Let's talk about text editors. Of course we can have our vi vs emacs war here (I'm a vim user myself) but I'm also interested in some of the lesser known text editors. For me, vim has so many features that I'll never use, and I tried switching to neatvi for a while for a minimool experience, but I found myself missing visual mode too much. Something like neatvi with visual mode would be my perfect text editor. Any of you have experience with interesting or unconventional text editors?

usually i stick to sam
https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/sam/

Sam is pretty ok. The only thing I don't like about it is that it has it's own snarf buffer that you need to sync with the host rio, but I suppose that can be useful in it's own way if you get used to it. I prefer acme, but I like having multiple acmes open and I don't like that any acmes that share the same plumber instance all open every new file at the same time. This can be worked around by just running plumber before acme tho, so that's what I typically do.

>>2
I can't wrap my head around structural regular expressions or I would probably be using vis (https://github.com/martanne/vis) by now

vis goes against everything sam stands for

i don't understand why there's a need to make a vi that enables sam like features, vi and sam both derive from ed, and ed has the regex stuff at it's core. vi is essentially a visual ed interface, you can do pretty much all the same thing as ed, just seeing full pages rather than lines. the best thing vi adds is file multiplexing. sam does similar but adds mouse chording, which /really/ is a force multiplier. become mouse pilled. the kool-aid is great. drink it
the example video in the project shows using multiple expressions to fine tune the selection, which i guess is useful? then multiple cursors, but like.. you can already get the same effects as that with vi, ed, sam, acme, awk, sed, etc.
for macros, you can do that with a text file and a pipe.

I do not program, hence why I choose to use nano. Simple and elegant.

Anyone tried kakoune?

i'm gonna get hate for this, but i use the default windows 10 notepad and occasionally use notepad++ for better readability of config files.

Emacs EVIL mode.

I use Emacs. I haven't made use or org mode yet at all and my init.el is pretty short. I don't really like Vim keybinds, I also prefer that I dont go in and out of an insert mode. All my keybinds are a combination of the default and ones I've added for a bit more functionality. I changed my capslock key to ctrl. Other than needing ctrl to be capslock I get along well with the bindings.

I spent about 6 months daily driving emacs to understand the psychology of it. it's not bad. org mode is cool, if it had better html output i might have stuck with it. tried digging into elisp to get the html output better and that was interesting. If i stuck with linux I'd probably have stuck with emacs.

Ed is the standard text editor.

>>13
At the very least learning ed will make you better at vim.
Pretty decent cheatsheet for it found here https://catonmat.net/ed-unix-text-editor-cheat-sheet
There are 'quite a few' commands, but even just understanding the addressing and a few basic commands it becomes a pretty useable editor.
Apparently at bell labs they had accountants and secretaries whose terminals logged into ed and only ed (they added the !cmd command so they could access the other system programs if needed) and they were apparently quite productive.
But I suppose even if all you know is 'p' '+' '-' 'i' and 'd' you /can/ write anything you need, even if it is definitely not even close to 'the best way'

I use obsidian lol
It doesnt feel lacking in any way, the only problem I have with it is that its a *little* heavy of a load to run. But I have a gaming PC so it barely matters. Plus I really like having it synced across my phones and my laptop basically instantly.

>>14
cheat sheet? you mean ``man ed''?

>>16
no. I mean I should add it to 'man ed' on my machine.
man ed /does/ explain everything but kinda in an overly verbose way (which it kinda has to) which is hard to parse for specifics if you don't already know them. it's easy to grep the man if you know what you are looking for, but in the case you don't you basically are stuck rereading the whole thing to find the one piece of info you need. like quick is % or $ the last line? i think it's $ but not positive, and running 'man ed | grep last' spews too much text for the emergency mode of plan9 to display the relevant line ' 2. The character `$' addresses the last line of the' (also see how shit that line is written for greping)
not that it'd acctually help in emergency mode, because for some reason sed is in the paqfs but ed isn't on my machine. but that's another story

your text editor is bloat, all you need is cat, sed and echo

vim forever, vi in a pinch where anything else is missing. years ago used nvim (pre vim having good async stuff in vim 8). never saw a need to use anything else

