Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
And for the use case of
"I built txt because I spend most of my time in the terminal, and switching to a different tool just to make a quick edit always felt like friction I did not want. The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful."
it's literally only a handful of vim commands and shortcuts you need.
Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing.
Instead of "verb object" (eg. delete word or "dw"), it is "object verb" (eg. word delete, or "wd").
In particular, it seems to obsolete "visual mode" from vim (which I use often), because you're essentially always in visual mode. You always get to see a selection before you perform an action. Or at least that's what I understand, I haven't tried it yet.
> The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful.
> txt is not trying to replace your main IDE. It is the editor you reach for when you just need to edit something
These two are in conflict. If you just want to edit something, and don’t know [n]vi[m] or emacs, then use nano. If you want line numbers, code folding, syntax highlighting, etc. then it sounds like you should spend the time to learn a more powerful editor.
Honestly, vi isn’t that hard to learn the absolute basics, and you should spend the 15 minutes to do so, because it’s practically guaranteed to be available everywhere. :wq and i are about all you need to “just edit something.”
I can understand startups relying on AI tools to test out the ideas. But personal/hobby projects? Feels weird. This is not the place to go fast. Take your time, enjoy the process, learn/make things.
With the amount of new seemingly well polished personal projects being built (thanks to the help of LLMs) I feel increasingly concerned by how easy it is becoming to get a worm/virus/troyan to a lot of people.
And how is this different from downloading a file from a GitHub releases page? Or even installing from FlatHub with full fs perms (which would make sense for a text editor)?
I live in emacs over ssh connections. I never use the GUI, just TUI version (so `emacs -nw`) and love it. You can edit files over ssh hops or docker hops using tramp. I don't believe there is a tramp equiv. in other terminal tools. VS Code over SSH is much too heavy handed for quick single file edits but emacs handles it gracefully.
Came here to write exactly about those 2 editors which IMO are the best without a hassle to re-learn the shortcuts like ctrl-f to find, ctrl-s to save, ctrl-z to undo,...
Less known, there is also tilde : https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde
- it would be absolutely amazing if one of the guys writing posts along the lines "here is our super duper text editor"...
- would actually explain in a series of blog posts how they built a text editor from scratch and I am not talking about code...
- I am talking about architecture, methodology, how each feature is implemented on paper before coding it, thought process behind one..
- I am amazed that we live in a world where people create all types of software and yet little to no blog posts ever discuss the thought process and methodology behind them...
- like why did you do this...
- why is this feature implemented in this way and what are the alternative implementations and why did you pick this implementation over the others
A comparison with editors like micro https://github.com/micro-editor/micro or fresh https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh (discussed in the comments) would make more sense than one with vim and emacs. The shortcuts are CUA based. And to me these editors feel more like using GUI editor like sublime text for example. And that's nice.
While vim and emacs have their advantages which I don't want to discuss here, they are also the "big players" with their own philosophy, shortcuts and commands. Which is a hassle to learn when you're used to GUI editors.
Why not let a little space for users who don't want to re-learn how to edit a file ?
The linked post is not that long. The readme in the linked project happens to be longer, but it's clearly because the author put tables of keymap bindings in the readme.
It's what I'd hope a well-written readme should look like, I think.
I miss the days when people would release software not touched by AI. And I wish at least there'd be a disclaimer saying that this was AI-assisted, so I could avoid it.
While they play up the keyboard-driven functionality, they showcase a pointer-driven workflow in the demonstration gif. Curious choice, no?
I came here to say this.
Me too.
Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
And for the use case of "I built txt because I spend most of my time in the terminal, and switching to a different tool just to make a quick edit always felt like friction I did not want. The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful."
it's literally only a handful of vim commands and shortcuts you need.
Vim is great and I have 25 years of muscle memory for it. But I'm also interested in trying Kakoune (https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html) -- which I understand also has a VSCode plugin called Dance (https://github.com/71/dance) -- as I've seen somewhat convincing arguments that it is a more powerful model for modal editing.
Instead of "verb object" (eg. delete word or "dw"), it is "object verb" (eg. word delete, or "wd").
In particular, it seems to obsolete "visual mode" from vim (which I use often), because you're essentially always in visual mode. You always get to see a selection before you perform an action. Or at least that's what I understand, I haven't tried it yet.
