archseer

Related: finding the same bug with TLA+ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730953

Author here. I listen to feedback, but it's hard to incorporate every possible requested feature without the codebase becoming an unmaintainable mess.

We're a small team with limited time and I've always emphasized that helix is just one version of a tool and it's perfectly fine if there's a better alternative for some users. Someone with a fully customized neovim setup is probably going to have a better time just using their existing setup rather than getting helix to work the same way.

Code editors in particular are very subjective and helix started as a project to solve my workflow. But users don't always respond well to having feature requests rejected because they don't align with our goals. Plugins should eventually help fit those needs.

Yet.

Splits are provided, tabs and terminals aren't. Diff mode is work in progress.

I think you're mistaken. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UAaky12REM for example.

Both ZSTD and LZ4 were built by the same author. They have slightly different target goals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23211804

There's also a dramatic video rendition by the author: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_lLm3a33WsE

Thanks for the kind words! Fixed the link :)

There's this config you might like: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim

We can't invert the bindings though (wd -> dw) because that would require a big internal change to add operator pending mode:

When you press `d` in vim, that enters the operator pending mode, where it will wait for an object to be specified, in this case `w` and then delete it.

In a selection first model, `d` is very simple: it just always deletes the selection. So you select a word, then delete.

A tree-sitter grammar is slightly more complex but it has a bunch of benefits! Syntax highlighting is more correct, faster and a bunch of smart features like indentation and folding, bracket matching can be built on top of it.

If the bindings were the same, then what's the point? We're not a "vim ported to rust", instead we got our own take on things. (from the vision doc: "Don't try to be everything for everyone. There are many great editors out there to choose from. Let's make Helix one of those great options, with its own take on things.")

> helix wants to get much wider adoption

I've stated this before: I just want to make a good editor that I like using daily. There's a growing community of users with similar preferences that are very happy with it, but I'm not aiming to corner the market -- this isn't a startup. Much in the same way as vim isn't trying to become more like VSCode to increase it's market share.

That said, thanks for giving it a try! For keybinds, we do have a couple of guides:

- `hx --tutor` is the equivalent to vimtutor

- https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/wiki/Migrating-from-Vi...

- Our Matrix chat is always happy to help with questions :)

1) there's a pull request that fixes this but needs a bit of polish (https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/1819)

3) There's also a discussion for this, we hoped to include it in this release but it's instead going to be in the next cycle (https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/4439)

Well it's similar in vim: if I press `d` accidentally and I don't notice, then any subsequent movement commands will start to modify the file. It's a bit more explicit in Helix since you'll see a visual selection being made. Luckily in both editors you can undo the change :)

Treating newlines as regular characters allows you to use them in motions: t<Enter> will select text until end of the line for example.

That's probably because a lot of electron apps still run via Xwayland and you need to opt into ozone (chromium Wayland implementation)

I think you mean elastic tab stops https://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

Maybe you need to update your homebrew cache? https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/helix

Does it matter? I used Rust to write it but I don't claim it's "blazingly fast". The post-modern tagline is a joke. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33158035

We're planning to support multiple frontend too. The terminal one is just the main client.

> Helix cursor is bad and they refuse to fix it

What? Our cursor matches the default vim one (always 1-width, always bar). If you want to change cursor shapes, there's a config option too https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/wiki/FAQ#change-cursor...

We're working on snippets! It'll take a while longer to get there though.

Helix author here: I think the poster chose an unfortunate headline.

1) Helix was written to replace my neovim setup but is in fact kakoune inspired. 2) It's written in Rust but I don't draw focus to it precisely because RiiR/"X in Rust" posts are getting a bit tiring to see.

> it kind of falls apart

I'd like to point out that the editor is barely a year old and I'm working on it entirely during my free time. It takes time to sort out all the issues and provide excellent support for all languages. I primarily write Rust and Go so those are guaranteed to work well.

It's hard to do tree-sitter query based indentation with space based languages, because the indent has semantic meaning and the AST node is invalid until indentation is typed out. We do have a potential solution (https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/763#issuecommen...), it just needs someone to go and implement it.

I don't consider tree-sitter niche though. Outside of VSCode it's widely adopted, but yes it's probably too soon to only rely on tree-sitter with no fallback. Of course we do implement fallback behaviours too: we try to use tree-sitter first, then provide a simpler fallback for cases where there's no grammar available (or like in this case, it's not a great fit).

Edit: this has prompted me to switch python to the fallback algorithm for now https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/commit/9ae70cc410bd042...

I personally don't use GNOME either but I believe Linux isn't only used by JS developers.

What a silly statement. That's like saying a Mac is an overpriced machine for developers that are forced to use Xcode. Different strokes for different folks.

You can configure how many CPUs and memory to use under settings

> something that was unknown to be unsafe

The call they were using was deprecated and marked unsafe a while ago: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/blob/7ba57e7a7c87fca96...