[imiric]

This is very interesting, and it's great to see new editors.

But honestly I never got the fascination for the Acme editor. It seems powerful, but relying on mouse input is limiting, slow and imprecise. I'd much rather control my editor using the infinite key combinations of the keyboard I'm already typing on, which is much more comfortable, accurate and faster. It also builds muscle memory that can never be built with an analog input method like the mouse.

Multi-pane editing is also not very useful beyond a single vertical or horizontal split. For anything more complex, a tiling window manager is a more versatile tool that works for any app.

To enable these two functionalities UI elements need to be rendered, which clutters up the UI and takes up considerable screen real-estate. When working in a buffer and keyboard-oriented editor like Vim or Emacs, the screen only needs to show the content itself, which is a much more pleasant environment to work in.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding the benefits of the Acme workflow, and I honestly haven't given it a thorough try, so I'd be happy to read counterpoints.

BTW, I love the font Anvil uses! Is it available somewhere to download?

[isr]

I've been a vim (then neovim) user since 1999 (plus or minus 1 year - basically so long that I don't precisely remember).

I've written so much custom vimscript for things like an irc client, tiling window manager within vim, literate programming, my own slime'ish plug-in, etc, etc, that I even have a prelude.vim, with my own "standard lib" of useful vim functions.

The only point behind this is to say that, you could say, I appreciate and "get" vim.

So after 20+ years of nothing but vim, I felt the urge to try acme because of all the cool videos I kept seeing. And, 20 years of anything is enough to cause burnout.

And you know what - I really, really liked acme. The best way I can describe it is that you may well be slowly for strictly text editing tasks, but more if your attention is left for what you're actually doing, and less is spent playing vimgolf (or even remembering YOUR OWN mappings for YOUR OWN plug-ins- because you accumulate oh so many of them).

It's a simple system, with a few basic primitives, which when approached with a clean mindset - are really very powerful.

The best way to approach acme is NOT to think of it as a text editor, but rather think if it as a replacement for your terminal.

(btw, I use an acme fork called acme2k, with some additional nicities - some of which anvil also has).

In the end, I didn't completely abandon neovim, but now I use neovim in a more acmelike fashion. All my terms are inside neovim, and I frequently pipe from shell to empty buffers, etc.

Basically, try it. It's so different, it's hard to get across in just words. It's like smalltalk - you have to try it to really get it.

[imiric]

Thank you for engaging in the conversation. This is the kind of response I was hoping for. :)

I'm not nearly as experienced with Vim as you are, even though I've been using it for a similar amount of time, along with Emacs. I've never written my own plugins, though have deeply configured them to my preference along the years.

The thing is that I never feel that I'm playing "vimgolf", or that I need to make an effort to remember key bindings. Maybe once I change some things or introduce new behavior it requires a period of adjustment, but for the vast majority of time the actions I need to take to produce an effect are ingrained in my muscle memory. E.g. I don't actively think "how do I select the text between parenthesis", and typing `vi)` just happens automatically with little mental effort. I'm sure it's the same for you and anyone who's used Vim for a while.

In contrast, it's not possible to achieve this with mouse input. You will always have to consciously think about the action you want to take and manipulate the mouse to achieve it. More importantly, this action will always be imprecise given the analog nature of the input, so you might misclick and cause unintended behavior. Additionally, it takes your hands away from the keyboard which you're already using for making content changes. I'm a big fan of the ThinkPad Trackpoint for this reason, but even that is not a perfect solution. All of this combined means that it requires much more effort from the user, to the point where it's personally unbearable every time I've tried it. Both Vim and Emacs support mouse input as well, but I never rely on it for this reason.

> The best way to approach acme is NOT to think of it as a text editor, but rather think if it as a replacement for your terminal.

That's interesting. I kind of don't want that, though. Just like with my editors, I've invested a lot of time and effort to customize my terminal as well. It also has custom key bindings and configuration, and is deeply integrated into my workflow. Emacs, for example, supports embedding terminals and many different shells. I can see the benefit of having better integration with the editor, but all these solutions have some shortcomings that make them inferior to using a standalone terminal IME.

I also prefer the Unix philosophy of using smaller tools that do one thing well, and combining them to fit my workflow. Repurposing my editor for all my tasks doesn't gel nicely with that, otherwise I would be using an IDE. :)

> Basically, try it. It's so different, it's hard to get across in just words. It's like smalltalk - you have to try it to really get it.

Thanks. I've tried Acme a few times over the years, but not extensively, precisely because I get frustrated fairly quickly... I'll give Anvil or acme2k a more serious attempt. But then again, this is all based on personal preferences anyway, so I'm fine with accepting these editors are just not for me.

Cheers for the chat!

[Shorel]

> It seems powerful, but relying on mouse input is limiting, slow and imprecise.

Anyone who says this, has never played StarCraft.

In practice, some things a much faster with the mouse. You see something, and immediately you can move your cursor there. Text selection is also faster, given the text to be selected fits on the screen.

I have seen this claim online for decades, and it totally contradicts my experience. Some people learned computing before GUIs existed, and that shaped their opinions, but at this point that claim is just a meme repeated over and over on the internet forums.

