kakoune VS vis

Helix's modal editing is based on Kakoune's modal editing which is like an evolution to Vim's modal editing. You can think of it as being always in selection (visual) mode. https://github.com/mawww/kakoune?tab=readme-ov-file#selectio...

And while it doesn’t use the sam language precisely, I think in the broader “postfix Vi with visual feedback” category Kakoune[1] also warrants mentioning. The command language, in my experience, feels much more logical than that of Vis coming from a blank slate (things might be different if you come from Vim, but even when I used Vim regularly I never used the editing language that much exactly because I could never remember the damn thing).

And having mentioned Kakoune it’d probably be unfair to then not mention Helix[2]. It has a very similar editing language, but it’s a fairly anti-Unix everything-bolted-in affair on the inside (“everything works out of the box” being the advertising take) compared to Kakoune’s Acme-inspired no-scripting scripting (there’s an ex-style command to exec a user program that can then drive the editor over stdio RPC, a set of hooks, and that’s it). So if you’ve come for the Plan 9 feels, I don’t expect Helix to be that appealing. It’s still a good editor, nevertheless.

[1] https://kakoune.org/

[2] https://helix-editor.com/

You can take a look at kakoune. The source code (excluding documentations, test cases, customizations etc.) is less than 40k. It is, IMHO, a show case of a C++ project in use.

> 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..

I've been using Vim for years, but if there was one thing I could change, it would be the verb-noun order. The Kakoune[1] editor behaves mostly like Vim, but where Vim has `dw` as "delete word", Kakoune has it backwards: `wd`.

It might sound minor, but by placing the range first, Kakoune can give a preview of what will be changed. The longer or more complicated the command, the more this feature shines.

Strictly better as far as I know. A shame my muscle memory, and all default installations, are still stuck with Vim.

[1] https://kakoune.org/

Helix is a postmodern text editor built in Rust built for the terminal. It is inspired by Kakoune, another Rust based text editor. Helix has got multiple selections, built-in Tree-sitter integration, powerful code manipulation and Language server support.

> 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