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Why this? Yet Another vi-based Editor? 120

Posted by timothy from the integrationism dept.
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?"
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Why this? Yet Another vi-based Editor? More

Why this? Yet Another vi-based Editor?

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  • Not really (Score:5, Informative)

    by keesh ( 202812 ) * on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:03PM (#9360480) Homepage
    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 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Cthefuture ( 665326 )
      I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they are suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome.

      With that said, I wouldn't mind having a VI-like editor intregrated into Kdevelop. I like Kdevelop and the Visual-Studio-like features, but I often sorely miss my Vim functionality and I end up being forced to switch back and forth between a terminal and Kdevelop.

      • Re:Not really (Score:4, Informative)

        by harikiri ( 211017 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @06:09AM (#9364115)
        Apparently, because Kvim [freehackers.org] is kparts-enabled behind the scenes, you can use it as the default editor for Kdevelop, just like Kate [kde.org].

        In fact, after a brief look at the FAQ [freehackers.org] 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!!!

    • Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Michael.Forman ( 169981 ) * on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:54PM (#9360926) Homepage Journal

      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. [michael-forman.com]

      • History of "Why this" (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        For anybody's information, here is a more detailed explanation of the "Why this":

        http://mirror1.yzis.org/viewcvs/trunk/README?re v =6 10&view=auto

        History:
        ========
        Before working on Yzis, the authors (Mickael Marchand, Thomas Capricalli and
        Philippe Fremy) had been working on GVim. GVim is clearly the best vi
        compatible editor today. It contains tons of features, which are very clear
        improvements upon the original vi: visual selection, unlimited undo, powerful
        syntax highlighting, script language, splitted w

      • Re:Not really (Score:3, Interesting)

        by frisket ( 149522 )
        Sounds interesting, doesn't it?

        Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

        Multimode editing in GUI editors would be fine, but that's not the issue.

        Dual-mode editors à la vi went out with the Ark. Imagine if you had to press i in Word before you could type text, and had to press Esc before you could do anything else.

        • Re:Not really (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Pedersen ( 46721 )
          Dual-mode editors à la vi went out with the Ark. Imagine if you had to press i in Word before you could type text, and had to press Esc before you could do anything else.

          I don't imagine it, I do it. Oftentimes with annoying consequences. I much prefer the vi style of editing. I feel like I go a hundred times faster than any other mode.

    • From the website:
      Yzis is a new editor "vim-like". The idea behind Yzis is to develop a powerful, fast editor featuring most of Vim features and hopefully more.

    • Re:Not really (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      I got the impression you could easily do this with vim already, which is why vim is now three separate projects kinda: vim-core, vim, and gvim. Couldn't they just wrap vim-core up and make it into a component right now?

  • yez (Score:5, Funny)

    by nocomment ( 239368 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:03PM (#9360485) Homepage Journal
    ziss zounds quite intellestink.
    • it's zomething zpecial
      zomething, unique.

      -zima commercials
    • "Fuck me hell Tom, what's that?"

      "It's me belt Turkish."

      "No Tommy there's a gun in your trousers.
      What's a gun doing in your trousers?"

      "It's for protection!"

      "Protection from what, Zee Germans?"

  • NSTextField (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Ster ( 556540 )
    You can use some 'vi' shortcuts in Cocoa's NSTextField (or is it NSTextView?), which is used for text input fields. I'm using Safari, so I can hit ^A and go to the beginning of the line, ^E for the end, ^D to forward-delete, etc.

    -Ster

    • Re:NSTextField (Score:5, Informative)

      by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:17PM (#9360603)
      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.
      • Those are actually Emacs commands. vi would be ^ for the start of a line, and $ for the end.

        D'oh!

        You're right, it uses emacs commands, not vi commands. That's what I meant, I swear... :-)

        Mod parent up, grandparent down.

        -Ster

      • Hey! I just tried it out and you're right. ^ does go the start of a line. I never knew that. But why would anyone actually use that? It seems a lot less efficient than 0 to me, since it requires a shift key. Maybe it just feels slower because 0 is such a habit and I never use ^. Is there any difference between the two? Does ^ actually have any advantage (also, I'm using vim, so please tell me if 0 isn't part of standard vi)?

        • ^ and $ are, if I recall, the sed/ed cmd for 'beginning of line', and 'end of line' so it makes sense that vi is using the same character to 'match the pattern' ...

        • ^ goes to the first non-whitespace character. 0 (zero) goes to the first charater on the line.

          So if you have a indented line, ^ will take you after the indent. Where the 0 would take you to the space or tab that starts the line.
      • You can use any editor you wish using mozex [mozdev.org].
      • I use vi to write code most of the time. Yesterday a colleague asked me to help him with some code, so I sat down and tried to fix it for him using his emacs session. After five minutes filling his code with ^, $ and :w, I let him do the typing.
      • You hopefully know that escape is also mapped to ^[ which is much more ergonomic.
    • Those are all shortcuts lifted from Emacs.
    • I think it's rooted a little higher than that. The same keystrokes work in Terminal.app and I think just about everywhere that the app doesn't grab them for it's own shortcuts.

      Disclaimer: I'm not in front of my Mac so I can't check how many places this actually works.
  • 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.
    • 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

    • You mean Xouvert is not a marketeer's dream?
    • I'd never be able to go google for it without specifically asking how to spell it


      Ok it wasn't a question above, but you explained one good reason for picking goofy and goofily spelled names - findability on Google.

      Would you rather search for "slashdot" on Google, or "nerd news"? Which one will give the most accurate results?

