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Modeless Vim
- tombh 3y agoI made a plugin to do this too! https://github.com/tombh/novim-mode https://github.com/tombh/novim-mode I'd never heard of OP's, I'm sure we can work together to share ideas.
- teo_zero 3y agoWhat's wrong with mswin.vim that's shipped with every vim and neovim that you need to reinvent the wheel?
- tombh 3y agoFrom the README: > Vim itself already has support for something similar in its optional mswin.vim config file. However it still assumes the necessity of Normal Mode and such heritage as SHIFT+INSERT-style combinations. This plugin however, attempts to avoid Normal Mode unless absolutely necessary, say for interacting with the NERDTree buffer, wherein Insert Mode has no purpose.
- hresvelgr 3y agoWhy not just use nano where all the common operations are labeled clearly at the bottom of the screen?
- pvg 3y agoThe author answers that in the linked thing, the short of it is for the vim features that nano doesn't have.
- j2kun 3y agoI wonder which sort of features they could have in mind, if learning the basic modes is too hard for the intended user of the plugin.
- pvg 3y agoThey mention that as well - syntax highlighting is one example.
- saagarjha 3y agonano of course has syntax highlighting, so I’m curious where it falls short.
- diggan 3y agoDoes it have syntax highlighting for the same amount of languages as vim does, out of the box? I just installed nano-7.2-1 and opened a HTML file with `nano test.html` and it opened without syntax highlight, I can see the point in authors endeavor if syntax highlighting out of the box is what they're looking for.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoI feel like if yiu want a fully featured IDE with language highlighting, debugging breakpoints, and code completion, but at the same time you want more ergonomic user interface, you should just use VSCode instead of doing everything in the terminal
- wanderingstan 3y agoAs the author states, this is for people who do most things in a different (modal) editor and just need a terminal editor on occasion.
- throwaway_5753 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- colordrops 3y agotake that emacs
- thrill 3y agoM-x zone
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoIt's evil-mode time.
- swader999 3y agoBlasphemouse.
- mtillman 3y agoAs the author states, the purpose of this is for users who work in other editors. But if that’s the case, when would they need this? Assuming they mean when a user is logged into another device where they only have terminal access. But in that case, this wouldn’t be installed by default-one reason to learn vim or emacs. So is the use case that one would just install this on the remote box and that their permissions would allow for this? If they have the permissions wouldn’t they just be able to connect via their existing IDE and skip the terminal altogether?
- soap- 3y agoI started using this because my favorite editor (micro) has very poor syntax highlighting for ruby. It's a very specific use case but it's quite nice and I'm considering switching to modeless vim
- behnamoh 3y agoYou claim that you forget Vim keybindings, but then you have this on your about page: email: echo soaper.:.disroot.:.org | sed 's/.:./@/; s/.:././'
- nerdponx 3y agoWe all have limited capacity to learn stuff. If I didn't already know Vim, there's very little chance I'd have the motivation/time/energy to learn it for the first time now.
- GavinMcG 3y agoWhat’s that have to do with Vim keybindings in particular?
- behnamoh 3y agoI was just saying that if one can remember sed syntax, Vim's should be easy to follow.
- pvg 3y agoAfter years of vi users trying to turn every perfectly working program into a worse version of vi, it's heartening to see we're taking the fight for sanity and justice back to their territory.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoJust fact that ones you learn vim motions it is hard to let go since they are so powerful
- pvg 3y agoWell, reasonable people can have different, even more reasonable explanations for that 'fact'! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099049
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago[flagged]
- agubelu 3y agoPersonally, I find it a bit tiring that the usual response coming from the vim userbase towards someone not liking vim is either a) you obviously didn't learn it well enough, or b) you must be a bad programmer. Sure, vim is a great tool, but it's just a tool. You're perfectly allowed to not like it and/or prefer to use other tools.
- felipellrocha 3y ago[flagged]
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- loloquwowndueo 3y agoI’m using vim precisely because its modal - multi-key combos hurt my hands, modal has me doing fewer finger contortions.
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- eviks 3y agoYou can also rebind combos to not hurt
- fourseventy 3y ago[flagged]
- behnamoh 3y agoI need to get some fresh air and listen to peaceful music to forget that I saw this! Vim has been one of the best discoveries of my life BECAUSE of its modes, and I've taken that modal approach to my browsers, VSCode, etc.
- weaksauce 3y agoIf you don't already do it the neovim extension for vscode is nights and days better than the one trying to emulate vim in javascript.
- behnamoh 3y agoI tried both (mainly to use my neovim extensions) but unfortunately it was buggy (around 6 months ago) for me. Has it gotten more stable now?
