Meow: Yet another modal editing on Emacs

Had a similar experience, tried to switch to Meow twice, it's really nice in most ways. But I found lack of vim-style repeat and accidental "dropping" the selection to be so unwieldy that I couldn't stick to using it.

Ended up writing an alternative to Meow which addresses the issues I had.

It's currently in review for Melpa, see:

- https://codeberg.org/ideasman42/emacs-meep

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJqX8Z64k0c

> What works best for me is no modal editing at all.

I used vim for 8 years and after switching to Emacs, realized that I'm the same. I was spending way more time (in vim) thinking about (to borrow another commenter's metaphor) how I was going to play the notes than what notes I was going to write.

I also used to use vim and liked it, was running emacs with evil and it was ok… Then I started to write my config from scratch and got used to chords.

Later I tried boon, devil mode and meow but I just can’t get comfortable with mental overhead anymore. From those I’ve tried boon was the most interesting - some surprising QoL features, ergonomic layout.

What made chords bearable for me is a homerow mode on my Glove80.

De gustibus non est disputandum. If you think modal, you value mode switching because it aligns with your thinking.

I use both kinds and have done since the late 70s. It's fine to disagree btw, there are many editors, these ones are mine.

Sure, I can chime in. I've been using emacs for about 18 years with meow for the last 4 or 5. I have the caps lock as control switch for about 10 years so it's not about that for me.

I still edit with chords in insert mode but meow enables me to take actions on a variety of subjects more easily (current string, until start of scope, until the next 2 -, next 5 words).

I had a few packages to do similar things before (expand-region) but none of them clicked like meow did.

I've used Emacs for 30 years. In the very beginning swapped capslock and control. After 20 years started to have minor problems with the pinky. A lot of keyboard use. Did not like evil mode for several reasons. It meant a lot of configuration and relearning commands. Tried out god-mode for a short while, but had some sharp edges, and went back to normal. Retried god-mode with more effort to make it work for me and never looked back. At that point it took a long time to get everything to muscle memory, though. Maybe two months to feel ok and years to feel good.

I use "i" to get into editing mode (normal emacs mode) and control-backspace to get to god-mode. I mostly use searching for moving in the buffers. In god-mode it means pressing "s" and then typing the search text with enter marking the search text completion. Then I use "." to search forwards and "," to search backwards. If I want to search for the word(s) at point, I do "s" and "enter" and then "j" to grow the search word, word by word. When ready, again "." searches forwards and "," backwards.

The most common operations, like changing buffers and emacs windows, are under single key press. Everything is quite effortless.

The best properties for god-mode for me is that you can use the same key combinations as normally, just producing them in a sligthly different way, and that you can also do keychord edits in editing mode if that is convenient. You don't have to exit editing mode at all, if that helps.

The obvious compromise with modal editing is that you have to know in which mode you are in and that some of the useful commands are not available in the editing mode, and then you have to switch modes to get them. However, with god-mode related editing mode you always have all the keys available, and you only have to know the mode you are in (at least partly). I would never settle with evil mode, but god-mode works very well. A lot of benefits with moderate amount of downsides, therefore a win all in all.

If you're having to use Caps lock as control, modal editing is probably worth it. The one thing that makes non-modal editing far superior to modal, for me, is how easy it is to reach my Control key, as the palm of my left hand is always hovering over it and I learned to press it with my palm without having to ever move my fingers or hitting the wrong key.

I think the vim model in particular is great in terms of becoming muscle memory in like, a few months. It saves a few keystrokes compared to Emacs specially if you're counting Control as a key press. Navigating is a tad nicer with hjkl being next to each other. Having to press Esc after each edit just sucks though.

Nope, I've really, really tried to like modal editing, because the programmable command chaining is super cool, but even though I became proficient with it I never really enjoyed it.

Starting out emacs i got super fatigued with all the long pinky driven commands for mostly used commands. It felt usable after I added keybindings for commands like switch buffer, close buffer, duplicate line(s), move line(s), find in project, find file in project, indent (wrote my own sane (for me)) indention code). The windows/apple key is great for those things because they are not used by emacs.

On linux I settled on using emacs vanilla key commands for copy/paste/cut but that took a looong time to feel comfortable with and I still mess it up sometimes, also with the ctrl+shift-X version of them in the terminal. On iOS, using the apple key like for the rest of the system is sweet relief.

I have god-mode installed, but I've basically forgot about it as Emacs have a different model of editing than Vim.

With Vim, text editing feels like playing the piano. For every action, you compose a sequence of bindings and execute on it. It is really a language of editing.

Emacs feels more like blacksmithing, hammering the text into a proper shape. There's no composition, you just select the correct tools and applies it. And emacs have a lot of those tools.

god-mode is my modal editing of choice. I usually use it to scroll and read through and select files. It works especially well with read-only buffers in my experience.

yes and no. you certainly don't have many pre-defined keybindings, but meow tries to not conflict with normal emacs keybindings so you don't need special ones anyway.