest "oh wow" moment for me was how easy it was to create a color scheme. In Vim, creating your own color scheme is potentially a huge ordeal, with many edge cases. For example, vim-one's color scheme file is over 800 lines long. By contrast, I created a fully functional Kakoune color scheme in only 84 lines, 60 lines if I remove extraneous spacing and comments. There is no conditional logic, no legacy support, just one set of standard "faces" that work everywhere. All languages use the same standard set of faces to do their syntax highlighting. The difference that makes is astounding. This is but one example of Kakoune's orthogonality and simplicity of design. Coming from Vim, which is chock full of legacy code and an inconsistent mess of configuration, it's a breath of fresh air.
  - yitchelle 5y ago
    I would have thought that creating/adapting a colour scheme is a onetime activity when you start using the editor for your language. Do you update the colour scheme regularly?
    - christophilus 5y ago
      I think he gave that as an illustrative point about the simplicity of Kakoune, rather than saying this specific example is why he uses it.
    - raiguard 5y ago
      I used color schemes as an example, perhaps it was a bad one. I don't update it regularly, no. As others have said, the appeal of Kak is orthogonality and accessibility. The keybindings are sensibly organized, there is exhaustive autocomplete and on screen documentation, and the configuration language is simple. It is ridiculously easy to write plugins for, because you can use shell scripting, or create a program in any language you want and invoke it from a shell block. Kakoune's LSP plugin is written in Rust and communicates with Kak via the shell.
      - 5y ago
- thayne 5y ago
  I tried to use it enough to see if I could switch to it from (neo)vim. I liked a lot of the ideas in it, and in some ways I liked it more than vim, but it was missing some functionality that I just couldn't live without. Some things could be solved by plugins that just didn't exist yet, but others, I couldn't even see a way a plugin could be implemented. In particular, there isn't any way to get a diff mode comparable to vim's. I also don't like that it always unconditionally writes a newline at the end of files. I understand the reasoning for it, but it makes it much more difficult to use as an editor for transformed binary files (gzip, hex editor, encrypted files, etc.) or avoid adding extra whitespace to git diffs when I modify files.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I don't understand the new line thing at the end. I haven't used a utility or app in -decades- that cared about whether you have a blank final line.
    - usefulcat 5y ago
      I think it used to be a requirement (technically) for C and C++, though probably not much any more in practice.
    - xigoi 5y ago
      `cat`, for instance, definitely cares.
    - ziml77 5y ago
      I just ran into an issue with that recently. The Pandas library for Python doesn't consume the last line of a CSV unless it's followed by a new line. I would say I couldn't believe that it actually made inject that newline if it wasn't in the input, but Pandas has enough other oddities that it was pretty easy to believe.
    - jeffreygoesto 5y ago
- TeddyDD 5y ago
  I've been using it as daily driver for 3+ years. I switched from Spacemacs. Focus on selections, visual feedback and simple integration with other Unix tools are main differentiating features in comparison to vi family of editors.
- haarts 5y ago
  I've been using it for the better part of three years after using Vim for many years. What I like about it that it is intuitive. Selections make sense. The visual feedback is great too. I've configured nearly nothing, the out of the box experience is great. I'm never switching back to Vim.
- DJHenk 5y ago
  I am using it daily, as my sole editor, for a little more than a year now. Before that I used Neovim. Most important reasons for the switch are: * Leaves window management to the window manager, so it works much better with a tiling wm. I wish all applications did this. * Selecting first and then specifying an action works way better than the other way around, as it is done in the Vim family. Edit: regarding the comments and Vim's visual mode, you are right. I like to change my second bullet to "Does not have too many modes, like the Vim family."
  - reegnz 5y ago
    > * Selecting first and then specifying an action works way better than the other way around, as it is done in the Vim family. There is visual mode in vim too you know. That's for doing exactly what you describe. I use that when I'm unsure about the movement I need for an action.
    - FreeFull 5y ago
      Visual mode only allows for a single selection, though
      - reegnz 5y ago
        You don't need multi-cursor selection in vim. Vim has all the tools necessary to achieve the same end result with the same convenience. [0] Just thinking about what crazy things I've done with macros that multi-cursor would be incapable of handling makes me chuckle. vim doesn't need the fancy features of other editors (except for maybe LSP and tree-sitter for a more IDE-like experience). The core problem is that you don't grok vi [1] which is fine, not everyone has time and passion for that. But please don't think for a moment that vim is inferior just because it doesn't blindly copy other editors features. [0] https://engagor.github.io/blog/2018/02/21/why-vim-doesnt-need-multiple-cursors/ https://engagor.github.io/blog/2018/02/21/why-vim-doesnt-nee... [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118 https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118
        5y ago
- zimmski 5y ago
  At Symflower we do, one of us has it as its main editor and it looks extremely productive. As a former VIM hardcore user i enjoy the pair programming sessions. I guess these sessions must feel the same way when a non-VIM user watches a VIM hardcore user. We even have an extension for Symflower https://github.com/symflower/symflower-kakoune https://github.com/symflower/symflower-kakoune that is how much we appreciate Kakoune.
- cduret 5y ago
  I use it daily for many years, being a user of vim for 20 years or so. I could not come back to vim now, I find the kakoune way more efficient. I find two annoying things : - U need to make a lot of tuning to make it usable because there is now tab management, no clipboard, etc.. - U need always the last version of C++ compiler to make it compile. This is annoying on professional VMs that are way behind the current version of gcc. I would suggest the community to make better documentation for plugin development which can be very hard to learn
  - ukfarmer 5y ago
    I had the same problem building Kakoune on more elderly systems, and settled for building a static binary on my own machine that I could then run on shell accounts on other people's boxes if the toolchain isn't new enough to build in situ. kak locates its runtime library relative to the binary path, so it works fine in ~/bin & ~/lib or ~/.local/bin & ~/.local/lib even if your home directory is different on different machines.
  - enricozb 5y ago
    shameless plug for my tab manager plugin: https://github.com/enricozb/tabs.kak https://github.com/enricozb/tabs.kak disclaimer: I'm in the process of a decently sized refactor so the configuration instructions will soon be changed/outdated.
  - anthk 5y ago
    >This is annoying on professional VMs that are way behind the current version of gcc. Get binary PKGSRC packages from Joyent and set PATH accordinly. https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/ https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/ It's for RHEL and clones but it should work on any parallel distro or more recent.
- diegoperini 5y ago
  It replaced sublime text for me for scripting languages like PHP, bash and stuff. I still prefer VSCode for js/ts and native IDEs for compiled languages. I love it.
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  That seems like a weird analogy. There are fabolously rich and successful American megachurch pastors (or whatever they are) that probably have no connections to the Catholic Church.
- sj4nz 5y ago
  kak is my daily driver. About the only customization I do for it is the integration of fzf for file picking-- althought its window management with kitty seems to be broken, I have to run it inside tmux for this to work. Recently I more often than not use broot as the launcher for kak instead of directing kak to open files from inside kak. Multiple selections with the visual preview before action was the key feature for me-- it is a nice affordance compared to having to mentally model what an operation would do with a vim movement.
- jasone 5y ago
  I have used kakoune almost exclusively for two years. Prior to that I used vim for 16 years, emacs for 10 years before that. For me kakoune started as vim visual mode done right, but I have come to love the editor because it has a small orthogonal command interface that provides all the power I had with vim, but with lower cognitive burden. Kakoune is a fantastic tool of rare quality. I find it a joy to use.
- anthk 5y ago
  TWM was reinvented into FVWM and the later one was much faster, it used far less resources and functionality wise it ran circles over TWM.
- lijogdfljk 5y ago
  I used Vim for ~7 years, fully switched over to Kakoune a few years ago. My primary reasons are: 1. always selection-first focused 2. multi-cursor support combined with #1 is really intuitive That's about it really. I have it set up primarily with User Modes, to avoid modifier keys as i don't like reaching for modifiers, and i'm pretty happy.
- haroman 5y ago
  I agree with this one, it's just like creating a new branch kind of lifestyle or something like that.
- chansiky 5y ago
  I tried it for a short time, but given the ubiquitousness of vi/vim, I just couldn't get myself to commit. I want to keep my muscle memory intact for when I have to ssh into a remote computer somewhere. Which, I guess what I'm saying is, it looks like I'll be attending mass this Sunday.
andrewflnr 5y ago
I tried kakoune on the basis of a blog post I found here a while back, that described its better-thought out Vim-like command language. I was hooked almost immediately. Now I use it daily. So if you like Vi/Vim's text editing model but wish its language was more orthogonal and powerful, give Kakoune a shot.