- DolphinKoala 3y ago[dead]
- weaksauce 3y agothe only time i've seen any bugs is when the neovim version lagged behind what they require in the project. i would work but not well. upgrading neovim fixed it for me. though, like any project, there are probably bugs at the edges... not sure what bugs you are experiencing however.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- angvp 3y agoOh man, I'll give you an E- for the effort.
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoEmacs has Evil Mode for simulating a modeful editor with vi-style keybinding. Vim now has an extension to do the opposite thing. It would be extra amusing if it supports Emacs-style keybindings (but it doesn't).
- jrm4 3y agoWow. This appears to be made for exactly me. I've half-learned vim and like the idea of it, but frankly I also use so many other "regular" programs that at times I wish I never learned vim. I'm really hoping this is more-or-less what I think it is.
- dinkleberg 3y agoEveryone has their preferred setup, so I guess it is cool that this exists for that reason. But come on! Learning vim bindings is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Once you’re hooked you’ll hate any non-mode based editors.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- quickthrower2 3y agoGuess I never got hooked!
- rflec028 3y agoAs both an avid vim and emacs user, and a lover of both: This is heresy!!!!!!!!!!
- jjcm 3y agoConceptually the reasons the author give for this (syntax highlighting and other features of vim outclass other terminal-based editors) make total sense. That said there's something absolutely defiling about this. It's like installing a V8 in a Tesla, or replacing the pumpkin in pumpkin pie. I love that it will make VIM more accessible for more people, but I hate how they do it. Kudos to the author.
- csdvrx 3y ago> I hate how they do it What exactly do you hate? The site says: > > Ctrl+S to save, select text using Shift+←/→/↑/↓, and copy/paste using Ctrl+C/V. I haven't setup Control-S, but I have very similar bindings: Shift and arrows for selecting, then Alt or Control-Shift for moving the selection around, as shown on https://raw.githubusercontent.com/csdvrx/CuteVim/main/recordings/shift-arrows_then_ctrl-shift.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/csdvrx/CuteVim/main/record... Also, like the author I have a shortcut to change themes (F9) and another to toggle invisible chars (F8), and I try to use the top of the screen as much as possible (I show the offset in hex, the row and column position etc). I like how vim is modal, but some Windows shortcuts (like Control-C) just make too much sense to given them up on Linux: I have put `stty intr ^X` because using Shift-Control-C to copy from the terminal was way worse. Having a few chording shortcuts give you the best of both worlds! BTW, all of the other shortcuts proposed on this site make a lot of sense to me: I do expect Ctrl-F to search, and Ctrl-T to open tabs, I think I will copy a few :)
- arcanemachiner 3y agoBack in my day, when we pressed Ctrl+S, the terminal froze, and that's just the way we liked it. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/12107/how-to-unfreeze-after-accidentally-pressing-ctrl-s-in-a-terminal https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/12107/how-to-unfree...
- kevindamm 3y agoCtrl-Q whew
- 3y ago
- bluish29 3y ago> This configuration is not meant for the aficionado who prefers vim over graphical editors. This is meant for people who normally use GUI editors (like VSCode), but sometimes need an editor that can run in a terminal. So it probably not for many people here. But I like it although I use vim as IDE when doing remote development.
- asicsp 3y agoSee also: https://github.com/tombh/novim-mode https://github.com/tombh/novim-mode (Plugin to make Vim behave more like a 'normal' editor)
- beachy 3y agoI attempted this within a few days of first being exposed to vi - 35 years ago. But since I was logging into different machines all the time I soon decided it was better to just use vi the way it came out of the box, modes and all. That philosophy has served me well over the years.
- csdvrx 3y ago> But since I was logging into different machines all the time We now have actually portable executables (multiplatform, multios) that contain their own config file: you can just scp 1 binary and be done with it.
- pastage 3y agoDo you have a link to this? It is not always possible, arcane non x86 arches, low bandwidth connections, but time is the big thing. A binary upload just to change some lines in a machine on the other side of the world. I am lazy.
- ttyprintk 3y agoThe superset is 243MB from https://justine.lol/cosmo3/ https://justine.lol/cosmo3/ but it might be more convenient to be lazy and run sshfs rather than modify the far end.
- csdvrx 3y agofor vim aarch64 and x86-64 : https://github.com/csdvrx/CuteVim https://github.com/csdvrx/CuteVim just embed your own vimrc with zip following the instructions for others, see https://cosmo.zip/pub/cosmos/bin/ https://cosmo.zip/pub/cosmos/bin/
- augusto-moura 3y agoDo you remember which plugin/project you used at the time? The one being linked looks pretty recent [1]. Are there any other implementations? [1]: https://github.com/SebastianMuskalla/ModelessVim/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/SebastianMuskalla/ModelessVim/blob/main/L...
