Some brief (and somewhat belated) notes about Helix.

At about just the time I managed an extension for Nova I started using Helix daily; You know how it goes, always with the shiny.

Coming from quite a few years of using Vim there are some things I struggle with or miss:

• The hardest change from Vim is x vs d for cutting/deleting.
• I miss ctrl+p for completing words based on the existing file.
• I use Vim mode in a lot of other places else, e.g. .inputrc, mksh. There is no Helix mode anywhere else so mentally I’m always going to have to know Vim and Helix.
• No sessions/projects.
• No equivalent to using % in shell commands.
• The lack of spell checking (editing markdown files, etc).
• Not being able to do :set nobomb.

But some things I really like:

• The idea of selection —> action over Vim’s action —> selection is great.
• More consistent and logical keyboard commands if sometimes a little longer: Adding gs, gl and ge to Vim’s gg for instance.
• The built-in space+f file-name search.
• The built-in space+/ file contents search.
• The overlay for shell commands.
• The default purple theme
• Sane defaults, a simple configuration file, and most of what you need is built-in

I’m going to keep playing with Helix. Financially it’s going to make more sense than paying for Nova every year; Although really I owe a few years of Vim sponsorship; And I supposed I should sponsor Helix if I do start using it all the time; One day.

Related: If I had a computer I would be doing more to get Pkgsrc’s package updated.

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  • program