helix VS xi-editor

Nice post. Obligatory Helix plug: For anyone interested in taking this further, there are whole editors designed around multi-cursor editing.

https://helix-editor.com/

I could never turn it off completely but I do sometimes use the Acme theme during the day (it's too bright in the evening), which highlights just comments, strings, and errors.

https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/wiki/Themes#acme

You can use a snippet LSP to work around Helix not having a built-in LSP manager. They're listed in https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/395

I'm probably not the average python programmer.

But I normally just create two terminals (I have a tiling window manager) and in one I open a python file under /tmp/ write my code and execute it in the other terminal.

I would probably use a REPL if it was integrated in my favorite editor ( https://helix-editor.com ).

Wow, that's been there a while: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/commit/35c974c9c49f912...

Wonder how I missed that. I'm getting a re-education in helix today -- thank you! I'll go through `hx --tutor` again before I insert any more feet in my mouth.

Interesting to see how they are gonna approach integrating plugins/extensions system, because this is likely gonna be one of the major factors affecting adoption and ecosystem growth.

Helix devs, for instance, lean towards a Scheme-like implementation. [1]

[1]: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806#discu...

Was confused until I realised I'd confused Zed, with Xi[1] which is also rust based, and which incidentally has a frontend called "Xim"..

Also there's a wiki-editor (like Tomboy[2]) called "Zim"[3].

[1] https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor

Project site linked from the GitHub[0] is https://xi-editor.io. Linked doc is a mirror of this[1], which was afaik originally written by Raph Linus.

[0]: https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor

[1]: https://xi-editor.io/docs/rope_science_01.html

> thing that gets deleted when you hit backspace

Is there a canonical source for this part, by the way? Xi copied the logic from Android[1] (as per the issue you linked downthread), and I vaguely remember that CLDR had something to say about this too, but I don’t know if there’s any sort of consensus here that’s actually written down anywhere.

[1] https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor/pull/837

This is pretty much how copy-on-write ropes work. Check out xi-rope, Ropey or crop, they're all built using B-trees and implement the behavior you described.

Helix is awesome, though once Lapce (spiritual successor to Xi editor) gets the Helix/Kakoune editing model, I may have to jump ship

Home (xi-editor.io)

Maybe take a look at the Xi editor (https://xi-editor.io/) (written in rust I think) that uses a client server architecture.

Have a look at what Lapce uses. The editor is coming along nicely, and iirc, they use the Xi editor as a plug-in.

Raph Levien posted a retrospective about using CRDT’s for collaborative editing in xi-editor here [1]. His conclusion is

“I come to the conclusion that the CRDT is not pulling its (considerable) weight. When I think about a future evolution of xi-editor, I see a much brighter future with a simpler, largely synchronous model, that still of course has enough revision tracking to get good results with asynchronous peers like the language server.”

[1]https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor/issues/1187#issuecomm...