>>18
if you have sed you don't need cat nor echo... ... ...
echo is kinda annoying since you need a readable, preferably single line text file to start the process

cpu% sed '1 c\
this is a test \
file written with sed as echo \
it has newlines and everything' /dev/osversion > file1
cpu% sed -e 's/test/a second/' -e 's/written/modified/' -e 's/with/by/' -e 's/as echo//' file1 > file2
cpu% sed '$ q' file1 file2 > file3
cpu% sed '$ q' file3
this is a test
file written with sed as echo
it has newlines and everything
this is a second test
file modified by sed
it has newlines and everything
cpu%


>>20
good point but since you almost certainly have cat and echo anyway you might as well use them

>>21
true, i can't imagine a situation normal situation where a person would have sed but not cat nor echo. excepting, of course, after running rm /bin/cat /bin/echo for literally no reason at all.

ed

>>2
im curious, what are your thoughts on acme? despite the fact i have plan9port installed on all my machines, i have yet to use plan 9 software specifically because im lazy :3

>>2
im curious, what are your thoughts on acme? despite the fact i have plan9port installed on all my machines, i have yet to use plan 9 software specifically because im lazy :3

>>25
i did not mean to sent that twice...

>>25
not 2 but eh. I use sam and acme enough to have opinions.
The question I would have about plan9port versions is if they would actually work well.

some things to test.
type some text into the text box. repeat the same word a few times in the text. then use the right mouse button to click one instance of a word. does it take you to the next instance of it?

next in the blue menu box, add a new line and type

| tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'

that's a unixy pipe the translate program and options to change from lower to upper case

then use the mouse to highlight some text with left click.
then once the text to change is selected use the middle mouse button to highlight the pipe command and release the middle mouse button.
did the highlighted text change to upper case?

next add a bash script in your path ie something like $USER/bin that does something simple like echo some string. and make sure it's executable.
next type

| yourbashcommand

with your cursor in the place in the text box that you want the output middle highlight the command with the pipe
does the output of the program show up in the text box?

and penultimately.
outside of acme copy some text into your buffer, then in acme, chord left and right mouse buttons into a text box. does it paste?
and lastly chord left and middle on some text in your acme. this should make the text disappear which was highlighted. then let go of middle and add right button (same paste chord we did before but without letting go of left button) to put the text back.
go outside of acme to some other linux text box and paste as normal. did linuxs paste buffer get updated to acme's?

if it does all this i'd say that's the bare minimum to be useable.

also you now know a lot of what makes acme pretty nice.
| takes the selected text and uses it as stdin for a command which is executed with middle click so extending acme is very easy for most.

and in the style of steve jobs. One more thing is the 'win' command. (just type win anywhere in acme then middle click it)
this opens your shell in an acme window.

acme is great btw

I don't care about the Emacs vs. Vim flame war because I use notepad++ >:D

imagine telling plato that in the year 2024 we'd have "text editor wars" rather than taking advantage of the personal supercomputers everyone has multiple of

>>29
socrates probably got into arguments with diogenes over the correct kind of stylus to use for wax tablets, diogenes being all, pshhh that bronze shit is bloat bro. and socrates being like well wood is prone to splintering, and diogenes replying wood? do i look like an idiot? i use my pinky's finger nail grown out as a style in true minimalist fashion.

neovim just werks

>>31
neovim is philosophically opposed to what made vim good.
may as well use emacs evil mode. lua is "better" than vimscript. but vim is only good when you use as few extensions as possible (ideally vanilla with a small init script to make change some default options based on use, ie show/hide line numbers). so if making it easier to add extensions with better scripting is the direction the result is emacs again. and elisp is better than lua. emacs has better built in documentation. emacs has more extensions. etc. if you are using vanilla neovim, there's literally no reason not to just use vim instead.

that said. vi is even better. anyone who 'needs' syntax highlighting is weak. it was the first mistake made by the tool devs, only surpassed in it's stupidity by autocomplete (ie tag commplete / intellisense/ etc)

>>32
I miss visual blocks when i use vi, but nothing else.