- JohnCurran 5y ago
  What did you find easier/more powerful about Kakoune than its equivalent in vim?
  - jzm2k 5y ago
    The multiline cursor is a great tool I didn't know I needed before I tried Kakoune. Also, the commands are more logical. Go to end of line with gl, select code from current place until the end of line with GL, go to the start of line with gh, go to the end of file with gj and to the top with gk, etc. It's more logical and the fact that you can use visual select by keeping shift down when moving is very nice.
    - pletnes 5y ago
      What’s the big deal with multiline cursor over visual block mode?
      - jzm2k 5y ago
        I think multicursor is more flexible. I can visually select N lines and use regex to place the cursors and then modify the text in multiple places simultaneously. Kakoune also provides a multicursor similar to the visual block mode that Vim offers but I find myself using that only in very specific situations like "these 5 lines should all start with this keyword" or whatever.
        usrbinbash 5y ago
        imo, Multiline cursors are one of these features that look and feel cool, but are rarely, if ever, really useful.
Ecco 5y ago
Anyone knows where the name came from?
- qiqitori 5y ago
  Japanese for "let's write". (書こうね)
  - msla 5y ago
    > Japanese for "let's write". (書こうね) So it's pronounced like kah-kooh-neh or similar. Three syllables, drag out the middle "oh" sound a bit longer.
  - glandium 5y ago
    It's not. See https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/454 https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/454
- aaplok 5y ago
  It means "kick", "hit". See one of the comments here: [0]. Also (if you speak French) this: [1] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1tdiap/kakoune_a_longdeveloped_vimlike_editor_designed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1tdiap/kakoune_a_longd... [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Nouvelle-Cal%C3%A9donie#Kakoune https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Nouvelle-Cal%...
debdut 5y ago
that video in the bottom of the page looks pretty neat! ofc everything will look magic when I've use to bloated VS Code for daily stuff
injidup 5y ago
Linux X11/tmux only.
- boardwaalk 5y ago
  macOS & FreeBSD too, and under WSL on Windows obviously.
grayrest 5y ago
There is a Kakoune-inspired VSCode extension. [1] [1] https://github.com/71/dance https://github.com/71/dance
- sidkshatriya 5y ago
  I've used this extension -- its nice -- but it can never give you the full experience. If you're new to Kakoune, I'd recommend just using the real Kakoune for a while and see if you like it. Once you truly understand the object/verb modal editing (vi is verb/object) + multiple cursors paradigm you might love it, as I did.
skavi 5y ago
Check out helix [0] for a kakoune inspired editor with some nice modern features included by default. [0]: https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/
- mikojan 5y ago
  Have been using this instead of vim for a month now. It's incredible. No messing with plugins and archaic config files. All works out of the box, including LSP integration. Highly customizable still. Extremely fast, too. I love "space-k" (Show docs for item under cursor). The one thing I'm still struggling with is the kakoune-like movements. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but they do feel inferior to vim's.
  - adam_ung 5y ago
    In Vim you can also hit Shift-k to open docs (I usually use it for manual pages).
    - skavi 5y ago
      In this case, space k will open a popup with docs/definitions provided by the language server.
  - skavi 5y ago
    what kind of motions are you missing? I prefer helix to default vim, but miss the power of the amazing lightspeed.nvim plugin.
    - archseer 5y ago
      There's been some prototyping on easymotion type jumps: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/1162 https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/1162
  - r-zip 5y ago
    I agree it's nice, but Helix's default LSP for Python is unusably slow, having used pyright with Vim/Emacs/VS Code. I tried setting up the pyright language server to work with Helix, but could not get it to work. It will be much more usable once there's better documentation.
wintrli8 5y ago
It seems to be a decent editor. I did not like the kak config files and the syntax it uses for some reason. That’s one of the main reasons I stayed away from it. Gonna check again to see if anything changed.
- sidkshatriya 5y ago
  > I did not like the kak config files and the syntax it uses for some reason. Maybe I have Kakoune Stockholm syndrome but I actually like the syntax of it's config/script files. - The "kakscript language" is really quite minimalist. This makes it easy to remember and extremely consistent. It is designed to serve as a "glue" language rather than a fully powered language. - To write plugins you have to work with kakscript and (Posix) shell script (bash, dash etc.) or a basic shell script that in turn works with a program written in another language (Perl, Python, Rust etc.). It's difficult to explain on HN but the kakoune<->outside world integration is one of the nicest I've seen. There is very little ceremony and you can be up and running really quickly. - The creator of Kakoune is very reluctant to add more features to kakscript. While languages around us quickly accrue features and syntax, keeping kakscript limited means that you are forced to write more complicated code in languages that have been designed to be truly general purpose and not in kakscript
NateEag 5y ago
Note the existence of kakoune.el, an emacs emulation of Kakoune's core: https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el I have no idea how well it reproduces the experience - I'll probably be using vim on servers and emacs evil-mode locally until the day I die, so I haven't bothered to get into Kakoune, awesome though it seems.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Why would you even bother making Emacs look like Kakoune? Funny how it seems a lot of Emacs developer time is spent a) making it look like / act like something else and b) making it do things unrelated to editing text. There is no focus. It's good that it can do a lot but it doesn't do any of those things well (unless you want to learn some cryptic key combinations that make less sense than vim). Meanwhile the rest of the world has moved on.
  - dima55 5y ago
    > Why would you even bother making Emacs look like Kakoune? Because somebody wanted the Kakoune core editor behavior combined with the world of features emacs gives you. > Funny how it seems a lot of Emacs developer time is spent a) making it look like / act like something else Somebody found this useful. Would you have preferred that this person didn't do any of this at all? > and b) making it do things unrelated to editing text. Yes. Unlike vim and kakoune and others, emacs is much more than a text editor. > There is no focus. What focus? Somebody wanted to do this for themselves. There's no "emacs, inc" that sets the focus that all devs follow. This is how free software works. > It's good that it can do a lot but it doesn't do any of those things well I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess you aren't an emacs user? It does most of those things fantastically well.
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      > Somebody found this useful. Would you have preferred that this person didn't do any of this at all? The usual conversation starters about emacs go "oh you have Spacemacs, you have EVil, you have plugin X, Y, Z, etc, etc" Whereas with other editors the focus is on improving the core experience Plugins are great, sure, but there seems to be an excessive focus on it and most plugins just don't give you the same experience.
vishnu2pc 5y ago
Anything in there that would make an avid vim user to switch?
atdt 5y ago
Kakoune does not yet have an interactive tutorial, like vim's `vimtutor` -- its developer community has mixed feelings about the need to develop an analogue. In lieu of it, there exists a document called TRAMPOLINE that is meant to help new users get up to speed quickly. It is available here: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/contrib/TRAMPOLINE https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/contrib/TRAMPOL...
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  kakoune is more discoverable than vim. You get an explanation of each command and its arguments, plus suggestions and completion, without the need for any plugin. The basics of the vim tutorial still apply to kakoune.
  - sidkshatriya 5y ago
    > kakoune is more discoverable than vim. Yes, this is one of its most underrated features. Make sure you have to following line in your kakrc ``` set -add global autoinfo normal ``` This will give you an explanation on the various commands that you perform in the normal mode of the editor in a unobtrusive popup on your screen. When you type commands e.g. `:w` you will get a popup again that explains the optional switches available when saving a file. In vi, you usually need to hunt down things in documentation. In kakoune, the documentation is displayed as you work in your usual workflow. This made things really easy for me.
taviso 5y ago
Hmm, how would you replicate the alignment operation they show in the gif using vim? I couldn't immediately think of how to do it. I guess you could select the block, then maybe s/\>\s\</\=repeat(' ', 20 - col('.'))/g? That doesn't feel like the right solution though... maybe a macro, something like qa^wi<Tab><Esc>q then visual select and :norm@a? I dunno.
- camel-cdr 5y ago
  I use the vim easy align plugin for that. You could replicate it with "ga2 ", so go align 2nd space seperated. There are a few alignment modes for the last character (instead of the space), e.g. "|" for markdown and "&" latex tables.
lf-non 5y ago
Is the extension language kakounescript documented somewhere ? I am having a hard time finding a reference. I wish they just used lua/js though.
- raiguard 5y ago