- alberth 3y agoIBM CUA I’ve always wondered how different Unix/Linux would be today if decades ago a Common User Access (standardized menu system like FILE | EDIT | etc) had been defined for TUI apps (like how it was for Windows & Mac OS). Imagine VI & EMacs having the same key bindings due to standards. https://sqlite.org/hctree/doc/hctree/doc/hctree/index.html#status https://sqlite.org/hctree/doc/hctree/doc/hctree/index.html#s...
- jfoutz 3y agovi and emacs are prehistoric. Folks now are ok with / and \ and maybe some can deal with : as a file separator. But in the precambrian era you needed to know about ^ to edit a specific version of a file, because diffs were tracked. They're both wonderful and amazing and can handle anything, because they had to handle everything when filesystems were like a brand new invention and nobody really knew what was good or bad, so they threw everything in. Tough to get standards before standards exist.
- anticodon 3y agoPower of Vi is that its keybindings are way more ergonomical compared to IBM CUA. If you're a touch typist. It doesn't make sense to change Vi/Vim/NeoVim keybindings because they're so convenient, composable and easy to remember.
- AnonymousPlanet 3y agoThat is only the case if you think you have to press Ctrl using your pinky. You can use the side if your palm instead. Then CUA suddenly becomes very ergonomic. Try it. I've done this for over 15 years now across a plethora of different keyboards and also survived several years of Emacs unharmed thanks to it.
- broscillator 3y agoI just tried this on my laptop and it is the most uncomfortable thing I've done on a keyboard.
- nhumrich 3y agoI have found "micro" to be a really good "modeless" alternative to vim
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- naruhodo 3y agoYeah, same. However, it is a pain to install on some systems because, for example, the Ubuntu package installs a debug build that puts a log text file (or similar, I forget the details) in $CWD everywhere you go. So you end up downloading a binary off Github, which feels dirty to me. And there are some other micro configuration tweaks I like to do. I'm definitely going to compare this against micro.
- bpshaver 3y agoWhat's wrong with "modal"? I don't think "modeful" is a word.
- jdeisenberg 3y agoSee http://worrydream.com/refs/Tesler%20-%20A%20Personal%20History%20of%20Modeless%20Text%20Editing%20and%20Cut-Copy-Paste.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Tesler%20-%20A%20Personal%20Histo... (specifically the sidebar “How Modes Degrade Usability”) There’s also a sidebar “Objections to Modeless Editing and Cut/Copy-Paste”
- viraptor 3y agoI think you misread/misunderstood OP.
- bpshaver 3y agoMy point was just that "modeful" isn't a word. Vim is a "modal editor." The article you cite does not include the word "modeful."
- jdeisenberg 3y agoAh, now I understand. My apologies.
- agumonkey 3y agoI'm not sure modeless has meaning. It's just an initial mode map in a way.
- quasarj 3y agoBlasphemy!
- decafbad 3y agoI'm honing my sword.
- lemper 3y ago[flagged]
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- asix66 3y agoSeems maybe author did not know that this is already built into vim?: "easy vim", aka evim, or "vim -y". see "man vim" That said, if modeless editor you are looking for... then vim is not the editor you're looking for. It goes against what vim is, and hamstrings it. Learning vim is a journey, and once comfort sets in, you will understand why, why vim.
- danra 3y agoGood to know. Of course, I did have to google how to quit easy vim.
- hobabaObama 3y agofor any one wondering cntrl-o --> to get to normal vim mode then exit as usual
- lancebeet 3y agoIt's apparently also possible to do Ctrl-q to quit directly (it runs :confirm qall).
- rgoulter 3y ago> I did have to google how to quit easy vim. For those who know how to quit vim, but want to experience "how do I quit" again, try running `:term`.
- sweetjuly 3y agoThe real magic is opening :term, close all your splits, forget that you're still in term, try to open vim again, and then being momentarily confused why you find that all the keybinds and broken. This happens to me about once a month.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thih9 3y ago
- a-dub 3y agothis is violence. i never knew it was possible to emit a shitpost in the form of a github project, i am simultaneously disgusted and humbled.
- null_point 3y agoThis reading this for me is like watching someone order eggs sunny-side up but then they scope out the yokes and toss them; eating only the egg whites. Similes and feels aside, I wonder which situations using vim in this way comes up that you wouldn't just use your preferred editor for. I know you can set an editor for things like git, but couldn't you use a GUI editor?
