enjoying Helix (part 2)

(update: there is a part 3)

It has been over 2 months since I started using Helix heavily, and it continues to impress:

• One feature I enjoy a lot is its directory view feature, which you access with :open command. It displays all files in the whole directory tree, and allows filtering them by just typing any matching character(s), to the point of even doing things like exact matching, in addition to fuzzy matching (the default).

• Another I love is the jumplist, which allows moving forward (C-i) and backward (C-o) through the motions that occured. It's extra kool in that this spans not just the current buffer, but others as well, allowing easy navigation between buffer locations reached with Go to definition (g d). Emacs has a similar feature, except via twisted finger gymnastics.

I do, however, have some unfulfilled desires:

• None of the issues I had back then have been fixed.

• I wish there was automatic saving of yanks, a feature available by default on Emacs (where older yanks are accessed with Alt-y, as contrasted with C-y for latest yanked text). Currently, one has to do the more awkward usage of so-called registers, which have to predefined in advance before an action (like yank, delete, or change).

• I have installed the editor a few times, and it's still not clear how things fit together... I have struggled too much to setup nice things like syntax highlighting and code completion.

• Too many of the themes are immature, such that I still haven't found one I could settle on.