  Kak is mostly self-documenting, but there are a few :doc pages that give more detail. Of particular interest are the commands [0] and command parsing [1] pages. Those will get you started. Kakscript does not have any control flow beyond a simple try/catch mechanism - for anything complex, you use shell scripting [2]. It is both a blessing and a curse - making it extremely easy to integrate with other tools, but causing some pain if you don't know shell scripting already. [0]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/commands.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/comma... [1]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/command-parsing.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/comma... [2]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/expansions.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/expan...
loeg 5y ago
Anyone else spot the iso646.h macros[1] in the screenshots? E.g., https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/src/buffer_manager.cc#L32-L33 https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/src/buffer_mana... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_alternative_tokens#The_macros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_alternative_tokens#The_macro...
- thristian 5y ago
  Since Kakoune is a C++ codebase, they're standard language keywords, not macros.
hyperupcall 5y ago
When I tried Kakoune, it seemed like a really cool idea and implementation, but it didn't seem like their configuration language had basic functions for string manipulation, path testing, etc. So a common pattern with plugins etc. was to shell out to sed, awk, etc, which was a _huge_ turnoff. I now use Neovim, but if they have recently implemented that functionality, I'd be willing to give Kakoune another shot
- sidkshatriya 5y ago
  Shelling out was a turnoff for me also initially but I've learn to embrace it. Kakoune tries not to re-invent the wheel. If sh/sed/awk/perl/other unix tools do the job well, might as well use them. That is the philosophy I think. I like the fact that using Kakoune has improved my shell script skills like crazy. (Posix) shell scripting is just everywhere and is an important skill to have. Kakoune uses shell integration everywhere and I've come to appreciate the the pragmatism/elegance of the "kakscript as a glue language paradigm".
  - oblio 5y ago
    > (Posix) shell scripting is just everywhere and is an important skill to have. Not on Windows. Which may or not may matter.
    - berkes 5y ago
      Didn't Microsoft team up with Ubuntu to offer this to Windows users? I'm out of the loop and haven't touched windows seriously in years (other than to fix WiFi or printer issues for family. Sigh), so I probably misunderstood this Ubuntu in Windows completely.
      - oblio 5y ago
        It's through WSL and it's still not native or seamless. You can't ask a regular Windows user to have it set up as a dependency. I can't just go "wsl.exe" and have a very clean and seamless integration into Windows and pretend that "wsl.exe" is just another shell like cmd.exe or powershell.exe, WSL is it's own box off in a corner.
rob74 5y ago
Once you realise that it's, er, let's say, inspired by vim, you look at the logo and see that it's basically a clone of the vim logo/icon - the orange part of the K looks like the V in the vim icon, and the green lozenge background is almost exactly the same. Which makes it even stranger that they are trying to hide that - there is no mention of vi/vim on the site's landing page. Ok, I understand that they are wary that mentioning "vi(m)" could scare people away, but come on, they are going to find out anyway sooner or later and lose interest then, so what's the point? Also, what happened to proudly mentioning your software is open source and all the "fork me on GitHub" ribbons/banners/whatever? They seem a bit shy on that too - which is all the more bizarre because most of the links in the top navigation actually go to GitHub, but none of them are labeled "source code".
- hasperdi 5y ago
  AFAIK the creator got the inspiration from Vim, but I think the other statements about github, not mentioning vim, etc. Are just products of your imagination
  - rob74 5y ago
    That the landing page doesn't mention vi/vim or open source is definitely a fact. Of course the reason for not mentioning vim was a product of my imagination, but actually I just wanted to say that I think it's odd for them to avoid stating the almost-obvious...
    - gumby 5y ago
      I just clicked over and looked at the repo which answered my question. No big deal.
    - a2800276 5y ago
      > avoid stating the almost-obvious... I feel it's in the nature of communication to avoid stating the obvious and only becomes problematic when what's obvious to the sender is not to the receiver. Paradoxically while too much obviousness makes a statement banal, being the first to explicitly state what's obvious to everyone is extremely insightful... :)
GekkePrutser 5y ago
The person that decided on the launch command 'kak' is not Dutch for sure :) Though I guess most 3-letter words mean something bad in one language or another :P
- sundarurfriend 5y ago
  I end up mentally pronouncing kak like "cack" (https://www.lexico.com/definition/cack https://www.lexico.com/definition/cack) every time. Makes kakscript sounds pretty weird too.
- philipswood 5y ago
  Yup, Same meaning for Afrikaans. Although Afrikaans is derived from Dutch some very rude words in the one are absolutely fine in the other for both.
Sukera 5y ago
I've been using this over the past few months and so far, the only thing that really bothers me is that there's no UTF-8/Unicode category selectors support in their self-rolled regex engine, citing not wanting to ship a unicode character database to keep the editor small (only mentioned on IRC, sorry). This makes writing syntax highlighting extensions a pain/difficult to maintain[1]. --- [1] https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/4411 https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/4411
- pacaro 5y ago
  I understand not wanting to ship large tables, but then why not ship the scripts to generate the tables from the publicly available source of truth?
dang 5y ago
Past related threads: What you could steal from the Kakoune code editor, and get away with - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685267 - Oct 2020 (94 comments) Kakoune – A Modal Text Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19313794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19313794 - March 2019 (58 comments) Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 - Aug 2018 (45 comments) Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 - Dec 2016 (327 comments) Kakoune: a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13152499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13152499 - Dec 2016 (2 comments) Kakoune – An experiment for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653 - Oct 2015 (34 comments) Mawww's experiment for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 - June 2015 (15 comments)
gigatexal 5y ago
Vim inspired. Nice. I’ll give it a shot
usgroup 5y ago
Finally, a full rank editor. Needless to say the best part is the orthogonal design. Emacs and others compared to this have zero determinants in their favour.
- lvass 5y ago
  Emacs is the best editor with kakoune keybinds, but I'm not letting you play Cunningham's law on me.
  - usgroup 5y ago
    No, I was making a maths joke on count of the "orthogonal design" on their website. Orthogonal matrices are full rank and have non zero determinants, but I think it was perhaps a bit too well disguised.
makach 5y ago
//Supports all operating systems except windows?! Oh the humanity! When will the discrimination end?// I love a good editor. I just discovered Joe and am super happy with that. Cross platform key-bindings is very important considering I am using many different operating systems.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > When will the discrimination end? When all developers finally finished moving away from Windows :)
throwaway19962 5y ago
quda 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Comevius 5y ago
There is also Helix, inspired by both Vim and Kakoune, with built-in LSP support. I'm having a great time with it. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
- archseer 5y ago
  Hey thanks! That's good to hear :)
  - lijogdfljk 5y ago
    Assuming you're related to Helix, how does it relate to Kakoune on the selection-first approach? That's one of my favorite features of Kakoune, curious how Helix handles that if inspired by Kakoune?
- lilyball 5y ago
  I just went through the tutorial. It's not bad, though there doesn't appear to be much documentation (there's not even a built-in :help command, and :tutor is rather minimal). What do you like about it compared to Kakoune?
  - newlisp 5y ago
    0.6
bitigchi 5y ago
I'd like to try, but it does not support translations. I prefer using software only in my native language.
magpi3 5y ago
Can anyone point me to the documentation listing the modal commands? I can't find it in the editor itself or on the website EDIT: I figured it out. Type ":doc keys"
philip-b 5y ago
Kakoune's [design doc](https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/design.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/design.asci...) stresses that Kakoune is a text editor, not an IDE. What does this really mean? Obviously, the main way people use text editors like this is to develop programs. So, given that Kakoune doesn't want to be an IDE, what features does/will it lack?
rpastuszak 5y ago
From: https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html > The first thing to realize is that non-modal text editors are extremely biased towards insertion. I made https://enso.sonnet.io https://enso.sonnet.io and I 100% agree with Maxime on this one
michaelcampbell 5y ago
I run across this editor from time to time, but I'm in my 50's, and I'm pretty sure emacs will continue to be good enough for me through retirement, and I just don't feel like learning a new one. I even know enough vi(m) to get around; surely I won't need more than BOTH of those in the next 10-15 years. IDE's, sure, but for editing... nah. Most of the IDEs even have passable emacs keybindings, or the ability for me to make one (or use a FOSS one that someone quicker than I am has already done).