> Since going through the hassle of learning vim I can't use anything else anymore.
That sounds like an amazing investment, really makes me want to learn it too!
It's a shame that it ever felt like a hassle.
We should be introducing people to vim long before they are learning it under pressure. As you say, it's really not a lot to remember.
> The editors that live in the terminal either have steep learning curves built around modal paradigms, or they are too limited to be genuinely useful.
> txt is not trying to replace your main IDE. It is the editor you reach for when you just need to edit something
These two are in conflict. If you just want to edit something, and don’t know [n]vi[m] or emacs, then use nano. If you want line numbers, code folding, syntax highlighting, etc. then it sounds like you should spend the time to learn a more powerful editor.
Honestly, vi isn’t that hard to learn the absolute basics, and you should spend the 15 minutes to do so, because it’s practically guaranteed to be available everywhere. :wq and i are about all you need to “just edit something.”
I can understand startups relying on AI tools to test out the ideas. But personal/hobby projects? Feels weird. This is not the place to go fast. Take your time, enjoy the process, learn/make things.
> GUI editors are the opposite problem — they are powerful, but reaching for the mouse to edit a config file or fix a typo breaks your flow.
You don't need to reach for the mouse, are you not aware you can launch, switch apps, and type just with your keyboard?
But also, how is your demo using a mouse of your whole selling point is anti-mouse?
> curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ErikHellman/txt/main/insta... | sh
With the amount of new seemingly well polished personal projects being built (thanks to the help of LLMs) I feel increasingly concerned by how easy it is becoming to get a worm/virus/troyan to a lot of people.
And how is this different from downloading a file from a GitHub releases page? Or even installing from FlatHub with full fs perms (which would make sense for a text editor)?
This is gonna be a hard name to google :)
FYI: Claude has committed to the repo.
I live in emacs over ssh connections. I never use the GUI, just TUI version (so `emacs -nw`) and love it. You can edit files over ssh hops or docker hops using tramp. I don't believe there is a tramp equiv. in other terminal tools. VS Code over SSH is much too heavy handed for quick single file edits but emacs handles it gracefully.
Since https://github.com/micro-editor/MICRO exists for some years now, a comparison would be welcome.
Also https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh which is micro "on steroids" (i dislike the expression but can't think of a better one now)
Came here to write exactly about those 2 editors which IMO are the best without a hassle to re-learn the shortcuts like ctrl-f to find, ctrl-s to save, ctrl-z to undo,... Less known, there is also tilde : https://github.com/gphalkes/tilde
“turbo charged”
- one of these days...
- it would be absolutely amazing if one of the guys writing posts along the lines "here is our super duper text editor"...
- would actually explain in a series of blog posts how they built a text editor from scratch and I am not talking about code...
- I am talking about architecture, methodology, how each feature is implemented on paper before coding it, thought process behind one..
- I am amazed that we live in a world where people create all types of software and yet little to no blog posts ever discuss the thought process and methodology behind them...
- like why did you do this...
- why is this feature implemented in this way and what are the alternative implementations and why did you pick this implementation over the others
reminds me of https://zed.dev/ ?
Is this even still under development? Last non-renovate commit was early June
A comparison with emacs and vim would be nice.
A comparison with editors like micro https://github.com/micro-editor/micro or fresh https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh (discussed in the comments) would make more sense than one with vim and emacs. The shortcuts are CUA based. And to me these editors feel more like using GUI editor like sublime text for example. And that's nice.
While vim and emacs have their advantages which I don't want to discuss here, they are also the "big players" with their own philosophy, shortcuts and commands. Which is a hassle to learn when you're used to GUI editors.
Why not let a little space for users who don't want to re-learn how to edit a file ?
I can tell a README which is a long as that is not written by the author, but of course by Claude.
So, I ain't reading all of that.
The linked post is not that long. The readme in the linked project happens to be longer, but it's clearly because the author put tables of keymap bindings in the readme.
It's what I'd hope a well-written readme should look like, I think.
I miss the days when people would release software not touched by AI. And I wish at least there'd be a disclaimer saying that this was AI-assisted, so I could avoid it.