Lots of IDEs claim to offer Vim/Emacs emulation. Vim users seem often quite happy with the vim emulation they get (I'm only an occasional Vim user so don't have an opinion).
The issue with emulating Emacs is that the editor key bindings are not the feature. The feature of Emacs is basically an IDE totally tuned to how you want it, plus the fact that then you apply the same ecosystem to a great number of text-adjacent applications - Org, E-mail, code, markdown, etc.
Someone saying to me "hey, you can copy with M-w!" just really doesn't appeal.
Vim seems more about an out-of-the-box "language" for typing, so I can see how you can emulate this more sanely.
> Vim users seem often quite happy with the vim emulation they get
Its better than nothing, but usually only lets you use vim bindings for text editing itself. Compared to neovim, where the entire editor and the plugin ecosystem is fully based on the same keyboard-driven workflow, it's quite lacking. For example, I remember that when using VSCode with its Vim mode plugin, it took quite a bit of configuration to be able to switch to the file tree and navigate it with the keyboard, and it still didn't work that well due to inherent limitations of the software.
Another huge example is Neogit. If you're an Emacs user, you probably use Magit, which Neogit is heavily inspired by, so you'll understand. Having it integrated into your editor and working with the same shortcuts is very nice and can't be replaced by vim emulation mode.
Author here. We pushed 1.1 today. It was scheduled for release two weeks ago, but it was quite hard to balance adding so many new features with the influx of bug reports that followed our launch a month ago. Obviously, adding Python is a big one, but I'm most excited about the new symbol index, which reduces 10-second workspace-wide queries to under 100 ms. The agent also uses this index, so the benefits compound over long agentic sessions as well. FWIW I'm not quite sure about the black-and-white dimming feature. If it's not useful, we might remove it in a future release so please let us know!
Not a walkthrough video, no. The first steps section of the getting started guide is the best place to start (https://docs.rune.build/#your-first-steps). There are also a few short clips on the home, Go and Python pages.
Fair ask though! a short walkthrough is on the list.
I'm not seeing any mention of this being FOSS, is this closed-sourced? If so, that should be mentioned in every single comparison page between editors.
edit: It is mentioned in the Neovim, and Emacs pages. Not the VSCode, or Zed pages.
I may check this out as I'm between editors currently. Liked zed for a bit, until a blog post showed me how they were installing npm and who knows what else on my PC without me knowing. Used Code for a bit after until suddenly they started requiring AI dependencies just to run the IDE.
I've looked at gram, but unfortunately it, being a fork of zed, still has some dependencies I'd rather not deal with. Given the recent hacks (especially those a few weeks ago with lots of compromised AUR packages in Arch) I'd rather not have npm or nodejs installed. I don't develop in it, I don't need it, and having it installed is just an huge unnecessary attack vector for me.
I do love what the gram developer is doing though.
pricing page does not at all make clear what isn't included in the free version. you have to pay a monthly subscription for "language support"? does that mean it doesn't "support" languages in the free version? and what does "language support" mean?
Fair. I’ll change the wording so it’s obvious. To answer your question, there’s no difference other than the licensing terms allowing you to use it for commercial work.
Same. Is it completely new editor with "emacs mode"? an actual emacs configuration. Who knows? Why should I care if the author didn't care to explain it?
Might want to think about installation. Suspicious of black box shell installations like that, and I'm on a laptop with restrictions. Looks like installation failed trying to write to places it shouldn't, but it's just pulling a dmg to copy on MacOS?
EDIT: also not helping trust that it's not letting me quit?
I’ll look into these. We do some special handling of cmd+q so resources are released gracefully. I’m guessing you didn’t select a preset yet. Is that accurate?
Anyone know of something like spacemacs which does the chording well? I've gotten used to it but it's starting to feel like it's not being updated, but I have all the muscle memory
Sorry, I just don't understand the premise behind Rune. The whole neovim / emacs / blah blah cult is based around configuring the infinitely configurable ecosystem. It's not better, or more productive, it's a hobby. So if you try to package that you've missed the point.