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Does anyone know of a modal editor that has an actual scripting language (i.e. better than VimL) behind it? I'm not satisfied with: * tcl/ruby/python interfac

by jayferd 15y ago

Does anyone know of a modal editor that has an actual scripting language (i.e. better than VimL) behind it? I'm not satisfied with: * tcl/ruby/python interfaces to Vim, because they're horrifically documented, and plugins using these are difficult to distribute * Re-implementations of a subset of Vim's mountain of hacks in a different language (see jsvim, et al)

Rayne 15y ago
Yeah, it is unfortunate how terribly documented they are. Not sure what you mean by difficult to distribute though. You either load the file from VimL or you embed the code in VimL. You distribute it like any Vim plugin. The documentation for the interfaces serves as decent reference material. What is really lacking is a long tutorial on the subject that is in an easy to find place.
- jayferd 15y ago
  It's the classic linking problem - if you write a plugin in $LANGUAGE, the end-user has to have a Vim compiled with $LANGUAGE support. My favorite example is Command-T. In order to link VimL to C, he had to write a Ruby extension and use the Ruby interface. Which is a total pain.
  - Rayne 15y ago
    Yeah, you've got me there.
notJim 15y ago
Sublime Text 2 has both a Python API and a plugin that makes it act sort of like VIM. Frankly, the plugin is pretty bad if you're used to VIM, but there's active development on it (it's open source [1]), and it's apparently good enough for many people. If you want to try this out, there's also a plugin that gives you an Ex-Mode [2], which I gather is something VIM users might want (I'm frankly not sure what it is.) [1]: https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage [2]: https://github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx https://github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx
- laughinghan 15y ago
  Ex-Mode let's you do all sorts of extremely useful things like running sed in-place on the current file, or only on the current selection text in the file, or do something like sed but interactive that will do a regex search-and-replace on the current file/selection but at each match give you the option of skipping that one. Ex-Mode also lets you do a lot of things unrelated to sed, including running an arbitrary shell command and inserting the stdout into the file at the cursor, but all the sed-like commands are what blew me away.
nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
Sublime Text 2 has "vintage mode" which gives you a vi-compatible modal editing interface. Much of ST2 is scriptable with Python, and it runs on all major platforms. I've been a vim fan for many years, and ST2 has recently won me over.
nyellin 15y ago
You will love evil, the latest, greatest, and most complete Vim emulation layer for Emacs. If you have heard of Vim-mode, viper, or vimpulse, this is the successor to all of them.
- jayferd 15y ago
  Yeah, I've tried it. I think it's unfortunate that they try to emulate Vim so closely. I love modal editing, but there are features of Vim (like VimL and the hacky combination of VimL and ex mode) that deserve to be re-thought, rather than re-implemented.

by jayferd 15y ago

Rayne 15y ago

Yeah, it is unfortunate how terribly documented they are. Not sure what you mean by difficult to distribute though. You either load the file from VimL or you embed the code in VimL. You distribute it like any Vim plugin. The documentation for the interfaces serves as decent reference material. What is really lacking is a long tutorial on the subject that is in an easy to find place.

jayferd 15y ago
It's the classic linking problem - if you write a plugin in $LANGUAGE, the end-user has to have a Vim compiled with $LANGUAGE support. My favorite example is Command-T. In order to link VimL to C, he had to write a Ruby extension and use the Ruby interface. Which is a total pain.
- Rayne 15y ago
  Yeah, you've got me there.

notJim 15y ago

Sublime Text 2 has both a Python API and a plugin that makes it act sort of like VIM. Frankly, the plugin is pretty bad if you're used to VIM, but there's active development on it (it's open source [1]), and it's apparently good enough for many people. If you want to try this out, there's also a plugin that gives you an Ex-Mode [2], which I gather is something VIM users might want (I'm frankly not sure what it is.) [1]: https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage [2]: https://github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx https://github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx

laughinghan 15y ago
Ex-Mode let's you do all sorts of extremely useful things like running sed in-place on the current file, or only on the current selection text in the file, or do something like sed but interactive that will do a regex search-and-replace on the current file/selection but at each match give you the option of skipping that one. Ex-Mode also lets you do a lot of things unrelated to sed, including running an arbitrary shell command and inserting the stdout into the file at the cursor, but all the sed-like commands are what blew me away.

nuclear_eclipse 15y ago

Sublime Text 2 has "vintage mode" which gives you a vi-compatible modal editing interface. Much of ST2 is scriptable with Python, and it runs on all major platforms. I've been a vim fan for many years, and ST2 has recently won me over.

nyellin 15y ago

You will love evil, the latest, greatest, and most complete Vim emulation layer for Emacs. If you have heard of Vim-mode, viper, or vimpulse, this is the successor to all of them.

jayferd 15y ago
Yeah, I've tried it. I think it's unfortunate that they try to emulate Vim so closely. I love modal editing, but there are features of Vim (like VimL and the hacky combination of VimL and ex mode) that deserve to be re-thought, rather than re-implemented.