Fresh view of text editors – command and graphical variations

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’ve used nvim many times; not sure how many times I’ve mentioned or
indicated that I’m using the nvim-gtk graphical variation of nvim,
so I’m using it now to update my latest editor configurations.

With this one, as with the others, I have mapped keys to save, write,
and/or quit the editor.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I used the XNEdit text editor the most for small changes today.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I saved a Version 0.12 test version of nvim and tried it out this morning.
nvim, a.k.a. Neovim, intends to work on specific items, fully intending
to achieve some changes that will justify a Version 1.0 release after
more than a decade of development.

From the very early work, it’s been a usable text editor. I’ve used it
since 0.10; the latest released work is NVIM v0.11.2.

Purpose:Enable advanced UIs without modifications to the core – this
explains why nvim has always been a steady, reliable editor; it also
explains why it’s now available with at least five different GUI
alternatives; I’ve been able to use three of them successfully.

Milestones
List view

Open
6 (6)
Closed
37 (37)

1.0
Due by April 1, 2026
•0/3 issues closed
0% complete
3 open
0 closed
0.12
Due by December 25, 2025
•115/187 issues closed

After a LONG time

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

techore wrote:

Brian Masinick wrote:

3) https://linuxblog.io/50-linux-text-editors/

Wanted to say “Thank you.” I have a lingering task from more then a year ago of identifying an alternative cli editor in case I break things so badly nvim isn’t working. Criteria being vi keys, small footprint, and very few build dependencies.

Selected vis. Task complete!

I hope that all is well with you. I remember that you were among the early ones working with nvim.
Today I was reading through their site because I recall them stating that they wanted to reach a Version 1.0 status by mid 2026 at the latest. I’ve been surprised at how stable nvim has always been, but today I got some clarity about why that is the case. I carefully read a few sections on their site, including the fact that while they heavily refactored the vim code, and one of the biggest changes was that they replaced asynchronous operation so that the extended features wouldn’t block other activities.

The other part I found extremely significant, and it’s the reason why the core nvim is so solid is that the core of the editor IS the same as the vim code. So even though it’s been in 0.xx status for a decade, it’s actually an extremely stable tool.

How has vis been as your alternate editor? Do you have to use it often, or have you had success getting your nvim configuration stable? For me, I have these Neovim varieties: stock nvim, nvim-qt, nvim-gtk, fvim, and nvui, so I have Qt, Gtk, F#, and LUA variations of Neovim. Moreover, I have four function keys defined to give me rapid write-quit, write, quit, or quit immediately, which of course I can do with :wq, :q, :q!. I use nmap entries to function keys. Also, though I’ve known straight vi for over four decades, I don’t know every vim or nvim extension; just by reading up a bit, I’ve added a few key definitions, just as I’ve done in the past with Emacs.

As for Emacs, I HAD been using my own function key definitions plus the stock bindings, but then I found Spacemacs. Turned out that project went dormant, so while it was quite interesting, I located Doom Emacs, a vi-emacs hybrid with elements of space key bindings learned from Spacemacs, key bindings from vi, the original work from Emacs plus a fresh approach from a former vi user! With the humor common in the UNIX and Linux space, the “former” vi user calls his configuration “Doom Emacs”!

For a full-featured text editor that also qualifies as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), I consider Doom Emacs to be the number one IDE. For a super lean classic editor, the one that @brgs came across is an updated version (with a few key binding defects fixed) of the original ex-vi editor; Version 4.0 (gritter) 3/25/05 of the 70s-80s editor; it’s smaller than the nvi available from the BSD project, smaller, I believe than any editor except those that benefit from shared library code; geany is a great example of a fast editor whose image size makes it an excellent editor/IDE, and because of shared libraries, also has a small executable image size.

Anyway, all of these editors are more than powerful enough to use as an every day editor!

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m back with the Doom Emacs configuration of the GNU Emacs text editor
and IDE today. There are no new Doom updates to this configuration today.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m back with the helix text editor. It takes a bit of getting used to
the different key bindings to perform move and delete operations.
Once that’s done, it’s just as easy as any other editor to create
text.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Just to be different, I tried out the nvim 0.12 image, which I renamed;
it’s pretty usable:
TESTnvim runit-service-manager.sh

so I put my TESTnvim image in my /usr/local/bin directory and I happened
to find the runit-service-manager.sh script there, so it was a convenient
thing to check out; worked just fine.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m back with the jove text editor. This editor is not very well
known to most people. Written by Jonathan Payne, JOVE stands for
Jonathan’s own version of Emacs.

