One of the workflows I used in vi/m over last 2 decades is : vertical selection and edit
So much so that it is part of my muscle memory and I needed to learn the equivalent in helix.
After some searching, I found it. Here are the steps:
Go to the column you want to select. Press v to enter select mode. Select the column and to go down and up in the column selection use Shift-C or Alt-Shift-C You can repeat the Shift-c command using the numeric operator if needed, like 10-Shift-C to select the column 10 rows vertically.
Emacs 1 has this command fill-paragraph (Usually M-q) which will auto format long uneven lines to make them look even by adding a hard wrap.
But I use helix for writing these blog entries. That is how I discovered reflow command in Helix.
It is simple really
Select the blocks of text you want to format (by typing x and repeating for as many line as you have). Then :reflow. That’s it!
When I am working on a project, it is highly likely that I would open other files from that project. In order to do that, in Helix I would do SPC F. This opens up file picker for that workspace.
I can then either navigate using arrow keys, or most likely start typing the name of the file and the file will be highlighted. As a side benefit, the file is shown on the right pane as a preview.
Helix is a great editor. I’m trying it more and more these days (Like this post is edited in helix)
While shift from action->object to object->action in itself is big change (muscle memory), there are indeed other differences as well.
Luckily, it is easy to add keybindings to helix. Turns out someone took this too far, and created a lot of keybindings to make helix more like Vim
Refer to this for the entire config.
Noticed that new version 22.08.1 of helix is now available. See this Upgrade via your preferred package manager.
After the upgrade, used hx after a long time.
I also signed up for the matrix channel. Turns out that is where all the action is.
I’m member of (almost-dead-but-not-quite) Telegram group for a while. But matrix channel seems active.
I got immediate reply to my query. Nice!
My query was : How do I go to the last line of the buffer ?
I wrote about espanso in past here and here, and I’ve been using it ever since.
Since helix is (for now) terminal-only editor, my espanso shortcuts work very well with it.
e.g. I can type :smile: and get 😄, and type thru and get through (Automatic correct the usually misspelled words 🎉)
Espanso works well with neovim-in-terminal (and Emacs), but I use Neovide GUI, where they don’t work.
One of the thing that I thought was missing from Helix editor was integration with a decent grammar checker tool. On Emacs and neovim, I use ltex-ls.
To my surprise, it works well (I’m using it already) with Helix.
It is probably not well documented though. I had to look through the github issues, but I did come across the solution.
It is straightforward though.
Download the latest release of ltex-ls from here.
I came across Helix Editor on youtube when watching about neovim related video.
It is vim like editor. That is, a modal editor.
But it is different in one fundamental way, it terms of how commands work.
In (Neo)vim, it is action followed by object. So delete word becomes dw But in Helix it is other way round. Object followed by Action. So it is word delete hence wd
It takes a bit getting used to.