Does anyone use this daily? this gets posted a few times a year to HN but tbh it looks like someone just re-invented vi. Which seems kindof like creating a new religion. It can be done, but even the best televangelist isn't going to hold a candle to the spread of the catholic church.

chc4 5y ago
Several of my coworkers use it instead of Vim. It seems pretty nice, and I've been tempted to try jumping ship now too.
jzm2k 5y ago
I've used it daily for ~6 months now. Before that I had used Vim for close to 8 years and tried many different editors during that time but I always went back to using it. I feel Kakoune truly is an improvement over Vim and I highly suggest you try it if you like modal editing.
grayrest 5y ago
I've gone for several week long stretches of using it but never fully converted. What winds up happening is that I get to a point in a project where I really need to focus on the code and not the editor, switch back to vim, and don't get around to switching back for another few months. The editing model is better than Vim's and if I didn't have 20 years of vim muscle memory I probably would have switched over by now.
- chongli 5y ago
  I disagree that the editing model is better than vim. It’s fancier and makes for flashier demos but I don’t think it’s better. For one thing, it places the emphasis on editing in the large. That is, its default operating mode is to leave multiple cursors all over the buffer when you’re trying to jump around your file. You have to build a habit of pressing an extra key to dismiss the multiple cursors so you don’t inadvertently start inserting text in multiple places without realizing it. This is the wrong approach! Vim puts primary emphasis on quickly getting around and making small edits one at a time. Editing in the large can be accomplished easily with the substitute ex command or search and repeat (via n and .) or macros recorded with q. For any programmer, the vast majority of their time is going to be spent editing in one place at a time. When they need to do something bigger, vim has them covered. If they’re finding they need to do some more sophisticated refactoring they probably want an IDE (or at least an LSP plug-in for vim of which there are many).
  - TeddyDD 5y ago
    > That is, its default operating mode is to leave multiple cursors all over the buffer when you’re trying to jump around your file. That's not true, motion commands don't create new selections. Search will create a new selection only if you explicitly ask for that by pressing shift N.
  - andrewflnr 5y ago
    You can do the Vim approach just fine, and I usually do. I write prose in kak for goodness' sake, I don't usually have multiple cursors for that. The only time I accidentally get extra selections, besides old muscle memory triggering that feature in search with shift-N, is when I accidentally click in the terminal, which was going to mess me up with any editor. But occasionally it's very nice to actually have that multiple selection feature. For instance, suppose you have a search and replace that you only want to do on certain instances of your search, in a context dependent way. You could just use n and . repeatedly. However, I find it nicer to examine each selection, drop the inappropriate ones individually, recheck my work, then do all the edits at once. This also eliminates (granted, by defining it away) the problem of changing your mind halfway through the search process about what change you want to make. When you change your mind, your cursor is either still live in all the places, or you're done, in which case at least there's only one thing to search for again, not the half that were changed and the half you hadn't reached yet.
    - gnubison 5y ago
      > is when I accidentally click in the terminal, which was going to mess me up with any editor. Well, most terminal editors don’t capture the mouse at all — this is what I personally prefer (let the terminal emulator handle it) and as a bonus it fixes this problem.
  - filoeleven 5y ago
    When I last looked at Kakoune, it struck me as “Vim with training wheels,” in the best sense of the term. In other words, it has (all of?) vim’s keyboard commands, but with more visual feedback to show what they are doing live. I envisioned myself learning with Kakoune and eventually migrating to vim once they became ingrained. Or, at the very least, becoming proficient in vim so that I could use it more confidently when needed. Has that been anyone’s experience?
raiguard 5y ago
I've been using Kakoune as my daily driver for almost a year. The thing that made me fall in love was the simplicity, both in daily usage and in extensibility. The biggest "oh wow" moment for me was how easy it was to create a color scheme. In Vim, creating your own color scheme is potentially a huge ordeal, with many edge cases. For example, vim-one's color scheme file is over 800 lines long. By contrast, I created a fully functional Kakoune color scheme in only 84 lines, 60 lines if I remove extraneous spacing and comments. There is no conditional logic, no legacy support, just one set of standard "faces" that work everywhere. All languages use the same standard set of faces to do their syntax highlighting. The difference that makes is astounding. This is but one example of Kakoune's orthogonality and simplicity of design. Coming from Vim, which is chock full of legacy code and an inconsistent mess of configuration, it's a breath of fresh air.
- yitchelle 5y ago
  I would have thought that creating/adapting a colour scheme is a onetime activity when you start using the editor for your language. Do you update the colour scheme regularly?
  - christophilus 5y ago
    I think he gave that as an illustrative point about the simplicity of Kakoune, rather than saying this specific example is why he uses it.
  - raiguard 5y ago
    I used color schemes as an example, perhaps it was a bad one. I don't update it regularly, no. As others have said, the appeal of Kak is orthogonality and accessibility. The keybindings are sensibly organized, there is exhaustive autocomplete and on screen documentation, and the configuration language is simple. It is ridiculously easy to write plugins for, because you can use shell scripting, or create a program in any language you want and invoke it from a shell block. Kakoune's LSP plugin is written in Rust and communicates with Kak via the shell.
    - 5y ago
thayne 5y ago
I tried to use it enough to see if I could switch to it from (neo)vim. I liked a lot of the ideas in it, and in some ways I liked it more than vim, but it was missing some functionality that I just couldn't live without. Some things could be solved by plugins that just didn't exist yet, but others, I couldn't even see a way a plugin could be implemented. In particular, there isn't any way to get a diff mode comparable to vim's. I also don't like that it always unconditionally writes a newline at the end of files. I understand the reasoning for it, but it makes it much more difficult to use as an editor for transformed binary files (gzip, hex editor, encrypted files, etc.) or avoid adding extra whitespace to git diffs when I modify files.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I don't understand the new line thing at the end. I haven't used a utility or app in -decades- that cared about whether you have a blank final line.
