Mastodawn

Request for comments:

Users and fanatics of Emacs, vim, Sublime, Textmate, Github Atom and other such text editors, I would like to know what are your ten or twenty most loved features and keyboard shortcuts in your respective text editors.

I'm working on hot-editing hypertext that keeps links updated (like Xanadu, but read/write) and I would like it to be a tool that designers, coders, and content creators feel at home with. (not an Office clone like Google Docs)

#gopherine #gopher2049

Background: New tooling is really needed to achieve this, the effort will be less effective if I try to build on top of existing text editors without a significant investment writing extensions for every single one of them. (something beyond my scope and capabilities as a one-man show)

My hope is that showing how it can be done (not telling), others will feel inspired to borrow ideas and implement them on their editors in years to come.

#gopherine #gopher2049

Further background:

If you are in control of your hypertext graphs, and you are in charge of authorising who gets to use your hyperlinking footprint and when, you are empowered to reject (or accept) whatever Google and other snooping parties are able to infer about your personal life, activities, and other things that are none of their business.

#gopherine #gopher2049

Marcin Cieślak Dec 26, 2017

@h not sure I understand fully what you are saying (esp. toot three). Would an extra, possibly format-independent #hypertext layer help? One could index all documents (Apache #Tika comes to my mind, maybe) and have a local(?) database of outgoing links. But I am still not sure what would be your goal.

@saper I start with the assumption that the content and the graph structure of hyperlinks are related, but they are not the same thing. I think the hyper has to be maintained separately, possibly in a DHT. When somebody changes or deletes a link, that's a local editing concern that affects the graph structure, but it's not the graph structure that everbody must see. I think that a document-centric view of the web has been detrimental to hyperlinking.

@saper So I'm starting with a little prototype that allows hot-editing of hypertext. Not HTML/www hypertext, but a different kind that's more suitable for these purposes.

💾 UberGeek.bak Dec 26, 2017

@h vsplit and split, as well as regexes for searching in command mode in vim.

in general, a vim keybinding set is what I look for in any #editor now.

@UberGeek Thanks, this is helpful.

fsck -f -Ayy #lmao Dec 26, 2017

@h org-mode (especially agenda) in emacs

@kajiwara Ah, I will have to look up a blog post or documentation for this.

fsck -f -Ayy #lmao Dec 26, 2017

@h and the notmuch mail interface there is top notch as well

@kajiwara The mail interface is probably beyond my scope, not trying to fully re-implement emacs clone, but trying to provide a relatively familiar interface for users of different text editing environments, who are used to a certain way of doing things so that they can be immediately productive carrying their skills along with them.

fsck -f -Ayy #lmao Dec 26, 2017

@h yeah, sadly emacs is much better as a platform for other things than as a text editor

neil 🍄Dec 26, 2017

@h I think modal vim bindings would work brilliant for read/write hypertext. I'd love to be able to navigate around in command mode, then jump into insert mode whenever I wanted to update something. Any subset of vim bindings is automatically a win for me for any app :)

Basic command mode navgiation (j/k/h/l, 0, $, w, b, gg/G, Ctrl-f/Ctrl-b) and basic insert mode shortcuts (i/I, a/A, o/O, ESC) would be a great start.

@neil That's a good idea. So Esc + I would be bound to "enter Edit Mode" action.

neil 🍄Dec 26, 2017

@h Yep various keys jump you into edit mode, and then ESC (or Ctrl-[, or even quickly pressing fd which spacemacs does) takes you back to command/navigation mode. That quick back and forth between navigation/command and edit modes seems like it could work well for both navigating and then hot-editing hypertext.

@neil This is more a Unity thing than an emacs thing, right?

neil 🍄Dec 26, 2017

@h Also vimperator/pentadactyl had some interesting vim style bindings for hypertext navigation (e.g. f overlays all visible hyperlinks with a 2nd shortcut key to then navigate that link).

I also really like in spacemacs how SPC SPC brings up a list of commands available in your environment, then you can search through them with a fuzzy text search. Kind of like the HUD in Unity. (It's probably an emacs extension behind the scenes, but I don't know which one.) I find it really helpful.

@neil A HUD to get help as in documentation, or a cheatsheet, or command completion?

neil 🍄Dec 26, 2017

@h I was thinking command completion. (I guess its utility depends on the number of available commands that you need to remember, but in emacs it's invaluable!)

@neil Oh it's just that I was unaware that emacs had a HUD, it's been possibly decades since the last time I looked.

neil 🍄Dec 26, 2017

@h I'm not sure I'm using the right terminology :) Basically this in the screenshot:

https://social.coop/media/KYGLL97hq8vkKneAzJs

I think atom/sublime might call it the command palette.

@neil Right. I guess the terminology may vary depending on whether the area that pops up overlaps the content, or it splits the window in two. If it splits the window in two it's a pane, if it drops down from the top and is overlaid on top of the content, that's a HUD.
But never mind, I see what you mean.

Anton Dec 26, 2017

@h
* atom's git change highlights are nice
* vim's mouse-free cursor and pane nav are nice
* vim has block edit (ctrl-v) which is really handy

@anjoman I'm taking a look at Atom. i don't know how popular it is, and it may be a little bit bloatsy... I don't know if it's gaining acceptance but I like that it's really FOSS. (Sublime and Textmate aren't)

6gain Dec 26, 2017

@h On Desktop, ctrl-K as a 'standard' for inserting a link has become my muscle memory. Seems to work in quite a lot of Html editors, and I can never remember the Markdown syntax for links anyway.

@6gain On which editors you use, for example?

6gain Dec 26, 2017

IIRC, the Wordpress and Blogger WYSIWYG HTML editors do it, and I think Evernote does it too.

Stephen Dioxide

@h I love the navigation in vim, by word, sentence, and line. I also have a remapping of "f" that takes the cursor to the first word that begins with the letter, instead of the first instance of the letter.

@Steve vim navigation, definitely. Remapping and extensions is beyond my immediate scope, but they will be a thing for sure, so that other people can make idiomatic editor support more complete.