- wanderingstan 3y agoHappens often when one needs to ssh into a remote server and edit some files, sometimes with tmux to boot.
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoWhy not use vscodes ssh plugin? Feels like that is what you actually want.
- ilaksh 3y agoI currently use vim every day. I have been trying to learn vim off and on for about 30 years. vi and vim have modes because they were created in an era where computing and terminal capabilities were very limited and even when the terminals could support interactive editing, it wasn't expected. They had very low expectations. They were used to things like 'ed'. The religious beliefs that programmers have about vim are a case study in why I believe that AI will easily take control of the planet in less than a century. That sentence is questionable in multiple ways. Anyway, I will definitely try this thing out. Hopefully I am not too lazy to keep installing it. That's what happened with the last one of these.
- a-dub 3y ago> vi and vim have modes becaus they were created in an era where computing and terminal capabilities were very limited. that's the whole point. it was designed for limited terminals and high latency, very slow serial links. that means when you learn it and all of its shortcuts and you have a fast and modern terminal, you are able to edit at ludicrous speed. it's like training at altitude or running with weight belts for editing text.
- ilaksh 3y agoI just don't believe that the average vim users edits significantly faster than non vim users. I mean, maybe 5% faster. Sure. Maybe. But at what price? _At what price, I ask you??_
- anticodon 3y agoI don't know how faster I became at editing text after switching to vim. But it definitely has a different feeling: the text just flows from the fingers. Your mind is never interrupted to remember some shortcut e.g. to select text inside the brackets or inside the quotes. Anything you want to do with text happens effortlessly with the speed of thought. Definitely worth it.
- wruza 3y agoFor me it’s somewhat slower at the price of freeing my mind from “ctrl-shift-left-wait-wait-oops-right-right”-like things. I believe that faster typing in vim is a myth supported by our adepts, who are more zealous than is reasonable.
- stevebmark 3y agoI've always disliked that Bram calls Vim a "modal" editor. All this means is your keyboard and mouse actions do different things based on what "mode" of the editor you're in. All editors are "modal" editors. In VSCode for example, if you've focused the search box, pressing up loads the previous search, compared to if you've focused the code area, pressing up goes up a line. Vim purports to be more efficient than other editors because it's a modal editor, but that's nonsense.
- schainks 3y agoNot all modal editors are created equal? Once fluent in vim, I could literally get more done in the same amount of time, but YMMV.
- colordrops 3y agoThat's not really the same thing though is it? Each of vim's modes are extremely complex with their own usage of the vim grammar. The "modal" behavior you describe is very simple.
- stevebmark 3y agoThey are the same thing of course, complexity is not relevant to the definition. The main difference is Vim's editing modes are imperative. You have to glue together small painful commands to do what you want. Modern editors are declarative - you say "I want to move this file" or "I want to rename this variable" or "I'll drag this split here" and they do the rest.
- minitech 3y ago> Modern editors are declarative - you say "I want to move this file" or "I want to rename this variable" or "I'll drag this split here" and they do the rest. Those are imperative actions rephrased to make an artificial distinction (and I rename variables in Vim with gR). How high-level the available actions are and being a modal or non-modal editor are orthogonal.
- beautron 3y ago
- kagevf 3y agoemacs has CUA available and another comment mentioned there's an "easyvim". My point being that those editors already support those features.
- shri_krishna 3y ago[dead]
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoIs this so you can look cool and say you "use vim btw" while not getting any of the benefits of using vim?
- Aaronmacaron 3y ago> The config files in this repository turn vim into a modeless editor. Instead of remembering cryptic commands, you can use standard key binds, like Ctrl+S to save, select text using Shift+←/→/↑/↓, and copy/paste using Ctrl+C/V. > This configuration is not meant for the aficionado who prefers vim over graphical editors. This is meant for people who normally use GUI editors (like VSCode), but sometimes need an editor that can run in a terminal. I think it's unrealistic to expect users who only occasionally use vim to edit the odd config file in the terminal to fiddle with a custom vim setup. If you're really looking for a good editor that behaves like GUI editors I really recommend micro [1]. It has mouse support by default, syntax highlighting for many languages out of the box, most keybinds are the same as in GUI editors and copy/paste works like expected. [1] https://github.com/zyedidia/micro https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
- fandalf 3y agojust use gedit then?
- laserbeam 3y agoI don't think this covers the main reason I only use vim occasionally: it is the only reasonable editor available over ssh by default on all VMs deployed in your typical org. Over there it usually has default settings, and it's not trivial to change configs or install other editors. Worthy attempt, looks cool, but I'm still stuck with having to learn the basics of moving a cursor around reasonably :(
- AlchemistCamp 3y agoYou can learn the basics in under 15 minutes.