  - usefulcat 5y ago
    I think it used to be a requirement (technically) for C and C++, though probably not much any more in practice.
  - xigoi 5y ago
    `cat`, for instance, definitely cares.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    I just ran into an issue with that recently. The Pandas library for Python doesn't consume the last line of a CSV unless it's followed by a new line. I would say I couldn't believe that it actually made inject that newline if it wasn't in the input, but Pandas has enough other oddities that it was pretty easy to believe.
  - jeffreygoesto 5y ago
TeddyDD 5y ago
I've been using it as daily driver for 3+ years. I switched from Spacemacs. Focus on selections, visual feedback and simple integration with other Unix tools are main differentiating features in comparison to vi family of editors.
haarts 5y ago
I've been using it for the better part of three years after using Vim for many years. What I like about it that it is intuitive. Selections make sense. The visual feedback is great too. I've configured nearly nothing, the out of the box experience is great. I'm never switching back to Vim.
DJHenk 5y ago
I am using it daily, as my sole editor, for a little more than a year now. Before that I used Neovim. Most important reasons for the switch are: * Leaves window management to the window manager, so it works much better with a tiling wm. I wish all applications did this. * Selecting first and then specifying an action works way better than the other way around, as it is done in the Vim family. Edit: regarding the comments and Vim's visual mode, you are right. I like to change my second bullet to "Does not have too many modes, like the Vim family."
- reegnz 5y ago
  > * Selecting first and then specifying an action works way better than the other way around, as it is done in the Vim family. There is visual mode in vim too you know. That's for doing exactly what you describe. I use that when I'm unsure about the movement I need for an action.
  - FreeFull 5y ago
    Visual mode only allows for a single selection, though
    - reegnz 5y ago
      You don't need multi-cursor selection in vim. Vim has all the tools necessary to achieve the same end result with the same convenience. [0] Just thinking about what crazy things I've done with macros that multi-cursor would be incapable of handling makes me chuckle. vim doesn't need the fancy features of other editors (except for maybe LSP and tree-sitter for a more IDE-like experience). The core problem is that you don't grok vi [1] which is fine, not everyone has time and passion for that. But please don't think for a moment that vim is inferior just because it doesn't blindly copy other editors features. [0] https://engagor.github.io/blog/2018/02/21/why-vim-doesnt-need-multiple-cursors/ https://engagor.github.io/blog/2018/02/21/why-vim-doesnt-nee... [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118 https://stackoverflow.com/a/1220118
      - 5y ago
zimmski 5y ago
At Symflower we do, one of us has it as its main editor and it looks extremely productive. As a former VIM hardcore user i enjoy the pair programming sessions. I guess these sessions must feel the same way when a non-VIM user watches a VIM hardcore user. We even have an extension for Symflower https://github.com/symflower/symflower-kakoune https://github.com/symflower/symflower-kakoune that is how much we appreciate Kakoune.
cduret 5y ago
I use it daily for many years, being a user of vim for 20 years or so. I could not come back to vim now, I find the kakoune way more efficient. I find two annoying things : - U need to make a lot of tuning to make it usable because there is now tab management, no clipboard, etc.. - U need always the last version of C++ compiler to make it compile. This is annoying on professional VMs that are way behind the current version of gcc. I would suggest the community to make better documentation for plugin development which can be very hard to learn
- ukfarmer 5y ago
  I had the same problem building Kakoune on more elderly systems, and settled for building a static binary on my own machine that I could then run on shell accounts on other people's boxes if the toolchain isn't new enough to build in situ. kak locates its runtime library relative to the binary path, so it works fine in ~/bin & ~/lib or ~/.local/bin & ~/.local/lib even if your home directory is different on different machines.
- enricozb 5y ago
  shameless plug for my tab manager plugin: https://github.com/enricozb/tabs.kak https://github.com/enricozb/tabs.kak disclaimer: I'm in the process of a decently sized refactor so the configuration instructions will soon be changed/outdated.
- anthk 5y ago
  >This is annoying on professional VMs that are way behind the current version of gcc. Get binary PKGSRC packages from Joyent and set PATH accordinly. https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/ https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/ It's for RHEL and clones but it should work on any parallel distro or more recent.
diegoperini 5y ago
It replaced sublime text for me for scripting languages like PHP, bash and stuff. I still prefer VSCode for js/ts and native IDEs for compiled languages. I love it.
avgcorrection 5y ago
That seems like a weird analogy. There are fabolously rich and successful American megachurch pastors (or whatever they are) that probably have no connections to the Catholic Church.
sj4nz 5y ago
kak is my daily driver. About the only customization I do for it is the integration of fzf for file picking-- althought its window management with kitty seems to be broken, I have to run it inside tmux for this to work. Recently I more often than not use broot as the launcher for kak instead of directing kak to open files from inside kak. Multiple selections with the visual preview before action was the key feature for me-- it is a nice affordance compared to having to mentally model what an operation would do with a vim movement.
jasone 5y ago
I have used kakoune almost exclusively for two years. Prior to that I used vim for 16 years, emacs for 10 years before that. For me kakoune started as vim visual mode done right, but I have come to love the editor because it has a small orthogonal command interface that provides all the power I had with vim, but with lower cognitive burden. Kakoune is a fantastic tool of rare quality. I find it a joy to use.
anthk 5y ago
TWM was reinvented into FVWM and the later one was much faster, it used far less resources and functionality wise it ran circles over TWM.
lijogdfljk 5y ago
I used Vim for ~7 years, fully switched over to Kakoune a few years ago. My primary reasons are: 1. always selection-first focused 2. multi-cursor support combined with #1 is really intuitive That's about it really. I have it set up primarily with User Modes, to avoid modifier keys as i don't like reaching for modifiers, and i'm pretty happy.
haroman 5y ago
I agree with this one, it's just like creating a new branch kind of lifestyle or something like that.
chansiky 5y ago
I tried it for a short time, but given the ubiquitousness of vi/vim, I just couldn't get myself to commit. I want to keep my muscle memory intact for when I have to ssh into a remote computer somewhere. Which, I guess what I'm saying is, it looks like I'll be attending mass this Sunday.

