Why this? Yet Another vi-based Editor?

Poizon writes "The guys from freehackers.org have begun developing yet another vi-like editor, called Yzis (speak: "Why this?"). Their primary goal is to seperate the text processing engine and the GUI, in order to be able to integrate it into window managers like KDE as a native component. They have previously worked on KVim, a Vim port to KDE, so chances are good that they will succeed with Yzis. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?"

Comments

Not really

[keesh]

This is one of the things Vim 7 will do. And really, I couldn't bear going back to plain old vi after having used vim for so long. Too many features missing...

Re:Not really

[Michael.Forman]

I desperately would like to see the integration of multimode text editors into more GUIs. Right now there is a usability ceiling built into GUIs. They're designed for beginning and intermediate users with no advanced user features. The productivity jump I gained from moving from a standard text editor to vi was profound. Now I'm forced to dumb it down in GUIs.

Michael.

Re:Not really

[harikiri]

Apparently, because Kvim is kparts-enabled behind the scenes, you can use it as the default editor for Kdevelop, just like Kate.

In fact, after a brief look at the FAQ for Kvim:

What's an editor component ?

A component is a subpart of an application that you can embed dynamically in other applications. Making KVim available as a Kde component means that every Kde application will be able to embed Vim when it needs an editor : KDevelop, mail clients, news clients, ...

PS, More IDE's need vi(m) support!!!

yez

[nocomment]

ziss zounds quite intellestink.

What's with the abnormal names already?

[Ieshan]

Geeks must have some sort of Advertising Impairment Syndrome, where in order to make a brand-name, they take the most unpronouncable and esoteric combinations of characters and stick them together.

It's like all the crazies who go ballistic at people when people don't pronounce a hard "G" at the beginning of "Gnome". Why the fuck should they? It's pronounced differently in every other word beginning with "G-N".

This might get modded flamebait, but every geek on slashdot knows it's true. Slashdot ITSELF is an example (tee hee! "http colon slash slash slash dot dot org!"). It IS cool, but it severely impedes the chances that anyone will ever recognize your product, or even download it, because if I had a conversation with a friend about this, I'd never be able to go google for it without specifically asking how to spell it.

Re:What's with the abnormal names already?

[JabberWokky]

This is a backend, intended for usage within another project. In cases like that, it is better to have a distinctive set of characters for Google to find (a process I call 'kiboing'). Only developers are going to use this. Any end users will use it as part of an editor. Think KHTML versus Konqueror. KHTML is the engine, Konqueror the user facing application.

Of course, cars seem to be going towards alphabet soup in their naming (I swear there's a model with the suffix MFC). I'd say that there's no more market tested and carefully chosen names than car model names. The Chevy Nova notwithstanding. :) Maybe people are starting to like esoteric combinations of characters.

--
Evan

Re:What's with the abnormal names already?

[Frizzle Fry]

It IS cool, but it severely impedes the chances that anyone will ever recognize your product, or even download it, because if I had a conversation with a friend about this, I'd never be able to go google for it without specifically asking how to spell it.

But most geeks don't find out about these projects from conversations. They find out about them by reading about them online somewhere, in email, etc. They don't need to ask for the spelling because they have it right there and can copy it to google or wherever. It's not impaired advertising, it's advertising that has adapted to its market. If something isn't going to be advertised on tv and radio, but will instead be discovered through a text medium (web, email, chat), then it is not mainly concerned with the things you discuss. Frankly, this name does happen to be pretty stupid, though.

As for why Gnome should have a hard G (I didn't actually know this; anyone I've known who used gnome didn't pronounce the G), the answer is presumably because it is a play on Gnu, which has the G pronounced the same way.

Re:NSTextField

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Those are actually Emacs commands. vi would be ^ for the start of a line, and $ for the end.

I too often find myself hitting Esc and then typing vi commands in text boxes, like here on /. A real vi mode would be welcome in input widgets.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do another vi when the ultimate vi based editor is here ?

Re:The untold truth about text editors

[kwench]

I agree that vi is a PITA when you are used to the new colorful world of windows, buttons and menus.

But... this project is aiming at providing a plugin-like editor for all applications.

Example: I am currently typing this text in a small textarea in Opera.
Imagine I'd like to replace all occurences of "I" with "we". What can I do? Search and spell checking works fine in Opera (I don't know about other browsers), even on texts in textareas, which is already something. But a Find&Replace function is simply not there.
Now imagine your browser with your favorite editor (like vi) as plugin. You do the great vi-magic like :s/I/we/g and you are done.

wordpad has command mode too

[ufnoise]

Whenever you move the mouse to the top menubar and select save in wordpad, you are entering command mode. Move the mouse back down to the text area and you are back in edit mode.

Editors listing

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a big list of editors here, which includes several vi clones (or based on vi[m]) like Elvis, Cream, Vile and WinVim.

All of these run on Windows only but there are a lot of Unix/Linux eds that have Win32 ports. There are other tools (IDEs and so on) there as well. I found that site while looking for a Windows version of PICO - I ended up using nano instead, which I didn't know existed (old Unix head that I am). Nano runs great on a Windows console, BTW.

Personally I would like to see someone come up with a list or a wiki of all free/libre editors for *nix/*BSD. There are a few lists around, but none are very comprehensive.