Moving from Vim to Helix

This is my article about Helix - a post-modern editor.

Reference:

• Helix
• Github

Built-in with Rust.

Yes, Helix is an open source written by Rust, no Electron, no Javascript. You can use it tmux, plain any terminal. My combo iTerm2 + tmux - very good :), save for battery life and still have a good performance.

The Begin.

If you use vim or neovim, you will have a little surprise with Helix. Helix follows the selection -> action model. This means that whatever you are going to act on: a word, a line, etc is selected first and after action on it (delete, yank, change, etc).

You still move with j, k, l, h as Vim. But when use w, b or e, you will see a cursor select your word.

Some cheatsheet:

Action	Helix	Vim
Delete a word	wd	dw
Delete a character	d	x
Select a line	x	Shift + v
Go to the first file	gg	gg
Go to end file	ge	Shift + g
Go to end line	gl	$
Go to first line	gh	0

And you can use shell command in helix:

More information: use tutor

Easy to config

If vim uses .vimrc to config for vim, helix uses config.toml to configure editor. This is official documents
It is easy to config, I show my current config.

theme = "gruvbox"

[editor]
line-number = "relative"
mouse = true

[editor.cursor-shape]
insert = "bar"
normal = "block"
select = "underline"

[editor.whitespace.render]
space = "none"
tab = "all"
newline = "none"

[editor.whitespace.characters]
space = "·"
tab = "╎"

Props and Cons

1. Props:

   • Config with file
   • LSP integration
   • Fuzzy file in the project
   • Debugging (experimental)

2. Cons:

   • Not File explorer.
   • Some LSP need a manual config (JSX, TSX).
   • Not support plugin.
   • Status-bar is simple.
   • A lot of issues are pending.

Anyway, helix is developing, and we can hope many contributor help to improve.

Comments

[Nathálya Ricci]

I tried Helix, but couldn't find a way to config Eslint and Prettier to work with my .eslintrc and .prettierrc... It just works with its own config :(

[Mike Stemle]

What's funny is that I just started using Helix myself, and I can't find a single comprehensive table of VIM mappings to Helix ones. Have you found anything like this?