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Comment by teeray | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that Acme hasn't been mentioned at all. While its mouse-oriented nature is a little strange coming from Vim, there are some very awesome ideas in it. For one: It lets you write plugins in anything you like. This is because all aspects of the editor are exposed as a filesystem a la /proc. Need to create a new window with some custom contents? Create a new file. Other awesome ideas: The text in that custom window can be actions because any text can invoke commands by using another mouse button.

Russ Cox has a great video tour of Acme's features here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M

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Interesting but I feel the constant switching between mouse and keyboard would get annoying really fast.

" The basic summary is cursoring around required a higher level of mental planning to organize the interaction, which apparently obscures the perception of the passage of time--think of being deeply engaged in something and being surprised when you look at a clock-- whereas the use of the mouse was done at a lower, mechanical level that left the mind free for higher things, such as complaining about the mouse."

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Mouse_vs._Keyboard/ind...

The theory is that it's modal like vim; when you are entering text, you have both hands on the keyboard; when you are manipulating text, you have one on keyboard and one on mouse.

Which goes all the way back to the beginning: Englebart's NLS, which had a mouse on the right and a chord set on the left of the keyboard. (Go watch The Mother of All Demos if you've forgotten; I'll wait.) The Xerox Alto borrowed the chord/mouse pair; then the Xerox Star team found the chord set too hard for normal people to learn, and substituted dedicated function keys on the left of the keyboard, still designed to be paired with the mouse. (Incidentally, while we're talking editors, Star had a MOVE key instead of CUT and PASTE, because it was a user interface principle that there be no hidden state.)

Yes but whe editing programs we are constantly alternating between insertion and manipulation every few seconds.

Acme with keybindings for chord actions might be interesting

The concept of Acme remembers me of Xiki[1]. It would be perfect with better fonts and/or code highlighting.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUR_eUVcABg

Wow, there are some really cool and unique ideas in this editor. Thank you for sharing.

I am of course so ingrained in the emacs way that I probably will never change editors.

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