helix-vim VS vis

I tried to re-learn from Vim to Helix but failed. No sure if this is a muscle memory problem or perhaps article is right about cons Kakoune-like approach for me. Even adapting with something https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim did not work. So if you like Helix it probably a good thing that you did not learn the vim at the time.

Not that they're inherently worse, just different - I'm perfectly happy with vim motions and relearning to type is pretty low on my list of priorities. Luckily there is a compatibility hack, not perfect but it's close enough: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim

I want to like Helix, I really, really want to. It's lean, fast, polished, purely console based so it fits my workflows perfectly... but the almost-like-vim-but-not-really key bindings are a deal breaker. I just can't make the switch.

If Helix were completely different in this regard, like Emacs is, I could handle--and I know because I use both vim and Emacs regularly pretty fluently. But Helix is way too close to the vim keybindings to discern it from a memory muscle perspective. I use vim keybindings everywhere else (zsh, all readline-based apps via a setting in ~/.inputrc, VSCode), so getting used to slight differences in just one editor is extremely hard because I can't just drop all other apps.

I recently tried this: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim which attempts to provide vim mappings to Helix. It's funny how the description in the page describes my progression almost 100%. And while it makes things slightly better, it's still not accurate enough to make this a non-issue.

https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim somebody on the internet has you covered

There is this configuration: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim

This switches most keybinds to be vi-like.

> I wonder if the author has ever heard of vis[0]

Yes.

https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/Differences-from-Kakoun...

https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/wiki#onboarding

> which imho fulfills far better each one of those premises

Not very motivated for such a harsh critic..

If you want an editor that uses Sam's structural regexes with keyboard-focussed vi-style interaction, you might be interested in https://github.com/martanne/vis

Not Rust, but there's vis which aims to be a Vi(m) inspired editor with Sam's structural regular expressions.

I do not use vim nor a WM nor a Thinkpad, but I do use vis. It's great.

> They either break from Vim's model (kakoune, helix) or follow Vim along with all it's flaws (Neovim, Vis).

I am sincerely curious of what flaws from Vim has Vis inherited, in your opinion.

I have the impression that the design idea of Vis is taking only the modal design of Vi (not Vim), plus the structural regular expressions of Sam, then make it as clean as possible with programmability via Lua plugins.

In fact, the state non-goals [1] seems to clearly distant itself from Vim.

[1]: https://github.com/martanne/vis#non-goals