andrewflnr 5y ago

I tried kakoune on the basis of a blog post I found here a while back, that described its better-thought out Vim-like command language. I was hooked almost immediately. Now I use it daily. So if you like Vi/Vim's text editing model but wish its language was more orthogonal and powerful, give Kakoune a shot.

JohnCurran 5y ago
What did you find easier/more powerful about Kakoune than its equivalent in vim?
- jzm2k 5y ago
  The multiline cursor is a great tool I didn't know I needed before I tried Kakoune. Also, the commands are more logical. Go to end of line with gl, select code from current place until the end of line with GL, go to the start of line with gh, go to the end of file with gj and to the top with gk, etc. It's more logical and the fact that you can use visual select by keeping shift down when moving is very nice.
  - pletnes 5y ago
    What’s the big deal with multiline cursor over visual block mode?
    - jzm2k 5y ago
      I think multicursor is more flexible. I can visually select N lines and use regex to place the cursors and then modify the text in multiple places simultaneously. Kakoune also provides a multicursor similar to the visual block mode that Vim offers but I find myself using that only in very specific situations like "these 5 lines should all start with this keyword" or whatever.
      - usrbinbash 5y ago
        imo, Multiline cursors are one of these features that look and feel cool, but are rarely, if ever, really useful.

Ecco 5y ago

Anyone knows where the name came from?

qiqitori 5y ago
Japanese for "let's write". (書こうね)
- msla 5y ago
  > Japanese for "let's write". (書こうね) So it's pronounced like kah-kooh-neh or similar. Three syllables, drag out the middle "oh" sound a bit longer.
- glandium 5y ago
  It's not. See https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/454 https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/454
aaplok 5y ago
It means "kick", "hit". See one of the comments here: [0]. Also (if you speak French) this: [1] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1tdiap/kakoune_a_longdeveloped_vimlike_editor_designed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1tdiap/kakoune_a_longd... [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Nouvelle-Cal%C3%A9donie#Kakoune https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Nouvelle-Cal%...

debdut 5y ago

that video in the bottom of the page looks pretty neat! ofc everything will look magic when I've use to bloated VS Code for daily stuff

injidup 5y ago

Linux X11/tmux only.

boardwaalk 5y ago
macOS & FreeBSD too, and under WSL on Windows obviously.

grayrest 5y ago

There is a Kakoune-inspired VSCode extension. [1] [1] https://github.com/71/dance https://github.com/71/dance

sidkshatriya 5y ago
I've used this extension -- its nice -- but it can never give you the full experience. If you're new to Kakoune, I'd recommend just using the real Kakoune for a while and see if you like it. Once you truly understand the object/verb modal editing (vi is verb/object) + multiple cursors paradigm you might love it, as I did.

skavi 5y ago

Check out helix [0] for a kakoune inspired editor with some nice modern features included by default. [0]: https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/

mikojan 5y ago
Have been using this instead of vim for a month now. It's incredible. No messing with plugins and archaic config files. All works out of the box, including LSP integration. Highly customizable still. Extremely fast, too. I love "space-k" (Show docs for item under cursor). The one thing I'm still struggling with is the kakoune-like movements. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but they do feel inferior to vim's.
- adam_ung 5y ago
  In Vim you can also hit Shift-k to open docs (I usually use it for manual pages).
  - skavi 5y ago
    In this case, space k will open a popup with docs/definitions provided by the language server.
- skavi 5y ago
  what kind of motions are you missing? I prefer helix to default vim, but miss the power of the amazing lightspeed.nvim plugin.
  - archseer 5y ago
    There's been some prototyping on easymotion type jumps: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/1162 https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/1162
- r-zip 5y ago
  I agree it's nice, but Helix's default LSP for Python is unusably slow, having used pyright with Vim/Emacs/VS Code. I tried setting up the pyright language server to work with Helix, but could not get it to work. It will be much more usable once there's better documentation.

