Vim.js - JavaScript port of Vim

[mqzaidi]

Rule 34 for software: If it exists, there IS a javascript port of it.

[tlrobinson]

That would be Atwood's Law: any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-principle-of-le...

And tlrobinson's Law (or corollary?): Any submission to Hacker News about a novel JavaScript program will contain a comment referencing Atwood's Law.

https://twitter.com/tlrobinson/status/395636386671235072

[vezzy-fnord]

Even more true now that Emscripten and asm.js exist.

[saosebastiao]

I'm normally unimpressed by applications ported to javascript. However, this actually has me excited. I would love to be able to edit all my Dropbox text files with a web interface. If anyone here works for Dropbox, I beg you to integrate this!

[perimo]

If it's possible to integrate this with BrowserFS, you'd be all set: https://github.com/jvilk/BrowserFS/#browserfs

[suprjami]

http://dillinger.io/ you already can

[bilalq]

Really cool! It even supported doing things like:

    inoremap jj <Esc>`^

Backspace ended up triggering the browser's back action though. Other than that, this is really nice.

Edit: After looking at the source, this seems to make use of emscripten to reuse Vim's existing source code. This really makes me wonder what other cool things we can bring over to the client side.

[chrismorgan]

… There are still browsers that use backspace for navigation?

(I'm a little surprised by this because I've seen so many complaints about it leading to data loss.)

[dlau1]

I tried typing some gibberish and one shortcut that seems to be a bit broken for me is yiw diw

Hmm, actually it seems all the motions I tried didn't work :-(

http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#word-motio...

[IgorPartola]

This... Plus Gmail... Man that's fantastic. I have sent an embarrassing number of emails that end with :wq.

Once you try Vim, it's really hard to go back. I also tried using mutt instead of GMail, and while it gets me 90% of the way there, the lack of graphical preview of attachments and things like filters and HelloSign make GMails web interface more useful.

[finnh]

There are browser plugins that let you edit <textarea> elements in your $EDITOR.

I use "It's all text!" in Firefox for this purpose and it works well; the workflow is pretty simple: focus in textarea, hotkey to switch to vim, save & close buffer to switch back to the browser. (not affiliated, just a user).

You do of course lose rich text formatting.

[yogo]

Yep, I constantly have to delete jj at the end of emails. The cool thing about this port is that mapping seems to work. Naturally the first thing I tried was :inoremap jj <esc>, which I don't think works in codemirror + vim plugin.

[squigs25]

Who uses :wq when you can use :x?

[IgorPartola]

Oh man, this even has tabs!

[gnur]

All the three letter motions I tried don't work. Without them this is more vi then vim. caw ci" ca( all don't work.

[justinmk]

It is built with the compiler flag: --with-features=tiny.

[imslavko]

For Vimium users: don't forget to enter the insert mode in your browser first ;)

[xcyu]

This is pretty cool. Backspace not working for me though in Chrome.

[bromagosa]

Same here, Chrome on Debian.

Backspace and ESC not working, so after I enter a mode I'm stuck in it forever.

[Aqueous]

did you port ncurses using emscripten? This could enable bringing a large portion of GNU over to the browser as a cloud-based app. Stallman's nightmare, in other words.

[jay-anderson]

It works amazingly well. However don't split windows then use ctrl-w j to switch. The browser captures ctrl-w first and closes the tab. Other ctrl-* combinations don't work probably for similar reasons.

[marijn]

See also http://codemirror.net/demo/vim.html (though that's only the editor component, not a whole vim implementation)

[dddddannyyyyy]

this is not vim, this is some incomplete bindings implementation.

[tikwidd]

Who wants to make a javascript emacs? you could call it emscriptenmacs..

[vidarh]

ymacs (Fabrice Bellards Emacs "clone") is installed in jslinux.

[JasonFruit]

I tried it, and now I'm confused and angry! Seems right to me.

[volaski]

Cool. Now go build NERDTree and Ctrl-P and come back. Then I will use it

[jbeja]

You still use those?

[lorenzfx]

I really hope someone will patch it into the IPython notebook (or at least enable the codemirror vim keybindings). If I can find the time to learn some javascript I'll give it a go myself.

[cauliturtle]

nice but `backspace` then I returned to > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6899072

[siddboots]

Can anyone think of a sane way to make this integrate with github?

[ra3]

Lots of comments seem to expect some further web integration with various services but this looks like more of a prototype/proof-of-concept using emscripten.

Cool nonetheless.

[fhd2]

While this is impressive, I find it surprisingly slow compared to much more demanding applications with bigger code bases compiled via Emscripten. Any ideas why?

[justinmk]

Well, I don't know what you mean by slow, but it could be the use of setTimeout() every 10ms to simulate[1] Vim's synchronous busy-wait is affecting responsiveness.

Lu mentioned[2] on vim_dev that it was necessary to write a hack for this portion.

[1] https://github.com/coolwanglu/vim.js/blob/master/web/vim_lib...

[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vim_dev/AQTHbUHijgg

[pablovidal85]

Very slow (unusable) on a MacBook Air 1.4GHz 4GB RAM using Chromium 30.0.1589.0 (215899). I suppose it's the price of using an emscripten port.