spacemacs VS xah-fly-keys

Compare spacemacs vs xah-fly-keys and see what are their differences.

spacemacs

A community-driven Emacs distribution - The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs *and* Vim! (by syl20bnr)

xah-fly-keys

the most efficient keybinding for emacs (by xahlee)
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spacemacs xah-fly-keys
63 18
23,481 461
- -
9.1 8.3
7 days ago 5 days ago
Emacs Lisp Emacs Lisp
GNU General Public License v3.0 only -
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

spacemacs

Posts with mentions or reviews of spacemacs. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-30.

xah-fly-keys

Posts with mentions or reviews of xah-fly-keys. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-01-08.
  • Software development is not carpentry. Almost everything a developer writes is unique, they have never built that particular thing before. We are not cabinet makers repeating a variation of something we've built hundreds of times before.
    1 project | /r/programmingcirclejerk | 27 Mar 2023
    lol no xah-fly-keys
  • Ask HN: Best way to experiment with text text editing?
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Jan 2023
    To build on what others are saying about Emacs, if you start exploring the package ecosystem, you're going to see quite a lot of really interesting packages that are related to improving/experimenting with the UX of editing text. While I'm not endorsing anyone in particular, I think what this list does show is just how easy it is to do pretty much whatever you want in Emacs;

    https://karthinks.com/software/avy-can-do-anything/

    https://github.com/jyp/boon

    https://github.com/clemera/objed

    https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el

    https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/

    https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly-keys

    https://github.com/Kungsgeten/ryo-modal

    https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode

    Emacs 29 also now has treesitter and LSP mode integration built-in, a compilation mode, a comint mode for REPLs, excellent file browsing packages (I use dired/dirvish), and a few other killer features.

    Now, if what you truly dislike are "quirky editors", prepare yourself for a world of hurt because vanilla Emacs departs quite a bit from "modern" text editors. I struggled with this for a while, but eventually by buying into the paradigm, I now feel that when emacs try emulating "modern" IDE features like autocompletion, LSP, and DAP UI, I feel like it's a regression, not a progression. The point here is that you might have an "idea" of what good initial UX and lack of quirks would look like, but Emacs might change the way you think.

  • Is the dygma raise right for me?
    1 project | /r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 5 Dec 2022
    Another consideration is that some editors make heavy use of key chords, which aren't so ergo friendly. Emacs in particular is notorious with how it uses the Ctrl key. I highly recommend switching to an editor with modal keybindings like NeoVim, or alternatively, your existing editor may have a Vim keybindings mode or extension. For instance Emacs has Evil mode and xah-fly-keys. Another route to circumventing chords is you can use one-shot modifiers (aka sticky modifiers) or define macros.
  • Home row mods for sequences and Emacs
    2 projects | /r/ergodox | 26 Nov 2022
    More radically, you might find a modal interface easier and more comfortable to use with HRMs, like Vim's, or staying within Emacs, using Evil mode or Xah fly keys.
  • xah-fly-keys: the most efficient keybinding for emacs
    1 project | /r/planetemacs | 7 Sep 2022
  • Share Your 'other-window' Commands
    2 projects | /r/emacs | 6 Sep 2022
    I use xah-fly-keys. In command mode, on a QWERTY keyboard, the comma key moves the cursor to the next window.
  • Anyone tried a heavily customized key-map for evil mode?
    2 projects | /r/emacs | 26 Apr 2022
  • ∑ Xah Code
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Apr 2022
    > Long love ergomacs!

    I recently stumbled over, and started using (and modifying) Xah's "xah-fly-keys" emacs bindings, which are a somewhat more radical implementation of the ideas behind ergoemacs (e.g. use Emacs without any "chording", i.e. without ever having to press two keys at once apart from shift+letter).

    [1] https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly-keys

  • Replace (almost) all your programs with emacs!
    6 projects | /r/linuxmasterrace | 30 Mar 2022
    *xah-fly-keys
  • Optimal layout for vim
    2 projects | /r/vim | 27 Mar 2022
    I made it myself, but it was largely inspired by "xah fly keys": https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly-keys

What are some alternatives?

When comparing spacemacs and xah-fly-keys you can also consider the following projects:

doom-emacs - An Emacs framework for the stubborn martian hacker [Moved to: https://github.com/doomemacs/doomemacs]

meow - Yet another modal editing on Emacs / 猫态编辑

doom - Doom Emacs config

evil-collection - A set of keybindings for evil-mode

homebrew-emacs-plus - Emacs Plus formulae for the Homebrew package manager

kmonad - An advanced keyboard manager

GNU Emacs - Mirror of GNU Emacs

modalka - Modal editing your way

prelude - Prelude is an enhanced Emacs 25.1+ distribution that should make your experience with Emacs both more pleasant and more powerful.

ryo-modal - Roll your own modal mode

awesome-emacs - A community driven list of useful Emacs packages, libraries and other items.

.emacs.d - My current Emacs setup.