- TuringTest 3y agoAnd you can forget them in the next 15 minutes. Been there, done that. As the article says, if you don't use it regularly you'll never learn it by heart, and Vi doesn't have any affordances that will remind you of what you learned by recognition instead of recall.
- airspresso 3y agoIt's unforgiving, but that's also a bit refreshing. The feeling of accomplishment after a coding session in vim cannot be replicated in other editors.
- laserbeam 3y agoI agree with the aurhor of the library. > Q: Why don't you just learn the vim commands? > A: I did, but if you don't use vim regularly, you keep forgetting them. The basics are only useful in vim, and editors that you force into vim mode. Other places one types text into which use the same conventions absent in vim: browser input fields, the url bar, email, office software, random input fields in games (I've seen single file libraries that obey the same conventions of moving across words that you get in office), publishing software, chat clients... Vim is the only outsider, and because I only need it rarely, I forget things and I accidentally use the shortcuts from other software which sometimes break things. I know enough vim, but I keep using conventions from other software out of habit, and shortcuts do other things. Vim is great editor, but a horrible thing to use by default simply because it was made before text editing ux got standardized.
- bharrison 3y agoI can only imagine the kind of fascinating, or maybe frightening list of perceived requirements someone might need from their editor/ide that boils down to their installing this.
- dualogy 3y agoHere's a TUI / terminal editor I'd like: VSCode clone. Reads the same config file JSON formats from the same locations, loads and renders the same color schemes, runs the same Extensions Host, exposes the same API to extensions (with some things like WebView, CustomEditor and such throwing NotSupported obviously), keeps up with changes in all those formats. Major visual difference would be that whatever the editor font settings dictate, would apply to all the UX not just the text-editor tabs. But that, who would even mind. The extensions compat would have to be NodeJS-based I guess, but the rest wouldn't have to be written in JS/TS I suppose.. Plenty of us are "happily Stockholmed" by the overall DX of VSCode but were there a Electron-less but otherwise 99+%-compat-and-keeping-up-with-vsc rendition (TUI or native GUI), we'd jump on it nonetheless.
- vintermann 3y agoIt's interesting that you refer to Stockholm syndrome about vscode in a thread about vim. Me, I first wrote programs in AMOS Basic, which was certainly not CUA either (I remember shift-backspace erased a whole line, which could be really frustrating). I've done enough learning of tiresome nowhere-else UIs... back when I played Nethack, I would of course insert a big S anytime I tried to save in another program for a while. Nethack was at least fun enough to make it worth it. VSCode is fast for stuff I do in editors which is slow elsewhere (thanks in no small part to Mr. Gallant!) and better at doing anything an IDE used to do, than most IDEs. Does vim support full-featured language servers/tree-sitters these days?
- veilrap 3y agoVim has pretty good support of the lsps and tree sitters that code does (at least for the languages I’ve used), I actually have a mirrored configuration between the two to simplify when I want to jump from one to the other. :)
- jokethrowaway 3y agopretty cool you can do that! nano syntax highlighting is not as good as vim but it can work - the problem is in a lot of places there is nothing but vi if you can configure vim you probably can also just install nano so it's unlikely this will get any use
- DolphinKoala 3y ago[dead]
- thih9 3y agoI guess now I know how experienced emacs users feel about me always using evil mode.
- oneshtein 3y agoCtrl+Shift+←/→/ doesn't work, Shift+←/→/ at the end of line doesn't work, no quick access to console, so I will continue to use mcedit from mc instead.
- amne 3y agoAs someone who used mcedit for ~20 years now and vim for ~1 year I still feel sometimes I'm faster in mc+mcedit for both code edit and navigation. It's slowly moving towards vim(neovim actually) with the whole copilot autocomplete stuff that when used properly can speed things up a lot.
- arnklint 3y agoThat’s a whole lot of code to not have to learn 10 keystrokes.
- cassepipe 3y agoUnless of course the modal editor everyone is talking about has its most important key, i.e. the mode changing key, the furthest away possible from your fingers because of an historical accident and none of its users are talking about it and are smug about how easy it is so easy to learn a bunch of commands instead of mentioning the issue
- LAC-Tech 3y agoI'm down for modeless TUI editors. This idea that because I like to work in the terminal I must prefer modes is accidental. I used micro for a while, which was quite pleasant, but didn't have all the LSP goodness.
