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Comment by jyrkesh | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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/

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 ).

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.

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