this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Neovim

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Neovim is a modal text editor forked off of Vim in 2014. Being modal means that you do not simply type text on screen, but the behavior and functionality of the editor changes entirely depending on the mode.

The most common and most used mode, the "normal mode" for Neovim is to essentially turn your keyboard in to hotkeys with which you can navigate and manipulate text. Several modes exist, but two other most common ones are "insert mode" where you type in text directly as if it was a traditional text editor, and "visual mode" where you select text.

Neovim seeks to enable further community participation in its development and to make drastic changes without turning it in to something that is "not Vim". Neovim also seeks to enable embedding the editor within GUI applications.

The Neovim logo by Jason Long is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

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Just wondering: how would you characterize the general feel of the different nvim flavours: LazyVim, Chad, Astro, etc.? I'm not thinking functionality, which plugins are included, etc., but the way they feel when one uses them.

I tried out a whole bunch of them, as per Elijah Manor's excellent video about config switching (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkHjJlSgKZY)

I figured out LazyVim is trying its best not to look and feel like vim, with modal windows and fancy graphics and all. I didn't like that. I can't remember why I left Astro behind, but I finally settled on Chad, which at first I disliked because of the name, but eventually I figured out that that was the flavour for me: so many things just worked as expected, and there were so many times when I looked up something, and went: "Hm! That was quite smart, actually!"

So that's where I'm at – and purely for "feel" reasons. So: convince me: what am I missing when I don't use bundle B or config C?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not much. I don't use any bundles myself and never have FOMO. I sometimes copy configurations from big projects like Chad and Lazy if I see a clever way they added in certain visual aspect (bufferline, statusbar etc.); one can also see their plugin list for ideas. I figure by doing it yourself, it's easier to maintain and learn the plugin functions/keybindings that way. The approach I take is (1) learn default nvim -> (2) understand what each plugin adds to the default functionality -> (3) install and tweak what you need to create your own ecosystem. But maybe it's a bit geeky and time consuming.

TL;DR: you're not missing out much, check in with recent commits from different projects if you want to steal new ideas, or just hang around neovim communities.

[–] eyolf 2 points 1 year ago

That's my ideal as well – the distant goal that "one of these days, I am going to sit down and fix my config the way I really want it". But then time comes in the way, and I just copy something from somewhere...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Emacs user here, but this is basically what I did as well, learnt a lot from the doom-emacs configuration and am using their modeline directly, but without the heft of extra, unnecessary utilities