- Yasuraka 3y agoIt is sad that it is a plugin instead of a core feature and a buggy one at that (https://github.com/AndCake/micro-plugin-lsp https://github.com/AndCake/micro-plugin-lsp), it's the last missing piece to transform a really good choice into the de factor killer
- vkoskiv 3y agoPersonal anecdote: I've used Vim for many years, but I never progressed much beyond the basics, because I almost never put much active effort into learning more advanced motions. About a year ago, I discovered the Helix editor, which has a (IMO) genius feature, where pressing a key to start a motion or other action pops up a little pop-up box that shows all the possible options. It just perfectly clicks with my brain, I can easily ignore the pop-up once I've got the muscle memory, or I can even disable the pop-ups altogether. It's brilliant for discoverability. With this, I've passively memorized far more advanced motions in the last 12 months than I did in the ~8 years before that. And since Helix is a vim style editor, many of these motions also work in vim! I feel like Helix is the perfect editor for people like me who know just enough vim to be comfortable, but never got very deep into customizing or muscle memory with advanced motions. Helix does some things differently compared to Vim, which I hear puts off some more advanced Vim users. The built-in LSP & highlighting support with a stack-based "jump to symbol" and keybinds to traverse the stack also perfectly maps to how I want to navigate code, it has made me far more productive than ever before. I'm not affiliated with the project myself, I'm just super happy I found the perfect editor for me :]
- Malcolmlisk 3y agoThere is a well known plugin for neovim to do this kind of behavior. You can even create your own hotkeys into that plugin and will help you navigate and memorize different hotkeys for the editor. The plugin is called whichkey, and this is their github https://github.com/folke/which-key.nvim https://github.com/folke/which-key.nvim
- rodrigodlu 3y agoI'm today a neovim heavy user, but even using lazyvim, there's a lot missing with which key. Helix seems to be more out of box. I'm also restarted my journey with neovim after helix. Actually lazyvim convinced me to give another chance, because the community packs and mason makes lsp so convenient! Astronvim is also a good contender, but I broke it so many times trying to customize.
- oblio 3y ago
- hannofcart 3y agoAs an old vim graybeard, more power to you. I'd recommend checking out `vim -y` as well. (And once you try _that_, you'll likely have a question, the answer to which is Ctrl-l.) To others on this thread decrying this as heresy: leave 'em be. Let everyone use whatever editor flows works for them. Programming is hard enough without having to conform to other people's beliefs of how _you_ ought to use your own editor!
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- radiKal07 3y ago> Instead of remembering cryptic commands I use vim and nothing about its commands are "cryptic" to me. You want to "go to definition"? You press "gd" as in "(g)o to (d)efinition". What's cryptic about this?
- mcluck 3y agoExactly. The whole reason I use vim is because it's like a conversation. If you want to talk about cryptic shortcuts, look at IntelliJ. Why should Ctrl+B be Go to Declaration?
- onehair 3y agogd isn't a native vim command though :P This tool is intended for people who never use vim more than a few times a month or a year
- cassepipe 3y agoNot sure why you say it's not native... Sure it's made to work along with a ctag file but it's totally native (ie no plugin) if point vim to one, ctag is only crafting the file.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoAre you serious? That's incredibly cryptic. The fact that you learned it doesn't make it intuitive for others.
- anthk 3y agoI prefer vis. It has structural regexen, a la Sam in plan9, much better than the old s,foo,bar, syntax.
- jovial_cavalier 3y agoDoes anybody really struggle so much with vim that in the occasional circumstance they have to quickly edit files on a remote server, they are totally brickwalled, and need to install a total conversion config? That seems insane to me. A few years ago I decided to "get good" at vim, and I learned a handful of new tricks. A few new ways to select text, macros, new ways to navigate, etc. But before that, I was perfectly capable of navigating documents and editing them with the arrow keys, just using "i" and "<Esc>". It seems like the only person for whom this would be helpful is someone who has no clue what vim is, and doesn't understand modes at all. That kind of person is likely not going to be able to even find this repo, let alone install the configuration.
- greatNespresso 3y agoI relate with OP about the difficulty to memorize advanced commands from vim. Nevertheless, I cannot go back to a modeless editor and found a happy middleground using VSCode with the vim extension. It's not hardcore vim for sure but I feel that I get the best of both worlds.
- adamtajti 3y agoHilarious!
- saltserv 3y ago[dead]
- jacky2wong 3y agoI use VSCode + Vim. I found that largely replaces the need for a modeless vim. Is there an advantage of using it over my current setup?
