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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Show HN: Elecxzy â A lightweight, Lisp-free Emacs-like editor in Electron
wiseowise wrote 15 min ago:
> Electron
Prepare yourself.
hypersoar wrote 37 min ago:
I don't mean to tear down your project at all. If you want to make an
editor, I think that's great. I'm actually working on a text editor of
my own. But I think that you've fundamentally misunderstood the appeal
of Emacs. It has little to do with the key-bindings, or even any
particular part of the user interface. Many people don't even use them.
Doom, a very popular Emacs distribution, enables Vim-like bindings by
default. It's an old joke that Emacs is a great operating system in
need of a good text editor.
The appeal of Emacs is that I can, at any time, with only a few
keystrokes, dig in to how it does something and then modify it. The
self-documenting and customizable behavior is extremely pervasive.
Emacs Lisp is not just there for extensions. Every single layer of the
application--save for core primitives--is implemented in it. All of it
can be inspected, modified, swapped out, wrapped, hooked into, and
basically do anything you want. There's absolutely nothing else like
it.
throwaway27448 wrote 7 min ago:
> But I think that you've fundamentally misunderstood the appeal of
Emacs. It has little to do with the key-bindings, or even any
particular part of the user interface.
You mean the default keybindings for readline and macos? I think
you're greatly overestimating the extent to which you can speak for
other emacs users. I love the default keybindings and never even
thought to change them, and I very much understand being leery of the
lisp runtime. The modal editing of vim, doom etc always struck me as
pointless typing and too much like issuing commands rather than
making typing an extension of your fingers.
This isn't for me (electronâblah; I have microemacs etc), but I
100% get it.
stevekemp wrote 20 min ago:
I have to agree, if only because when I hear "the emacs keybindings"
I wonder, does that mean the defaults that nobody uses, or the ones
I've carried around for 20+ years?
As a quick example "M-g" ("Esc" [pause] "g") has been bound to
"goto-line" in my emacs startup file for at least 20 years, and is
something I press without even really thinking about.
There are many default keys (such as C-x C-f for finding a file), but
even core functionality gets rebound to suit my preferences.
dhruv3006 wrote 46 min ago:
How do you make a electron app light weight ?
What are the best practices for windows ?
PacificSpecific wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
ãããã
As an aside. What were the CJK IME issues you resolved? Was it related
to win32 emacs IME issues?
sanskritical wrote 1 hour 20 min ago:
If you want an example of an actually lightweight modern desktop editor
to take inspiration from, try zed.dev
Zed is written in Rust, insanely fast, consumes virtually no resources,
has an Emacs input mode (which I use exclusively) and despite not
having the greatest support for Emacs LISP (only via limited third
party extension, its singular flaw) has replaced emacs-ng as my daily
driver.
gozzoo wrote 20 min ago:
Iâll never get why people hype up Zed. Sublime Text already has all
the same perksâand beats Zed at the very things it claims to
improve. Sure, it might not have every advanced feature, but for
âvibe codersâ who donât need a full IDE and just want to skim
or tweak generated code, Sublime Text is the better choice.
wiseowise wrote 13 min ago:
Zed is open source and free (as in beer), to start with.
kurouna wrote 23 min ago:
Thank you for the comment and the suggestion!
I have actually tried Zed, and I completely agree with youâit is an
outstanding product. Its speed and incredibly low memory footprint
are truly impressive.
However, while it does feature an Emacs input mode, I found that the
range of supported Emacs commands is still somewhat limited. Because
of this restriction, I couldn't quite operate it with the same feel
and depth as a dedicated Emacs environment.
That being said, Zed is definitely a masterpiece of modern desktop
editors, and its architecture is highly inspiring!
rasur wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
With respect, you should learn Lisp - it will allow you to turn Emacs
into whatever you want. In my opinion just keeping the Emacs
keybindings but dropping all the other advantages of Emacs is missing
the point entirely, and using Electron instead is just - as the saying
goes - "adding insult to injury".
noufalibrahim wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
- Lisp Free x Emacs like
- Lightweight x Electron
Contradictions. Writing ones own editor is a bit of a rite of passage
though. So, on that front, Congratulations!
artemonster wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
dry water powder. just add water
throwa356262 wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
What I need is an emacs with more lisp and less javascript.