      Imagine searching for "VI Editor Plugin". I don't know about you, but I'd rather search for "Yzis".
    • > 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".

      So we did it your way.

      "Yzis" == "why this", but it's also a play on

    • What about have fun, program, enjoy yourself?

      Frankly people that immediately go in market-speak mode are a real nuisance....

    • Re:What's with the abnormal names already? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Frizzle Fry ( 149026 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:51PM (#9361300) Homepage
      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.
    • I'm a "guh-nome" pronouncer but I don't foist it on others (I still get the willies when I hear someone say "lie-nihks" though).

      However the one that gets me isn't "guh-nome" or "nome" it is "jee-nome". Ugh. Not as bad as "lie-nihks" (couldn't you at LEAST pronounce the "nuhks" at the end instead of "nihks"?) but it seems to be more common nowadays.

      I've heard "kuh-dee" once for KDE ... I think that one took the stupid cake, but "jee-nome" ... ugh.
    • 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".

      Whenever I hear somebody pronounce it "Jnome", I smack them. ;)

    • 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".

      That's just gnot true.
      For example, "GNU" is prognougnced "guh-NEW", Gnumeric is prognougnced "guh-new-MARE-ick", etc.
      So why shouldgn't we correct people who mis-prognougnce "gnome"?
      It doesgn't meagn that we're grammer gnazis or agnythigng.
      What are you, some kignd of gnut?

  • Why? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:19PM (#9360621)
    Why do another vi when the ultimate vi based editor is here [sourceforge.net] ?
  • Sounds interesting, doesn't it?
    No. Next question.
  • Please - KDE is much more than a Window Manager [xwinman.org]. KDE contains as one small part of the whole, a window manager called "KWin", but it can use any other conforming to the standards.

    Try it out for yourself [kde.org] and find out why none of us KDE users can live without its Browser [konqueror.org], its E-mail client [kde.org] or its complete office suite [koffice.org].

  • There are already a good deal of VI based editors... Not to bash on their project or anything, it still seems interesting, and it's not a bad idea. But perhaps they would be better off just taking something such as vim or some other similar editor and modifying it... Or even making something a bit new. Most people will still stick with editors like open-office, because of they way they work, and making another VI editor that doesn't really break the mold wont change this. Just my two cents.

  • Cocoa GUI (Score:2, Funny)

    by rawg ( 23000 )
    This sounds great! Finally I can have a Cocoa GUI for VIM!
  • It might be time to replace Vim's macro langague with a more widespread, general purpose language. Lisp anyone?

  • Editors listing (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 07, 2004 @07:39PM (#9361559)
    There's a big list of editors here [vbbox.com], 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 [nano-editor.org] 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.

  • C++ (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OmniVector ( 569062 )
    ugh. of course the authors just HAD to do this in C++, making it a bitch to integrate into objective-c based programs. At the very least objective-c++ with os x will work, but the gnustep people are completely shut in the dark. why do people code in that unportable language? c LINKS WITH EVERYTHING. sigh.
    • wtf? How on *earth* is this a troll?!?
    • Because C blows goats. I have proof.

      • Re:C++ (Score:3, Interesting)

        by OmniVector ( 569062 )
        i don't deny that C has it's fair share if issues. the problem is this project is a development library with the end goal of being integrated into text widgets. The only language that allows them to do this everywhere (GNUStep, gtk2, Qt) is C. C links with obj-c, obviously with other C libraries, and c++ libraries. The simple truth is by doing this project in c++ you make a port to other libraries extremely difficult and doesn't that defeat the purpose of why they are writing this in the first place as

  • would allow me to connect it to an emacsclient [emacswiki.org] session. That way I can take advantage of all the goodies I have loaded into my main emacs session, have seamless integration with my kill [gnu.org] and search [gnu.org] rings and not take a year and a day (er, 10 seconds) to load.

    I can only hope that the interfaces necessary to do this will fall out of this work.

  • This sounds awesome. Vi is cool!!!! quit exit :q :q! done :q!!!!!!! dammit! close editor freak~!4%)(*@#@@(*!@*&)
    • > quit

      In my vim, :quit works just fine and so does :exit
      Are you still in insert mode?

      > :q

      The reason :q prompts you is that you haven't saved
      your file yet. It is no diffierent from those annoying "Are you sure?" dialogs.

      > :q! done :q!!!!!!! dammit! close editor freak

      Surely, just typing :q! or :wq would do the trick.

    • Re:Yeah! Vi rocks! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > This sounds awesome. Vi is cool!!!! quit exit :q :q! done :q!!!!!!! dammit! close editor freak~!4%)(*@#@@(*!@*&)

      You must be using Emacs. IIRC, its exit sequence is Ctrl-Alt-Meta-Shift-TH1SUX-Delete-Enter. Either that or it launches a flight simulator, an email program, and recompiles your kernel.

  • Spellcheck please? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frenchgates ( 531731 ) on Tuesday June 08, 2004 @06:53AM (#9364271)
    This is why sites like slashdot get less respect than they should. "Seperate" is not a word. Come on, editors, is there something non-open-sourcey or Microsofty about a quick spell check before posting an item?
  • I hate to be the one to bring up Emacs, but I've been craving an Emacs editing widget for ages. Hell, to make both camps happy, it would be nice to see the desktop environments provide an editing widget that could be customized to be either like a Windows edit box, or Vim or Emacs.

    It's frustrating as all hell to try to delete a line with ctrl-a ctrl-y and end up with a bunch of selected text. Sigh.
  • Why use vi when there is emacs? :)

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