wintrli8 5y ago

It seems to be a decent editor. I did not like the kak config files and the syntax it uses for some reason. That’s one of the main reasons I stayed away from it. Gonna check again to see if anything changed.

sidkshatriya 5y ago
> I did not like the kak config files and the syntax it uses for some reason. Maybe I have Kakoune Stockholm syndrome but I actually like the syntax of it's config/script files. - The "kakscript language" is really quite minimalist. This makes it easy to remember and extremely consistent. It is designed to serve as a "glue" language rather than a fully powered language. - To write plugins you have to work with kakscript and (Posix) shell script (bash, dash etc.) or a basic shell script that in turn works with a program written in another language (Perl, Python, Rust etc.). It's difficult to explain on HN but the kakoune<->outside world integration is one of the nicest I've seen. There is very little ceremony and you can be up and running really quickly. - The creator of Kakoune is very reluctant to add more features to kakscript. While languages around us quickly accrue features and syntax, keeping kakscript limited means that you are forced to write more complicated code in languages that have been designed to be truly general purpose and not in kakscript

NateEag 5y ago

Note the existence of kakoune.el, an emacs emulation of Kakoune's core: https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el I have no idea how well it reproduces the experience - I'll probably be using vim on servers and emacs evil-mode locally until the day I die, so I haven't bothered to get into Kakoune, awesome though it seems.

raverbashing 5y ago
Why would you even bother making Emacs look like Kakoune? Funny how it seems a lot of Emacs developer time is spent a) making it look like / act like something else and b) making it do things unrelated to editing text. There is no focus. It's good that it can do a lot but it doesn't do any of those things well (unless you want to learn some cryptic key combinations that make less sense than vim). Meanwhile the rest of the world has moved on.
- dima55 5y ago
  > Why would you even bother making Emacs look like Kakoune? Because somebody wanted the Kakoune core editor behavior combined with the world of features emacs gives you. > Funny how it seems a lot of Emacs developer time is spent a) making it look like / act like something else Somebody found this useful. Would you have preferred that this person didn't do any of this at all? > and b) making it do things unrelated to editing text. Yes. Unlike vim and kakoune and others, emacs is much more than a text editor. > There is no focus. What focus? Somebody wanted to do this for themselves. There's no "emacs, inc" that sets the focus that all devs follow. This is how free software works. > It's good that it can do a lot but it doesn't do any of those things well I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess you aren't an emacs user? It does most of those things fantastically well.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    > Somebody found this useful. Would you have preferred that this person didn't do any of this at all? The usual conversation starters about emacs go "oh you have Spacemacs, you have EVil, you have plugin X, Y, Z, etc, etc" Whereas with other editors the focus is on improving the core experience Plugins are great, sure, but there seems to be an excessive focus on it and most plugins just don't give you the same experience.

vishnu2pc 5y ago

Anything in there that would make an avid vim user to switch?

atdt 5y ago

Kakoune does not yet have an interactive tutorial, like vim's `vimtutor` -- its developer community has mixed feelings about the need to develop an analogue. In lieu of it, there exists a document called TRAMPOLINE that is meant to help new users get up to speed quickly. It is available here: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/contrib/TRAMPOLINE https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/contrib/TRAMPOL...

29athrowaway 5y ago
kakoune is more discoverable than vim. You get an explanation of each command and its arguments, plus suggestions and completion, without the need for any plugin. The basics of the vim tutorial still apply to kakoune.
- sidkshatriya 5y ago
  > kakoune is more discoverable than vim. Yes, this is one of its most underrated features. Make sure you have to following line in your kakrc ``` set -add global autoinfo normal ``` This will give you an explanation on the various commands that you perform in the normal mode of the editor in a unobtrusive popup on your screen. When you type commands e.g. `:w` you will get a popup again that explains the optional switches available when saving a file. In vi, you usually need to hunt down things in documentation. In kakoune, the documentation is displayed as you work in your usual workflow. This made things really easy for me.

taviso 5y ago

Hmm, how would you replicate the alignment operation they show in the gif using vim? I couldn't immediately think of how to do it. I guess you could select the block, then maybe s/\>\s\</\=repeat(' ', 20 - col('.'))/g? That doesn't feel like the right solution though... maybe a macro, something like qa^wi<Tab><Esc>q then visual select and :norm@a? I dunno.

camel-cdr 5y ago
I use the vim easy align plugin for that. You could replicate it with "ga2 ", so go align 2nd space seperated. There are a few alignment modes for the last character (instead of the space), e.g. "|" for markdown and "&" latex tables.

lf-non 5y ago

Is the extension language kakounescript documented somewhere ? I am having a hard time finding a reference. I wish they just used lua/js though.

raiguard 5y ago
Kak is mostly self-documenting, but there are a few :doc pages that give more detail. Of particular interest are the commands [0] and command parsing [1] pages. Those will get you started. Kakscript does not have any control flow beyond a simple try/catch mechanism - for anything complex, you use shell scripting [2]. It is both a blessing and a curse - making it extremely easy to integrate with other tools, but causing some pain if you don't know shell scripting already. [0]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/commands.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/comma... [1]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/command-parsing.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/comma... [2]: https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/expansions.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/pages/expan...

loeg 5y ago

Anyone else spot the iso646.h macros[1] in the screenshots? E.g., https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/src/buffer_manager.cc#L32-L33 https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/src/buffer_mana... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_alternative_tokens#The_macros https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_alternative_tokens#The_macro...

thristian 5y ago
Since Kakoune is a C++ codebase, they're standard language keywords, not macros.

