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Comment by zellyn | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to develop Xi and rust-analyzer in tandem, and see how much of an IDE Xi could become while leaving it still basically a text editor.

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Language features are definitely in the near-term plans for xi, and depending on what stage Rust Analyzer is at it could definitely be a good initial target for some of that work.

Does xi have any Vim/modal like features?

We're still trying to figure out the best way to implement those. There's a prototype, but it hasn't landed in master. It's definitely on the roadmap though.

I thought Kakoune was an interesting experiment: an attempt to embrace vi-like modal editing, but keep it consistent, and go all-in on it.

I really want Kakoune to succeed. I love the UX behind it and it feels like a vim-done-right.

The major innovation of kakoune, imo, is to combine modal editing with multiple selections. These are two very powerful concepts that haven't been combined well before, to the best of my knowledge. In any case yes, I think kak is a great editor and a definite source of inspiration.

Sounds cool! I don't know what to say about Vim-like. At this point I think it's mostly a dream that one day, something can replace Vim. Not saying it's perfect, it's just so entrenched, and full of features.

That said, I don't think I'd be after a perfect Vim copy. I think I would like an editor that uses the same approach, doesn't have to be exactly the same keybindings.

I agree this could be very interesting.

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