Ha! I have a very similar experience and I agree with all your points. I really enjoy the basic experience and `kak` is my main text editor ATM, but some details and parts of the philosophy are infuriating me.
I started `breeze` as a prototype way to show kakoune author how kak could potentially work https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/issues/2590 , and later decided that actually I could maybe push it further into a full new text editor.
I'd like to make it more natural to use, and get rid of the (IMO) pointless idiosyncrasies like the plugin API being keystroke based. I'd like to also make it easy to embed into other software, so that there's some hope that it could be easily integrated into existing software, so I'm not doomed to forever switch between kakoune and classic-vi editing.
The lack of built-in window management is a major feature of kakoune for me. I try to delegate all window management to my window manager, including such things as browser tabs, so I like that kakoune is designed to be used like that. The biggest downside of kakoune's approach for me is that it makes vimdiff-functionality pretty hard to achieve.
Cool! I wanted to do similar things, neat idea. These days i'm wanting to try something similar but with a nice UI - i'm so tired of the Terminal, but it's hard to get away because editors like Kakoune and Vim are just so powerful.
My wish is that you or I (if i ever have the time) will implement something like this onto XiEditor. Ie, implement this as a feature to a lower level editor backend, so that you get the frontends "for free".
It drives me nuts that there's so much work done for the frontend side of things, but the backend of editors are being reinvented repeatedly for little gain.
I hope Xi can make a performant, hackable backend to plug into solid frontends.
I doubt this will ever happen. It's all about complexity, and in case of text editors there are layers and layers of abstractions that often (for UX reasons) have to be integrated tightly. Trying to unpack all pieces into fully generic bring-your-own implementation is going to be a lot of work upfront and in maintenance, and complexity explosion.
I really like some technical aspects of Xi, but I view it as a typical wishlist project/technical showcase. In the meantime projects like kakoune, with much smaller scale but better focus, in shorter time, build ecosystems that can be a practical Vim alternative.
Thanks, I had not known about Kakoune (or breeze). It's interesting looking at Kakoune's issue list. The idea for the editor is good, but you can see the huge of amount of work needed to make a feature complete bug free editor.
Also it's interesting to see the code when you write with the latest iteration of C++ instead of ancient versions of C.
I didn't notice actual design ideas (apart from the philosophy which sounded good to me). Do you have things on your mind on what kind of actions user can do?
The list of what already works seems just the same as in Vim.
I'm just curious what kind of modal system it actually is.
It's written in Rust, and it tries to improve on Kakoune, which tries to improve on Vi/Vim.
If you feel like hacking on a text editor, and would be interested - let me know.