Many of the simple, basic key bindings in Jove are the same as
they are in GNU Emacs.

https://icpc.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~acm00/regional98/editors/jove.basics.html
describes some of the basic features of Jove.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m not sure if it was the @anticapitalista article about comedy and resistance, or digging into some of the early articles about computing, but I couldn’t help myself, I found Kernighan, which @rokytnji commented about, then I went down a big rabbit hole and found stuff about stuff that Kernighan did with multiple people in software literature, which brought me to other luminaries of software, so there are three or four topics about that in the Greek inferno cafe. Unless you want to descend into the rabbit hole too, you might choose to take your reading elsewhere.

I think I’ll get off my computer to avoid more chaos and craziness. Happy editing.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I’m back to using Doom Emacs, this time on my antiX Sid setup; running
Version 30.1. I took care of the two commands: doom env and doom sync
to perform before running doom upgrade. I changed my alias to
include these automatically.

Something I probably have mentioned before that works well with any vi,
vim, neovim, or Doom Emacs version, a tool called fmt can format the
display to fit to various different widths.

fmt – simple optimal text formatter

SYNOPSIS
fmt [-WIDTH] [OPTION]… [FILE]…

DESCRIPTION
Reformat each paragraph in the FILE(s), writing to standard output.
The option -WIDTH is an abbreviated form of –width=DIGITS.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Here is a “vi” method of using the simple version of fmt”

:%!fmt

: – allow commands to be issued
% – perform the following for the entire file buffer
fmt format the text :

fmt fills and joins lines to produce output lines of
(at most) a given number of characters (75 by default).

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

https://commandmasters.com/commands/kak-common/ – (source of the details below)
How to Use the Command ‘kak’ (with Examples)

Kakoune, often invoked using the kak command, is a highly efficient, mode-based code editor that implements the “multiple selections” paradigm. This enables users to simultaneously edit data in different locations, making the experience flexible and intuitive. Kakoune opens up a seamless experience, allowing multiple users to connect to the same session for collaborative editing. Here, we explore various use cases of the kak command with detailed explanations.

Replace All Instances of “foo” in the Current File with “bar”

%sfoo<Enter>cbar<Esc>

Official site: https://kakoune.org/
https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

By the way, helix is a variation of what Kakoune does; both are modal editors, and share a few commands with vi, but that’s where the similarity ends. Both helix and Kakoune grammar is object followed by verb, combined with instantaneous feedback, that means you always see the current object before you apply your change, which allows you to correct errors on the go.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

I like to do at least something with text editors or development environment tools every day, or nearly every day.

I took a look at the Neovim project today. As of their most recent site updates, release 0.12 is 61% complete; there are a few fairly serious defects to resolve before 0.12 can be completed, and this release stands in the way of their desire to reach a Version 1.0 status.

How does it work and why does it work? The core engine used in Neovim is still essentially the same as vim. So all of the primary vi commands that work in vim also 100% work in Neovim. It’s the features that complement or replace the additional capabilities of vim/nvim that are not progressing as well as they’d like. I was hoping that it would complete by next year. That’ll only happen IF Version 0.12 is successfully completed this year, and we’re already well into month nine of the calendar year I’m familiar with.

I’ll check in with nvim-gtk in a moment and add any additional comments.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Brian MasinickModerator]

A couple of nice additions I see to the nvim-gtk interface over the stock Neovim is that:

1) there is an “Open” pulldown box that can open recently opened files; for instance, I’ve recently opened my .bashrc with nvim-gtk, also opened several files in my ~/bin directory, and a few in /usr/local/bin that are readable scripts. From Open you can also select any accessible directory and read files from there, so this is one handy Gtk addition.

2) there is a + GUI interface next to “Open”, this opens a separate buffer/file tab, so nvim-gtk can be used to edit multiple files and switch between the tabs to access them. This is similar to what many terminal command interfaces, including roxterm, are capable of doing, so this is a nice feature too.

3) in the middle of the top bar the name of the currently buffer/file in the edit window is named in bold letters, with the name of the directory listed below. For a new buffer, it lists [no name] in bold, with the current directory where nvim-gtk was opened, listed below.

4) to the right there is a save all button. I created my own function key mapping to save the current file; with this interface that’s unnecessary.

5) to the right of save all there is a “paste from clipboard” capability which I’ve not used; I may have to try a few of these features to assess their usefulness!

6) On the right, just before the GUI minimize/maximize/close buttons there is one more extra panel containing three horizontal bars.
This panel allows you to create a new window, add or remove a sidebar, add/install plugins, most of which are vim plugins, and an “About list: credits and version identification.

A couple of these features are really handy, though I haven’t used them yet. One reason I haven’t used them is that several other features, either inherent to Linux or common to the way I personally configure things make these features unnecessary, though a couple of them are still quite convenient.

--
Brian Masinick
Alternate "Search B":
This search page

[Author]

Posts