The Vis Editor

Vim/Vim Classic/Neovim provide indispensable improvements over Vi, but they are also massive, and one could spend years finding new features and adjustments in :help. Vis is an editor that is very capable yet the entire user interface can be summarized in about 1000 lines.

Switching from Vim

	vim → vis
Wrap/format text	`gq`	`=`
Search for text (must be valid regular expression)	`/` `main(`	`/` `main\(`
Search-and-replace is implemented using structured regular expressions	`:` `%s/xyz/XYZ/`	`:` `x/xyz/ c/XYZ/`
Default key bindings do not define line-oriented yank	`Y` or `yy`	`0Y`
Read output from external shell commands	`:` `r!command`	`:` `< command`
Instead of block mode, use regex to select the beginning of a line	`C-v` motion `I` `#` `Esc`	`v` motion `:x/^/` `i` `#`

Digraphs

A dedicated utility vis-digraph(1) is used to insert special characters. As with Vim, it is accessible using C-k in insert mode. With no argument this utility prints a list with human readable descriptions, which makes finding the right character easy.

Structured Regular Expressions

To see how capable these changes are, try sanitizing a YouTube transcript, which has hours/minutes/seconds mixed in at the beginning of each line

00:5555 secondsthe quick brown fox
01:041 minute, 4 secondsjumped over
02:002 minutesthe lazy dog

Commands

:x/.+ (second|minute)[s]/
o
5<Right>
:c/ /

Result

00:55 the quick brown fox
01:04 jumped over
02:00 the lazy dog

Customization

~/.config/vis/visrc.lua

require('vis')
require('plugins/filetype-settings')

vis.events.subscribe(vis.events.INIT, function()
  -- vis:command('set theme zenburn')
  -- vis:command('set theme base16-nord')
  vis:command('set theme base16-solarized-light')
end)

vis.events.subscribe(vis.events.WIN_OPEN, function(win)
  vis:command('set number')
  vis:command('set tabwidth 4')
  vis:command('set showtab on')
end)

settings = {
  python = {"set expandtab on"},
  ruby = {"set expandtab on", "set tabwidth 2"},
}

-- F7 in normal mode
spellcheck = require('plugins/spellcheck')
spellcheck.default_lang = "en_US"

~/bin/fmt

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/fmt -w ${FMT_W:=80} "$@"

References

Vis Editor – CoSin 2017
Vis Editor and Lua API documentation
A visrc.lua config
The vi family
Differences from Sam – Vis Wiki