Favorite Text Editors

Okay, here's a question that's sure to ruffle some feathers... What's the best editor for managing your journals? I've been using both emacs (doom) and neovim (lazyvim) and I think I prefer lazyvim.

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Is that a trick question, fellow Emacs user ?? :smile:

Seriously, I would guess Emacs with ledger-mode + flycheck is currently the most featureful setup for editing journals. They all have strengths though. Some people like to use VS Code.

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I only use emacs (doom) for org-mode and hledger journal files… Because of these I learned some emacs. But I feel more comfortable with vim.

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vim. In general I think hledger format is simple and sensible enough that the only really needed convenience is a working cup/paste command.

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Have you created any macros to streamline editing? For example, I’m probably going to create one that toggles unmarked, pending, and cleared.

I haven’t because I don’t yet use many of hledger non-basic features (like clearing). Sharing macros among us is definitely something which will grow the community!

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I mostly use the builtin editor in fava, as most of my trx are imported there is only very limited manual editing, mostly to add some tags or blance entries.

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plan9 acme is the greatest editor yet conceived

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I don’t even know what that is! :rofl: Time to do a little research and report back.

Okay, back from some research:

ABSTRACT

A hybrid of window system, shell, and editor, Acme gives text-oriented applications a clean, expressive, and consistent style of interaction. Traditional window systems support interactive client programs and offer libraries of pre-defined operations such as pop-up menus and buttons to promote a consistent user interface among the clients. Acme instead provides its clients with a fixed user interface and simple conventions to encourage its uniform use. Clients access the facilities of Acme through a file system interface; Acme is in part a file server that exports device-like files that may be manipulated to access and control the contents of its windows. Written in a concurrent programming language, Acme is structured as a set of communicating processes that neatly subdivide the various aspects of its tasks: display management, input, file server, and so on.

Acme attaches distinct functions to the three mouse buttons: the left selects text; the middle executes textual commands; and the right combines context search and file opening functions to integrate the various applications and files in the system.

Acme works well enough to have developed a community that uses it exclusively. Although Acme discourages the traditional style of interaction based on typescript windows—teletypes—its users find Acme’s other services render typescripts obsolete.

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If you know how to script, nothing comes close to acme. Although it does rely on the mouse, which wannabe unixers from the 60’s hate (i was one before i found acme), acme is the only editor that i know of that actually uses the mouse well.

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Damn. I 100% understand not using Vim/Neovim. That is I think somewhat fair to hear that but Vimmotion is the greatest thing ever. I personally can’t understand why would anyone not use it, aside from obvious learning curve issue.

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I don’t know what Vimmotion is, and google doesn’t return anything.

Vim is great, so is emacs, but they are tech from the 60/70’s. Acme
proves that the unix philosophy translates to the GUI in a non-trivial
way. It was made in the 90’s by Rob Pike, one of the lead designers of
Golang. I hope one day we will see an editor for the 2000’s.

I appreciate the historical info. I once read about acme and tried it briefly. @captaincurrie you get extra PTA points if you are using it somehow for your accounting ? Any cool examples to share ?

Sorry. I meant Vim motions. You can use Vim motions(moving with hjkl, w, b…) with other editors or anything that supports them. I use Vimium on my browser so that I can move around a webpage only with a keyboard for example.

Ahh. You must be liking the j/k keys and other Tip: Keyboard Shortcuts on this site then. :slight_smile:

Hmm didn’t know j/k was natively supported! Vimium usually overrides everything so I don’t notice something like that so much.

I love Vimium’s f key. You can click anything without using that normie pointer device :nerd_face:

The greatness of Acme is that it simply provides an environment for
you to use your scripts. It’s basically a kind of terminal.

So its not a question of what acme can do, its a question of what can my
programs do - acme just provides the space to use them in.

check out qutebrowser

While I use Emacs with my PTA files, I wish that another text editor had succeeded in the marketplace. Specifically, it is KEDIT, based on XEDIT. I really like the way it uses the command line.

However, for my hledger use, I use Emacs, mostly because ledger-mode adds some great functionality.

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