One of the best kept secret and one that he should have tried is "Kate".
Good old style editor that is a native app, not an electron app. All the features that you might want and more, but simple and efficient.
And the most important for me, super snappy. I can't bear the latency that you get for typing code when using things like vscode. I don't know how people can appreciate that.
Firing up VSCode on an old laptop, and having it get totally bogged down running a text editor killed a part of my soul. I'm from the vim era of computing, but I have a hard time telling people that's the route to go today with today's tools.
Classic electron app. vscode is no doubt a powerful tool but it and other apps in the modern milieu are the software equivalent of those big lifted trucks that like to "roll coal" and get like 5mpg highway.
This feels like two steps up from a highly customized vim config. But I want one step up.
I want to be able to piece together an editor from modular task specific executables. Different programs for file searching, input mapping, buffer modification and display, etc.
Probably similar to how LSPs are already separated from most editors.
One step less hardcore than writing a whole editor.
Anyone know of any existing projects along these lines?
It steps back from the “customize everything” mantra, believing that approach leaves users with an underdeveloped essential system. But it still has two major APIs: one for window manipulation [2], the other for text-based integration with the surrounding system via plumber [3].
All textual CLI tools (that is, those without pseudographics) work by default and are the heart of its style.
I use Acme for everything except web browsing (although most links are still managed by Acme).
I use my own text editor too, written using my own programming language. Fortunately Operating Systems suit my needs and I won't have to write my own OS ;-)
I use my own editor too. I modified an existing editor to my own needs. But I do use VSC as well for multi file projects. My editor can load images as well and has a scripting language to manipulate images. I primarily use it to edit my website, which is a static website in bare HTML. It also has some 'browser' functions in the sense that F5 opens a link including jumping to an anker if there is one in the link. It does have colour coding for HTML that also checks for matching tags.
I would recommend using the ropey crate for easy performance gains. A string buffer is quick to implement but you will hit a wall as soon as you need to edit large files.
It's not that bad. You need really large files to notice.
The largest realistic file I'll ever touch - sqlite3 amalgamation with 270k lines and 9.1 kB - still takes only 6 ms to memmove it on my poor laptop.
Any regular up-to 10k lines file is memmoved in order of microseconds.
That's true for code editing, but it's nice to not have to reach for a different solution when editing huge files. Sometimes I like to open up big log files, JSON test data, etc.
Good old style editor that is a native app, not an electron app. All the features that you might want and more, but simple and efficient.
And the most important for me, super snappy. I can't bear the latency that you get for typing code when using things like vscode. I don't know how people can appreciate that.
Syntax coloring, fast buffering and even a screen saver.
You could even call the compiler directly from it.
All this running on a pentium 120 and it felt a thousands times faster than today's vscode.
But vscode can edit multiple files at the same time...
I want to be able to piece together an editor from modular task specific executables. Different programs for file searching, input mapping, buffer modification and display, etc. Probably similar to how LSPs are already separated from most editors.
One step less hardcore than writing a whole editor.
Anyone know of any existing projects along these lines?
It steps back from the “customize everything” mantra, believing that approach leaves users with an underdeveloped essential system. But it still has two major APIs: one for window manipulation [2], the other for text-based integration with the surrounding system via plumber [3].
All textual CLI tools (that is, those without pseudographics) work by default and are the heart of its style.
I use Acme for everything except web browsing (although most links are still managed by Acme).
[1]: http://youtu.be/dP1xVpMPn8M
[2]: http://9p.io/magic/man2html/4/acme
[3]: http://9p.io/sys/doc/plumb.html
But I am now at home with Helix and Flow Control.
Did anything in your approach change how you think about everyday tooling?
Sometimes I get surprise questions from my friends whenever they see my screen. “What’s that?” “That’s my own text editor!”
I’ve also written my own terminal emulator and my own shell. The shell does actually see other contributors and users these days too.