1. Orthodox. Mostly focused on looks and integrations.
2. Modal, Vim improvement. Focus on keeping basic Vim keybindings with minor improvements.
3. Modal, rethinking Vim approach.
Ki falls into the third category which I constantly monitor.
Which is Emacs.
So Ed Visual Mode Improved Improved!
Ctrl + W
Ctrl + Shift + W
It really changed my perspective on interacting with the 'text' of a file.
VS Code, Zed, etc. have similar operations, but in my experience they expand and shrink too coarsely.
armchairhacker•3h ago
Comparison to Vim and Helix: https://ki-editor.org/docs/comparison#user-content-fn-1
worksonmine•1h ago
> As you can see, there's no single logical categorization for these keymaps, they are either lowercase-uppercase, normal-alt, left-right bracket, or outright unexplainable.
Word, End, Back, Change Word and even Change Inner (, etc are very logical to me and I feel like I'm talking to the editor when editing. I get that it doesn't make sense when one has learned another way to do it, but it does make total sense you just have to make an effort to try and understand it.
It's like learning and always driving automatic then calling manual "outright unexplainable". You simply learned another way and are conditioned into believing that's the one true way. It shows the creator comes from VSCode (multi-cursor is a useless feature, just use s/search/replace and get used to macros and a whole new world will open).
pbronez•1h ago
Is there a good tutorial for some of these advanced text editing features?
In particular I’d like to get platform independent shortcuts / key bindings. I use both windows and MacOS daily, and it throws off my muscle memory for shortcuts like “go to beginning of line”
davidee•49m ago
Just over a year ago I decided to switch to Neovim. The reason for switching was personal; I was struggling with what I'll call "clutter" in other tools and I wanted a tool that would reinforce, at least lightly, a mode of working that promoted focus on what I was working on, while making it easy to reference other files without loading up my editor with tabs and other visual clutter (buttons/menus) I don't care about most of the time.
I took the advice I seemed to bump into repeatedly: try out vim mode in my current editor before making the plunge.
I really struggled at first. It felt wildly foreign. All the shortcuts were nowhere near to the world I was familiar with.
As I was about to give up, I ran into some advice that was along the lines of "stop trying to memorize shortcuts and start thinking in terms of what you want to achieve" (words and motions in vim-speak).
Your example of [C]hange [I]nner is a great one; that one in particular was life changing. Sure there are some words and motions that do require memorization, but so many others just flow naturally. And once you start thinking in actions, it's easy to see how they can layer on top of each other in really elegant ways.
I'm not even here trying to tout vim-like editors, I'd wager there are many editors that have some semblance of this kind of interaction, but rather to reiterate there's a shift from a PoV of function vs. goal.
Again, I don't think this is "the right way" but rather one of many perspectives that works in context with the phenomenology of me.
hou32hou•48m ago
Hey, one of the creators here, I actually daily drove Neovim for two years, before switching to Helix for a while, then finally Ki.
> multi-cursor is a useless feature
I was a Neovim macro user until I figured out how insane that was compared to multi-cursor after using Helix.
worksonmine•31m ago
Multi-cursor was the first plugin I installed when I moved from VSCode to Vim because I was used to hitting Ctrl+d to select all words and then replacing. Does Helix do something different?
1) First I reach for <C-v> for visual block selection if everything is neatly aligned.
2) Next choice is %s/search/replace(/c if I need confirm).
3) Macros, and I love it everytime I get to use them. I just record the movements, copy what I need to copy, paste it where I need to paste it, and it's repeatable for every line or block where the *formatting* matches. And this is the important part, the words don't matter. I still feel like a wizard using them.
As far as I understand multi-cursor option 3 is a no-go without macros if the words don't match. But macros don't care as long as the movements translate to the same edits. How does Helix multi-cursor work that make macros insane?
hou32hou•18m ago
It's hard to explain unless you actually try Ki, because it is a paradigm shift
cassepipe•31m ago
I also feel like macros are a more clunky and error prone way to do that substitutions can do. Almost never use them.
gorjusborg•10m ago
I think the same goes for multi-cursor, though.