>>33
but what are you using visual blocks for? cutting a block of text? using it as a range for some regex operations (ie replacements/ etc).
in vi you can do the same with just specifying the range (ie. :.,+10d)
and really if you want to do visual blocks, the best tool for that job is a mouse, and if you already are willing to use a mouse once then you should go to sam or acme :)

>>34
good point

>>32

may as well use emacs evil mode

not 31 but emacs is an entirely different environment to neovim/vim... i do understand your point, however it sorta doesn't make sense to make such a statement, especially when the target audience is usually very different

i personally find it frustrating when people spend all their time tinkering with nerd fonts, fancy UI stuff and using a stupid amount of outside tooling from within a vim-like environment, but the cool thing is... it works unreasonably well for people who want to have that setup

idk, stick to ed or smth

the target audience is usually very different

Not really, the neovim people are confused people who think they want vim but actually want Emacs

nano

>>32

word words words

it just werks
vim doesn't have the same good stuff and looks like dogshite

>>39
literally all these text editors mentioned here "just werk".
nano? just werks
vi? just werks
notepad(++)? just werks
sublime text? just werks
ed? just werks (but maybe you don't, git gud)
hell.
even eclipse, vs code, and netbeans "just werk" (mostly slowly)

what "good stuff" and qualitate "dogshite" because vim looks exactly like your terminal by default, so that sounds like a lot more like a self own than an own on vim.
in other words. cook more, because these noodles are still crunchy.

>>40
all software you mentioned is either bloated or just sucks, neovim hits the nice spot. It has the nice things of vim + small improvements. and no, vim doesn't use the colors of my terminal for some reason, but neovim does.

>>41
well the critea which was being contended with wasn't lack of bloat or being competent. it was "just werk"ing it'd be hard to find a text browser that doesn't. in fact amoung all text editors the vi family is closest to not "just werk"ing because you have to enter insert mode to type, and you need to know how to close it. so it only "just werks" after you learn stuff. notepad tho? it really just werks.

Just use a pen and paper you stupid fucks

>>44
Can you shut the fuck up

Have any of you tried Lem? It's supposed to be like emacs but japanese and made with common lisp instead of elisp. It's pretty early in development right now but it looks promising...

>>46
mhm, its pretty cool

Havent given this a shot yet, but does anyone has experience using this https://kate-editor.org

>>48
i feel like gnome and kde are two cults in the same town that constantly are trying to one up each other. anything gnome has kde has to also have, and anything kde has gnome also has to have. but they can each never let well enough alone, so they try to put their own weird spins on everything. the weirdness of their spins has gotten more and more out of hand with each one-upping. to those who live in the town it all seems very rational as everyone who lives there is either a part of gnome's or kde's cult.
to a visitor to the town tho it's like, why does this building have an uncovered stairwell that goes up 40 feet with no railing to the 6th floor of the adjacent tower? kde member answers: " it's better than that stupid pulley system that gnome has to get between buildings. sometimes the carts fall off of that killing people below!

anyway. i have no idea why kate should exist other than it being "kde editor"

>>49
Kate is pretty nice!
or at least, it was, I decidedly remember it being easier to run properly without having a bunch of KDE services loaded
just a boatload of features, and the front page of the site mentions the most relevant ones that I liked
I don't actually like KDE, but I did like using Kate.

the weirdness of their spins has gotten more and more out of hand with each one-upping. to those who live in the town it all seems very rational as everyone who lives there is either a part of gnome's or kde's cult.

GNOME has gone insane, while KDE... well, was never quite sane.
historically though, both copied Windows pretty heavily lol
a lot of KDE stuff is still extremely Windows-y (KolourPaint is an outright direct clone of old MSPaint, for example), while GNOME decided to absolutely abandon that across the board

but I'm also interested in some of the lesser known text editors
many features that I'll never use

Maybe try out Joe's Own Editor. It has enough editing features to make fast and efficient editing possible, runs everyhwere, has different themes, syntax highlighting and a config file, as well as convenient settings menu and toggle-able help menu, when needed. It has default keybinds like the Borland IDEs, but can emulate other editors as well (it's worth learning the default keybinds though, they are the best)

its kinda fucked up but i just have like all the text editors and i cycle through them depending on my mood.

>>52
I used to do that a lot. different text editors do have different vibes, sometimes you just want a blank page with no tool bars, like ia writer, or maybe something that can reflect a specific vibe like zen or focuswriter.
other times you want lots of control over formatting and page layout (Scribus). or maybe text modification tools, programatic controls, context specific formatting and completion, text only, or with embedded image support (vim, emacs), and other times you just need to paste some text for a reminder and don't need any frills (notepad)

but I don't really editor hop much these days.

>>8
Yes, it's an interesting project, but I can't be bothered to unlearn decades of vi keybinding habits to learn kakoune. I like the concept of the editor relying on standard unix tools to do editing instead of having it all built in. Then there is the clippy clone who is somewhat helpful (though I prefer an actual man page over this clippy clone). Other than that, I don't know much about the editor, but I didn't want to bother more.