hyperupcall 5y ago

When I tried Kakoune, it seemed like a really cool idea and implementation, but it didn't seem like their configuration language had basic functions for string manipulation, path testing, etc. So a common pattern with plugins etc. was to shell out to sed, awk, etc, which was a _huge_ turnoff. I now use Neovim, but if they have recently implemented that functionality, I'd be willing to give Kakoune another shot

sidkshatriya 5y ago
Shelling out was a turnoff for me also initially but I've learn to embrace it. Kakoune tries not to re-invent the wheel. If sh/sed/awk/perl/other unix tools do the job well, might as well use them. That is the philosophy I think. I like the fact that using Kakoune has improved my shell script skills like crazy. (Posix) shell scripting is just everywhere and is an important skill to have. Kakoune uses shell integration everywhere and I've come to appreciate the the pragmatism/elegance of the "kakscript as a glue language paradigm".
- oblio 5y ago
  > (Posix) shell scripting is just everywhere and is an important skill to have. Not on Windows. Which may or not may matter.
  - berkes 5y ago
    Didn't Microsoft team up with Ubuntu to offer this to Windows users? I'm out of the loop and haven't touched windows seriously in years (other than to fix WiFi or printer issues for family. Sigh), so I probably misunderstood this Ubuntu in Windows completely.
    - oblio 5y ago
      It's through WSL and it's still not native or seamless. You can't ask a regular Windows user to have it set up as a dependency. I can't just go "wsl.exe" and have a very clean and seamless integration into Windows and pretend that "wsl.exe" is just another shell like cmd.exe or powershell.exe, WSL is it's own box off in a corner.

rob74 5y ago

Once you realise that it's, er, let's say, inspired by vim, you look at the logo and see that it's basically a clone of the vim logo/icon - the orange part of the K looks like the V in the vim icon, and the green lozenge background is almost exactly the same. Which makes it even stranger that they are trying to hide that - there is no mention of vi/vim on the site's landing page. Ok, I understand that they are wary that mentioning "vi(m)" could scare people away, but come on, they are going to find out anyway sooner or later and lose interest then, so what's the point? Also, what happened to proudly mentioning your software is open source and all the "fork me on GitHub" ribbons/banners/whatever? They seem a bit shy on that too - which is all the more bizarre because most of the links in the top navigation actually go to GitHub, but none of them are labeled "source code".

hasperdi 5y ago
AFAIK the creator got the inspiration from Vim, but I think the other statements about github, not mentioning vim, etc. Are just products of your imagination
- rob74 5y ago
  That the landing page doesn't mention vi/vim or open source is definitely a fact. Of course the reason for not mentioning vim was a product of my imagination, but actually I just wanted to say that I think it's odd for them to avoid stating the almost-obvious...
  - gumby 5y ago
    I just clicked over and looked at the repo which answered my question. No big deal.
  - a2800276 5y ago
    > avoid stating the almost-obvious... I feel it's in the nature of communication to avoid stating the obvious and only becomes problematic when what's obvious to the sender is not to the receiver. Paradoxically while too much obviousness makes a statement banal, being the first to explicitly state what's obvious to everyone is extremely insightful... :)

GekkePrutser 5y ago

The person that decided on the launch command 'kak' is not Dutch for sure :) Though I guess most 3-letter words mean something bad in one language or another :P

sundarurfriend 5y ago
I end up mentally pronouncing kak like "cack" (https://www.lexico.com/definition/cack https://www.lexico.com/definition/cack) every time. Makes kakscript sounds pretty weird too.
philipswood 5y ago
Yup, Same meaning for Afrikaans. Although Afrikaans is derived from Dutch some very rude words in the one are absolutely fine in the other for both.

Sukera 5y ago

I've been using this over the past few months and so far, the only thing that really bothers me is that there's no UTF-8/Unicode category selectors support in their self-rolled regex engine, citing not wanting to ship a unicode character database to keep the editor small (only mentioned on IRC, sorry). This makes writing syntax highlighting extensions a pain/difficult to maintain[1]. --- [1] https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/4411 https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/4411

pacaro 5y ago
I understand not wanting to ship large tables, but then why not ship the scripts to generate the tables from the publicly available source of truth?

dang 5y ago

Past related threads: What you could steal from the Kakoune code editor, and get away with - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685267 - Oct 2020 (94 comments) Kakoune – A Modal Text Editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19313794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19313794 - March 2019 (58 comments) Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17781780 - Aug 2018 (45 comments) Why Kakoune – The quest for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165919 - Dec 2016 (327 comments) Kakoune: a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13152499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13152499 - Dec 2016 (2 comments) Kakoune – An experiment for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484653 - Oct 2015 (34 comments) Mawww's experiment for a better code editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9764028 - June 2015 (15 comments)

gigatexal 5y ago

Vim inspired. Nice. I’ll give it a shot

usgroup 5y ago

Finally, a full rank editor. Needless to say the best part is the orthogonal design. Emacs and others compared to this have zero determinants in their favour.

lvass 5y ago
Emacs is the best editor with kakoune keybinds, but I'm not letting you play Cunningham's law on me.
- usgroup 5y ago
  No, I was making a maths joke on count of the "orthogonal design" on their website. Orthogonal matrices are full rank and have non zero determinants, but I think it was perhaps a bit too well disguised.

makach 5y ago

//Supports all operating systems except windows?! Oh the humanity! When will the discrimination end?// I love a good editor. I just discovered Joe and am super happy with that. Cross platform key-bindings is very important considering I am using many different operating systems.

capableweb 5y ago
> When will the discrimination end? When all developers finally finished moving away from Windows :)

throwaway19962 5y ago

quda 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Comevius 5y ago

There is also Helix, inspired by both Vim and Kakoune, with built-in LSP support. I'm having a great time with it. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix https://github.com/helix-editor/helix

archseer 5y ago
Hey thanks! That's good to hear :)
- lijogdfljk 5y ago
  Assuming you're related to Helix, how does it relate to Kakoune on the selection-first approach? That's one of my favorite features of Kakoune, curious how Helix handles that if inspired by Kakoune?
lilyball 5y ago
I just went through the tutorial. It's not bad, though there doesn't appear to be much documentation (there's not even a built-in :help command, and :tutor is rather minimal). What do you like about it compared to Kakoune?
- newlisp 5y ago
  0.6

bitigchi 5y ago

I'd like to try, but it does not support translations. I prefer using software only in my native language.

magpi3 5y ago

Can anyone point me to the documentation listing the modal commands? I can't find it in the editor itself or on the website EDIT: I figured it out. Type ":doc keys"

philip-b 5y ago

Kakoune's [design doc](https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/design.asciidoc https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/blob/master/doc/design.asci...) stresses that Kakoune is a text editor, not an IDE. What does this really mean? Obviously, the main way people use text editors like this is to develop programs. So, given that Kakoune doesn't want to be an IDE, what features does/will it lack?

rpastuszak 5y ago

From: https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html > The first thing to realize is that non-modal text editors are extremely biased towards insertion. I made https://enso.sonnet.io https://enso.sonnet.io and I 100% agree with Maxime on this one

michaelcampbell 5y ago

I run across this editor from time to time, but I'm in my 50's, and I'm pretty sure emacs will continue to be good enough for me through retirement, and I just don't feel like learning a new one. I even know enough vi(m) to get around; surely I won't need more than BOTH of those in the next 10-15 years. IDE's, sure, but for editing... nah. Most of the IDEs even have passable emacs keybindings, or the ability for me to make one (or use a FOSS one that someone quicker than I am has already done).