- mikl 3y agoModeless Vim. I guess that’s a bit like a peanut butter sandwich with no peanut butter. But if that’s what you want, more power to you.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- imbnwa 3y agoI struggle to think what person, whom doesn't interact with nearly frequently enough, would pull down this to repo just for when they may/might interact with vim
- 3v1n0 3y agoMicro is probably better at this point for such purpose. However I also have some customizations myself to use some kind of modeless commands to quickly select or move around, but I still model things around basic vim syntax and its fantastic move keys which keep me in the home all the time (e.g. Using alt+ghjk from insert, I move around, adding shit I select, without having to switch to move or visual mode)
- soap- 3y agoI was using micro. I still love it, but the syntax highlighting for ruby is very messed up
- a-saleh 3y agoT.b.h. I mostly use vim with keyboard movement in insert mode enabled, so ... 80% time I don't really use modes.
- cassepipe 3y agoIt's like using a bike as a scooter. It works but... Have you tried remapping CapsLock to Escape so now you have a quick access to the most important key of your editor and can actually enjoy it ? Most vim users do it but they never talk about it and the beginners have no clue and suffer needlessly from this historical accident.
- a-saleh 3y agoI have thinkpad, and fortunately they still make esc big enough, so that I was not compelled to rebind. It is more like ... when I am writing I like to stay in insert mode as long as possible - and this is where I would put the 80% of the time in vim. Once I put on my edit/refactor hat, that is where normal-mode shines :) And of course, special shout out to visual-selection mode.
- cassepipe 3y agoMy usual comment on any thread touching vim, as an answer to all hypothetical comments talking about how vim never clicked : Remap the Escape key to CapsLock else you will never like vim (provided you are a normal person) It's the most important key and you should punctuate all your inserts with it. So it'd better not be the key that's the furthest away from your fingers. The reason that's the case is an historical accident. Don't be a victim. Remap. P.S : Yes, I know about people using Ctrl+[, or Ctrl+C, I know you got used to it but one gets used to anything, it does not mean it's good. A weird combination isn't great and Ctrl + C has some quirks --> https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/25764/use-control-c-instead-of-escape-key https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/25764/use-control-c-i... P.P.S : Yes, I know about `jk` it's clever ok but my mapping is system-wide and now I enjoy Escape being at the right spot for bash, zsh, fish, gdb, firenvim vim modes at no configuration cost.
- wruza 3y ago“Doesn’t mean it’s good” doesn’t mean it’s a problem either. Also, people prone to remapping already have their Ctrl there.
- cassepipe 3y agoLife can be beautiful we don't have to suffer because it's already there. Remapping takes less than 5 seconds in MacOs and Linux. 2 minutes in Windows. And you only have to set it up once. Also my left pinkie never misses CapsLock and I don't even have to think about it. Can't say that's the case for Ctrl+[ which I have used extensively for one year. I am really happy I switched.
- michaelcampbell 3y agoModeless vim, Emacs "evil mode"... dogs and cats living together. It'll be anarchy.
- linsomniac 3y agoI could get behind a "nanoVim" config that was vim but with nano bindings, that could drop in Linux distros in place of nano, and would let me flip back to full vim when I get dropped into it to edit a crontab or the like.
- MantisShrimp90 3y agoI think it's funny how much emotional energy gets invested into any (neo)vim posts. But the energy is mostly people that never learned vim and feel super insecure about it. I'm not going to make the same mistake of judging this. If you are someone who has always hated vim and never want to touch it, go for it, this might make your day easier on some machine if you can load this repo really quick (although as others have noted you would need to ftp the repo onto a machine over ssh to make this work). As someone who is a neovim enjoyer, you are allowed to not like (neo)vim, I don't want to hear you bitch about the editor you don't want to use. If you're a vim user who has this bad habit of shaming people for their editor choice, STOP! It gives us all a bad name whenever you judge people just because they don't enjoy the vim life, just like emacs it's closer to a lifestyle than a tool and if people don't want to invest the time they have the right to make that choice. The world is no longer dominated by vim and it really has become an optional skill for new programmers.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoAgreed. I prefer vim as my $EDITOR, but I don't use it for programming. There I prefer JetBrains IDEs mostly. When I'm editing something in a POSIX terminal, vi is guaranteed to be available and is powerful. Knowing how to use vi is useful because it's required by POSIX and thus available on any system you SSH into. That means default settings & no plugins, and maybe not even vim.