If you want a really lean emacs-like editor, there is always mg and
microemacs.
Edit: not trying to be a dick or a gatekeeper. This is HN, all ideas
should be welcome including the one that dont make sense to some
people. And always interesting to see contributions from Japan.
chiffaa wrote 19 min ago:
> What I need is an emacs with more lisp and less javascript
Lem[0] in ncurses mode might be your friend. Unfortunately the BDFL
deprecated the SDL frontend seemingly due to the SDL3 breakages, but
the web one uses webview + a homegrown system instead of electron and
framework magic, so it's still fairly lightweight
its main proposition is that the whole thing is written in Common
Lisp, so it retains the hackable model of traditional Emacses without
retaining the legacy of GNU Emacs
[0]
HTML [1]: https://lem-project.github.io/
johanvts wrote 55 min ago:
What javascript is in emacs? I often find myself wishing eww had
javascript support, a lot of the web is unuseable as it stands.
pjmlp wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
I guess the "eight megabytes and constantly swapping" meme is now lost
given Electron.
__d wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
Egacs
subhro wrote 2 hours 18 min ago:
Light weight and electron in the same sentence?
Oh well.
chii wrote 2 hours 13 min ago:
Light weight has become a marketing term that targets software
developers who have gotten sick of bloat and want their software to
run fast and take less resources. It used to mean a trade-off between
feature rich and speed. It's been so over-used now that i
automatically ignore it unless there's demonstrated reason(s) for it
being called light weight.
maybewhenthesun wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
lisp-free emacs to me is like tomato-free ketchup? I mean, the main
reason to use an editor with such arcane keybindings is the way you can
live-edit the running editor?
So for me personally there's no demand. But still, if it scratches
your personal itch, there are most probably others who would like that
itch scratched. It might also because I rarely have to use windows
these days and in linux there's not much 'setup' in using normal lispy
emacs.
Also, for me , electron based editors have too much input latency.
luckymate wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
Just to be clear: you say by âdroppingâ lisp youâre keeping it
lightweight but itâs based on electron? So what does
âlightweightâ mean in your opinion?
kurouna wrote 8 min ago:
Thank you for the sharp question! You are absolutely right that
Electron itself has a baseline memory footprint that isn't small.
To give a clearer picture of what I mean by "lightweight," here is a
quick startup comparison video I took a while ago: [1] (Sorry for the
Japanese text in the video!)
Left: VS Code
Middle: Windows Notepad
Right: elecxzy
As you can see, elecxzy boots up almost as instantly as native
Notepad.
To ensure the actual text editing remains just as snappy and
responsive as Notepad despite running in a browser engine, elecxzy
features several optimizations, including a custom Piece Table and a
fully virtualized DOM/renderer.
So in this context, "lightweight" means "Notepad-level startup speed
and typing latency, but with native CJK IME support and Emacs
keybindings." I should have been clearer about this distinction in my
wording!
HTML [1]: https://x.com/elecxzy/status/2022003439757336583
imcritic wrote 1 hour 49 min ago:
What answer to that question and in this situation would make any
sense?
wiseowise wrote 10 min ago:
None, just another Electron hater.
luckymate wrote 43 min ago:
Probably none. Still Iâm curious what is the authors
understanding. Whether he actually thinks it is a lightweight
solution or whether thatâs kind of advertising phrase, like
âblazingly fastâ
embedding-shape wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
The motivation/justification from the author why they believe
removing lisp but adding Electron somehow sums up to being
"lightweight"?
Maybe the author thought of the UX/baggage/legacy or something else
when they thought about "lightweight", rather than how much
memory/cpu cycles something is using? Not sure, but maybe there is
a more charitable reading of it out there.
exe34 wrote 1 hour 14 min ago:
I believe it's called a rhetorical question.
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