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used to think this mattered a lot but funnily one of the main vim-universe inspired editors, helix, has convinced me otherwise

their choice to subtly diverge from the vim way of things is actually super nice, somehow way more mnemonic and easy to remember and use everyday



Zed has recently merged support for helix-like bindings, but it's still pretty far off (e.g. there's no way to default to "helix-normal" mode, meaning your first hotkey will be pure vim). I found it basically unusable for daily-driving, and Helix has me way too hooked on their style of modal editing for me to tolerate anything else.

Edit: here's my Helix keymaps, they're in Nix but that's pretty straightforward to port to JSON: https://codeberg.org/jcdickinson/nix/src/branch/main/home/co...


I have been eyeing helix for quite a while. Been using (neo)vim for 22y. Why not Helix for the next 22!

I find the helix model of select then act so much more aligned to my mental model. Rather than verb then noun in vim.

Vim register handling on deletion is pure crap. (delete a line lands into a different register than delete a word, pasting over a selection overrides the default register etc.).

There is one plugin in vim that I cannot live without though, and that is easymotion (there are other similar plugins). It highlights objects with a letter (like the start of words for example), pressing the letter jumps to the object. I find this so much more natural and easier than jumping to line numbers. I might have to implement this into helix ;)


I really want a Helix/Kakoune mode in Zed, but last I checked the development of such a thing was dead in the water, unfortunately


it's being actively worked on!


my comment was based on the last PR update I read some months ago where the developer had given up on merging it, so this is great to hear!




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