However, my principal criticism to your point is: any text editor that allows you to use the mouse, also has keyboard shortcuts. It's never one vs the other.

[imiric]

> Anyone who says this, has never played StarCraft.

Ha, I actually loved StarCraft back in the day, and RTS (or what's left of it) is still one of my favorite genres today.

> In practice, some things a much faster with the mouse. You see something, and immediately you can move your cursor there.

I get that, and while it may apply for gaming, that's not always the case for editing text or programming. For one, the keyboard is the primary input device you rely on while editing text. Switching away from it to use the mouse (or touchpad, Trackpoint, etc.) requires conscious effort. Whereas in gaming, particularly with RTS games, your hand is on the mouse most of the time, so there's no context switching.

Yet even RTS games rely heavily on keyboard shortcuts. In competitive gaming, skill is measured by APM (Actions Per Minute), and using both keyboard and mouse efficiently is a critical part of that. I would say that the keyboard is even more important than the mouse, though.

Take a look at this video[1]. Notice that the mouse is only used to select units, issue commands on specific targets, and ocasionally scroll the map. The keyboard instead is used constantly, and even exclusively for short periods of time.

Obviously, text editing and programming proficiency is not measured in APM. We spend much more time thinking about the content than how we input and manipulate it. But if we can remove any friction between using our tools and our output, then this is worth pursuing since this friction adds up over long periods of time.

> Text selection is also faster, given the text to be selected fits on the screen.

I'm not so sure. I can select a word, line, sentence, paragraph, or text between braces in a fraction of the time and effort it would take me to do the same with the mouse. It would also be much more precise.

> Some people learned computing before GUIs existed, and that shaped their opinions, but at this point that claim is just a meme repeated over and over on the internet forums.

That could well be the case, but the history of GUIs and mouse input dates as far back as the 1960s and 70s. Vi, Emacs and Vim were created in the 70s, 80s and 90s, after GUIs were popularized or during that process. Maybe there are legitimate reasons for people to prefer keyboard input beyond it being just a meme?

> However, my principal criticism to your point is: any text editor that allows you to use the mouse, also has keyboard shortcuts. It's never one vs the other.

That's true, and viceversa as well: any editor heavily focused on keyboard shortcuts also allows mouse input. My preference for keyboard input has nothing to do with my editor choice, I just never feel the need to rely on the mouse. This is why I wanted to better understand why someone would prefer mouse input, and why text editors like Acme would be specifically built for this kind of workflow.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bexWuHmV32A

[jxy]

mouse or keyboard is really just a preference. you could do mouse 1 sweep-select 2-3 in one window, and move to another mouse 1-3, and move to another do mouse 1-3, ... Or you could do, in case of vi, y$ (or other movements), ^w w (or other way to select other window), (move your cursor) p, ^w w, (move your cursor) p, ... Though I'm biased, because I feel it's much easier to move my mouse than do one of wWbBeE^$fFtThjkl to move my cursor, even though it is a lot faster and efficient to only move a few of my fingers than my whole arm.

the font is likely Go Font, the proportional one

[imiric]

Aha, right, cursor movement across large distances is indeed more comfortable with the mouse. This is usually awkward with the keyboard, and requires plugins like EasyMotion, or just holding keys or repeating key combos. I think these movements are rarer than small cursor movements, like jumping to the next character, word, line, etc., or jumping to the matching brace, etc. In these cases using the keyboard is still faster and more precise.

But I was more thinking about controlling the editor itself. Creating new buffers/panes and switching between them is all much faster with a keyboard. For example, I bind `=` and `-` to switch to the previous/next buffer, and Tab to switch to the next pane. I do these actions hundreds of times a day, and they're just a keystroke away. I couldn't imagine having to use the mouse for this. It would be unbearably slow and tedious.

The best part of key bindings is that they can be easily modified to suit any workflow. Whereas with mouse movements you really can't customize them beyond which of the few buttons to click. The movements themselves can't be optimized, unless you go into gesture territory, which has a lot of drawbacks as well.

No, it doesn't look like the Go font, but thanks.

[skydhash]

> Aha, right, cursor movement across large distances is indeed more comfortable with the mouse. This is usually awkward with the keyboard, and requires plugins like EasyMotion, or just holding keys or repeating key combos

Embrace search based navigation. And if you’re using Vim or Emacs, do whatever that can popup a new window with the result of your search and links to their location in the main buffer. And extend that to search in all files of the $PROJECT.

[imiric]

I do use search often as well, but it's not great. You may mistype and land somewhere unintended. Or have to iterate over the results if they're not a unique match, etc. Whereas if the location is visible on screen, it's much easier to go to it with a point and click.

[ksjw12]

Anvil uses a licensed version of the Input font, by David Jonathan Ross.

[BaculumMeumEst]

I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Acme because it’s fun, but you’re not misunderstanding anything. Anyone who unironically tries assert the superiority of their niche editor is delusional and/or full of shit. It’s just personal preference.

[imiric]

I'm not trying to have an argument about the superiority of any specific editor, but to try to better understand those preferences for one workflow over another. I could be missing something that would make my own workflow better.

For example, you could elaborate on what makes Acme fun.