Hacker News Reader

Comment by rizky05 | Hacker News Reader

I want terminal editor that does not need me remembering keyboard shortcuts to edit things. Mouse should be optional, and editing without mouse should be the default. But every editing operation should be easy to access and sensible - You don't have to read any docs to navigate/edit/search/replace.

When opening that editor, you should not be greeted with tutorial. It should be simple to do things so that tutorial is not even necessary.

You can say, I want VSCode that runs in terminal, but one that does not hog my cpu/memory. It should feels instant to do anything, without any loading time if possible.

View on HN

> I want terminal editor that does not need me remembering keyboard shortcuts to edit things.

Keyboard shortcuts are essential to increase efficiency and speed. For example, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z, ctrl-s, ctrl-p, ctrl-a etc. People learn these early on if they regularly have to input/edit text to speed up their workflow. Otherwise, they would have to resort to pointing and clicking through menus to accomplish the same thing.

The longer you use an editor, the more of these shortcuts you commit to (muscle) memory, so, even if the commonly used editing operation is easily accessable via the GUI interface, people are going to choose the keyboard shortcut to do the same thing since it's faster.

> When opening that editor, you should not be greeted with tutorial. It should be simple to do things so that tutorial is not even necessary.

You could navigate with the mouse or arrow keys in either vim or emacs. The only thing you would have to learn is how to save the file. You may not even have to learn that because both vim and emacs display a dialog box asking you whether or not you want to save the file if you try to exit the editor without saving first.

Well, then Helix/Kakouine/Vim/Neovim isn't for you.

Doing things with a mouse is accessible to you because you've already learned how to do it. It's not innately more intuitive or self describing in any way, the learning curve is just behind you.

I used GUI editors for a long time. I'd operate my computer with my right index finger and resisted any attempt to change that interface. I'd learn the usual Ctrl shortcuts and what not, that was about it. One day I finally dove into Helix specifically and not only am I not looking back, I am finding and using software specifically based on whether it uses vim like key interface. If it can't it takes like 50% points off the software, going back to the mouse is just so painful I don't know how I ever tolerated it. I feel like a chicken operating a typewriter.

How would you use a terminal editor without a mouse and without remembering keyboard shortcuts?

Nano is considered one of the smallest / simplest editors, and it shows you the keyboard shortcuts on the bottom of the window, is that what you're wanting?

Ooh, a menu-driven terminal editor? That sounds neat, you first select "copy" from the menu, then move a cursor to a certain point in the file where you want the copy selection to start (or end) and then you move a second cursor to the other end of the selection. Then you're back in the menu and you select "paste" and you move a cursor to where you want to paste the text. To insert you select "insert line", type out a line of text, and then move a cursor to the point where you want to insert the text.

It does sound like it would be a bit slow in operation, though.

You have described the Borland C++ 2.0 editor (from 1990, worked on DOS).

Nano supports mouse, right?

Tutorial "optional" is just weasel words for "works like things I already know." Problem is, especially in expert tooling, that everyone seems to know something else.

You want notepad in the terminal, then? There are a bunch of TUI editors like this, see the answers to this thread.

Terminal User Interfaces (TUI).

There aren't many editors like that around.

Check out micro and mcedit.

mcedit.

Better, "mcedit -b"

Or Jed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JED_(text_editor)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com