- AlienRobot 3y ago>learn vim After starting the (neo)vim tutorial, all I could think about was if people who "learned" vim never learned how to edit text in a normal text/code editor. And I don't mean this in an inflammatory way. I mean: hjkl = Arrow keys b = Ctrl + Left w = Ctrl + Right df<space> = Ctrl + Delete $d = Shift + End, Delete dd = Home, Shift + End, Delete 2 = just press the keyboard command twice?? ddp = Alt + Down ddkP = Alt + Up The more I read the tutorial the more I felt like... do you not have arrow keys? I mean this literally. Is your keyboard just esc to f12 and there are no arrows or the numpad and it just ends there? I do understand some good points of vim, like how explicit it is. There are many code editors/IDEs out there and sometimes how they treat Ctrl+Left/Right has subtle differences, e.g. ending the "word" in "-" or "_" or stopping before or after spaces. But most of this stuff is (or at least should be) configurable. But that's about it. I mean how do you even use the numbers? Who looks at code and says "no, this should be exactly 8 lines below this one." I just Alt + Down until it's right. I'd spend more time trying to write the command right than I'd spend just pressing the keys multiple times.
- bufio 3y agoThe best part of using vim is telling everyone you use vim.
- friedaanton 3y ago[dead]
- Aperocky 3y agoEven the church of emacs have never seen desecration like this.
- xwowsersx 3y agoThis is blasphemy of the highest order. Modeless Vim is akin to rewriting the universe's source code – an audacious act that sends ripples through the cosmic keystrokes, disrupting the sublime balance of modal existence!
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoOk now give it emacs keybindings. Thanks.
- chrisfinazzo 3y agoCorollary: xterm-mouse-mode in emacs is an equivalent of sorts for the rest of the world, and it is excellent.
- MatthiasPortzel 3y agoI tried to create something equivalent to this for a long time. I’m used to normal text editing controls, so there’s no reason for me to learn Vim’s controls. But Neovim’s syntax highlighting and other features are best in class. (I was using Mac, and so wanted to use command instead of control, which requires cooperation from your terminal emulator, adding another layer of complexity.) I got extremely close; but there were constantly little things missing that I expect from native text fields. I gave up and switched to Sublime Text, and haven’t looked back. The advantage of an “in-terminal” editor is really just not having to break flow to edit a text file, and Sublime is so fast and simple that it works great for editing files outside of a project. Even over SSH (with RemoteSubl) or for writing git commit messages. I can share config details if people are interested.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bornfreddy 3y agoOne thing I sorely miss with vim (and which sold me to vscode - yes, I know) is editing in multiple places at once (not sure about the correct term). You select some text, press Ctrl+d to select another one, if you want to skip one Ctrl+k d, then just edit in multiple places at once. Simple and sooo useful, because you actually see each selection before you edit it, and you can select them one by one (or skip, or go back). Alternatives with vim that I found were not quite as helpful, but I'd love to learn I missed something.
- bosquefrio 3y agovscodevim is a vim plugin for VSCode.
- krick 3y agoSo, what's next? Lispless Emacs?
- danShumway 3y agoI expected to somewhat lightly/jokingly make fun of this, but after looking at the README the reasoning makes complete sense to me and it seems like just a straightforwardly good project. This is not about saying what Vim "should" be, the author is setting up a quick hack to make a ubiquitous piece of software usable for them. Totally reasonable and it's great that Vim is flexible enough to make this work. It's not about building an ideal piece of software, Vim's model of syntax highlighting is probably not the ideal model for a piece of software, ideally you'd use per-language highlighters that are hosted separately. But those highlighters aren't installed by default, and Vim is. So yeah, use the tool that exists and make it usable. Yes, you could install a Vim alternative, but this is not about making an editor to live in or building a perfect system. So I think this is great, I don't think it defeats the purpose of Vim at all. I say this as someone who set up Emacs to use Vim keybindings and who thinks the modal editing and composition combined with macros within Vim is basically the biggest selling point of the editor. It doesn't matter what Vim "should" be, this is an easy way to get a ubiquitous text editor to be more usable. Not perfect but a one line installation on almost any Linux box with Internet access, so it solves a real problem with relatively little downside in a quick and easy way -- real hacking at its finest. It might be useful to compare and contrast this to Vim's easy mode (vim -y), but this project is also 2 years old and I don't know what the state of easy mode was back then, and that kind of comparison might be overkill anyway. I like modal editing, so I'm not as familiar with easy mode so I'm not sure what the comparison would be. I know at some point it started defaulting to a graphical session because quitting out of easy mode in the terminal was giving people trouble. But possibly something to look into, maybe, depending on the system you're using if you need to use Vim but can't customize it.
- cmod 3y agoIs Micro[0] not a better, more purpose-fit solution to these issues? (Syntax highlighting quality, etc) Prev discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37171294 [0]: https://micro-editor.github.io/ https://micro-editor.github.io/
- euroderf 3y agoFrom the README: > This is meant for people who normally use GUI editors (like VSCode), but sometimes need an editor that can run in a terminal. There's always emacs -nw