Emacs + Evil = ecumenicalism (evil-mode is a VIM emulation package for Emacs)

http://dnquark.com/blog/2012/02/emacs-evil-ecumenicalism/

by almost • 14 years ago

26 14 14 years ago

dnquark.com

pors2• 14 years ago

Site seems down. In the meantime check this out: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=300

pors2• 14 years ago

Down vote? No sense of humor, you gotta work on that!

Auguste• 14 years ago

Google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3...

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

Can't read the article, but I use evil every day to do my work. I don't like vim so much as I like modal editing, and evil gets it right for about 98% of what I want. Emacs is (IMO) just a better platform, although going down the road of learning emacs, but none of its bindings is pretty rough, and probably a bit too much work for most people (m-x describe-key was my greatest friend when going through that process)

disgruntledphd2• 14 years ago

C-h k is a shortcut for that function, while C-h f gets documentation on a function, while C-h a gives you fuzzy matching, which is wonderful when you're not sure what a command is called

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

I don't know why, I have zero issues remembering that cab deletes everything in your current set of parens and dumps you in insert mode, but emacs key chords just fly out of my head. If I am doing something like learning a new mode, I'll start using c-h k, but then a few months later when I need it again, it will be gone and I have to re learn it.

ochs• 14 years ago

I'm currently using viper-mode (a vi mode that ships with Emacs). I haven't tried evil, and I'm interested why you choose it over viper-mode.

Symmetry• 14 years ago

Because viper-mode only covers vi features, not vim features. Once you start using text objects[1], its hard to go back to normal vi.

[1] Like, if your curser is anywhere inside a set of parens you can type 'yap' to copy the entire paren block or 'yip' to just copy the stuff inside the parens. And unlike 'f0y%' it always just does the right thing with nested parens.

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

Vim is a fairly large beast, and I was using it at at least an intermediate level. Viper does the real basics of vim, but nothing more. Vimpulse was promising, but after a day using it, I switched back since there was so many things that I wanted to do but couldn't. With evil, the only thing that irritates me all the time is how it ignores punctuation.

function foo(){

If the cursory was at the end of the line and you did db in vim, you would get

function foo

In evil mode you get

function

Because it ignores the punctuation when deciding how much to delete.

That is the really big for me. More minor issues is the b text object doesn't work right in js2 mode, and there is no support for :g. Other then that, it completely covers everything I used in vim. Only I also get all the amazing modes, and don't ever have to use vim script again

phren0logy• 14 years ago

Can anyone comment on how the "Vim-ness" of this compares to Vintage mode in SublimeText 2?

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

Vintage is a very small subset of what evil gives you.

dnquark• 14 years ago

Author of the article here; never thought I'd be posting HN-worthy content, otherwise I would've picked something other than a very wimpy (but cheap) Xen VPS host (which I can't even SSH into at the moment)... For Emacs users, here's the alternative to Google cache -- the original org-mode file of the post (I use org2blog): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2685883/evil.org

(Alternatively, here's the text posted on Google+: https://plus.google.com/105073748129411089493/posts/7xEUhCoh...)

For all the Vim/Evil users here, I have a question (something that I didn't get around to mentioning in my blog post): what are the standard ways in Vim to navigate code in syntactic units? The s-expression motions in Emacs are very handy: for instance, if I am at the end of the line and I want to select foo(bar), I just do C-M-b a couple of times; likewise, if the point is before "foo", I do C-M-f. In Evil, if the point is before "foo", % works well, but not if the point is at e.o.l. That's currently one of my biggest gripes with Evil.

mattbriggs5• 14 years ago

I actually use a whole bunch of things for motion. backward-sexp is really nice, but very lisp specific, and I only rarely get to hack on lisp stuff. I use a combination of the following to jump around, and rarely find things lacking. My exact bindings probably break common emacs-isms and would be sacrilege to a true emacsen, but they work well for me :)

If the cursor is more then a few lines away, i will use / to search (or ? to back search) and then n my way to the target.

If I am on the same line, I will use f<target char> . that will move the cursor to be on the the next occurance of that character, and semi-colon repeats the motion. so given

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

if the cursor is at the start of the line and i want to get to the o in over, I would type "fo;;" seems a bit verbose, but ; is easy to hit, and sort of a twitch motion, so it is actually pretty natural.

If the place I want to get to is close to the beginning or ending of the line, i have ^(go to first non whitespace char) mapped to H, and $(go to end of line) mapped to L. given the vim hjkl bindings, HL is very easy to hit.

If I am more just "cruising" through the file, i have c-h mapped to b (back a word) and c-l mapped to w (forward word), and c-j to } (next paragraph) c-k (prev paragraph). So holding down ctrl puts me into "move quickly mode"

If I am close to a paren, I have % mapped to <space><space>, but that is mostly situational (i find I use it most often in lispy languages)

If I am on a word and want to move to another occurance of the same word, I usually use * and n my way to where I want to be (although I also use highlight-symbol.el with m-n m-p mapped to next/prev occurance)

Finally, something I just started trying out is jaunte.el. Done by a japanese guy, but if you look at the screencap here http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=... you can see when you invoke it, it puts an overlay over each visible word with a 1-3char shortcut. You press the shortcut, and jump to that place.

So yeah, YMMV and all that, but that is what I use for motion. Out of all of that, / and f are by far the most common things I use.

jimdesu• 14 years ago

The word you're looking for is 'ecumenism'. :)

Emacs + Evil = ecumenicalism (evil-mode is a VIM emulation package for Emacs)

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