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Looks nice! And I don't want to always be that Emacs guy, but for anyone interested, you can (of course) have a similar setup, here's some packages:

https://github.com/rougier/nano-emacs (haven't tried, but clean look and defaults)

https://github.com/rnkn/olivetti (writing environment)

https://github.com/rnkn/fountain-mode (screenplay writing)

https://github.com/alphapapa/org-sidebar (sidebar)

https://github.com/jrblevin/markdown-mode (markdown, with preview too)

https://orgmode.org/ (of course, org-mode for everything)

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And I don't wanna be that Vim guy, but similarly a mix of these plugins works well for me:

https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim (distraction free mode)

https://github.com/reedes/vim-pencil (better behaviour for writing prose)

https://github.com/junegunn/limelight.vim (visual highlighting of current paragraph)

https://github.com/plasticboy/vim-markdown (better markdown syntax)

https://vim-voom.github.io/ (outliner sidebar)

Edit:

BTW, for my truly favourite aesthetic experience, I like to pair this setup with a nice dark theme, a high quality font, and cool-retro-term (https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term/) emulating an old school CRT. Is this practical or ergonomic? Nope! But I love it!

Haha fair enough! Retro term definitely looks cool.

(Of course could then use Evil in Emacs for Vim keys, or just run vim in a terminal inside Emacs...)

Honestly, I've periodically considered heading back to Emacs-land to see how things have changed.

I used to be an Emacs user back in the early 2000s but Emacs pinky hit me something fierce (it's my own fault; I have poor typing style so I never use the right control, and I could never adapt to the control-capslock swap) so I jumped into Vim and never looked back.

But I gotta admit, Orgmode, among other things, has me feeling a bit Emacs-curious these days... ;)

Give Doom emacs or Spacemacs a shot too--it's the power of emacs with an opionated vim style keybinding. They're really slick in my experience.

As another commenter said, there are some nice all-in-one setups or minimal but sane defaults. I haven't used them but hear very good things. And don't forget you always have Evil for Vim bindings in Emacs (I think Spacemacs by default uses it?).

I should finally learn the Vim way. At the very least so when I forget to set EDITOR for root and edit some config, I'm not totally useless. That'll teach me for not opening it up (with sudo via how Emacs handles things like ssh) in my favorite editor. And org-mode is great, I've been doing more and more in Emacs and org these days (email, notes, todo, writing, coding).

Have you thought about trying a different keyboard? I use a Pinky4 and have ctrl (and alt and super) on a thumb key. It both moves these keys from your weakest finger to your strongest, and keeps your pinky free so you can maintain homerow even for something like C-a.

Alternatively, you may be able to hit some of the modifiers with the side of your hand instead of your pinky. That's what I did with my previous keyboard (Pok3r). It also made it easy to hit ctrl and super at the same time for some of my window manager keybinds that use both keys.

If I was going down that path, the ctrl-capslock swap is the first thing I'd try, along with training myself to use the right control key.

But all of this requires changing my typing style, and I've been typing the same way for, like, 25 years.

Put it this way: I chose to learn Vim instead of change how I type because that was easier. ;)

It might be blasphemous, but I'd actually love a pretty, distraction-free Markdown editor like this that supports Vim keybindings, but isn't Vim.

Am I just being lazy in learning the Vim plugin system? Are there pretty Vim frontends now that render all nicely like Ghostwriter et al?

Most dedicated markdown editors all end up using the same JS code editor components like Ace, CodeMirror or Monaco, and those editors have great vim keybindings usually as extensions or options. See if the tool you're using lets you flip those vim bindings on. For some editors they expose it as an option and for others you have to hack around with the source (for example enabling it with stackedit, a PWA markdown editor like ghostwriter, is possible with some hacking: https://github.com/benweet/stackedit/issues/254 ).

Well, without knowing what your definition of a "pretty" frontend is, it's a bit tough to reply.

Go check out the screenshots for Goyo and Limelight and ask yourself if it's pretty enough for you. Personally, I think Vim can look as good as any modern editor with a couple plugins and a decent theme and font, but we might not have the same standards. :)

Thanks so much for the response! Unfortunately, I'm probably less concerned about the prettiness about more about the ease of install and (maybe) mouse support to fallback to when I'm feeling lazy.

I'm looking to avoid learning Vim plugins (again...again), setting up an environment, and learning keybindings for sidebars, filenav, etc...

So what about something like SpaceVim ?

https://spacevim.org/

Emacs evil-mode (e.g. available in install-and-enjoy Doom Emacs, without having to learn any plugin systems) supports Vim keybindings and is not Vim.

I've enjoyed using this simple Emacs package: https://github.com/shime/emacs-livedown

Olivetti is fantastic, I mostly edit and write text in that mode, even longish emails.

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