Yi
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1 About
Yi is a text editor written and extensible in Haskell. The goal of Yi is to provide a flexible, powerful and correct editor core dynamically scriptable in Haskell.
- Yi is an haskell interpreter. Very much like emacs is a Lisp interpreter, this makes really easy to dynamically hack, experiment and modify Yi. All tools and goodies written in haskell are also readily available from the editor. This is implemented by binding to the GHC api.
- Frontends. Yi can use either gtk2hs or vty as frontends, so users can choose their favourite interface.
- "Emulation modes". The primary emulation modes for Yi are vim and emacs. Keybindings for vi, mg and nano and other are also provided. Other editor interfaces can be written by the user to extend Yi.
The long term goal of the project is to make Yi the editor of choice for the haskell hacker.
former Yi homepage: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/yi.html
2 Get Yi
"Stable" release on hackage:
http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/pkg-list.html#cat:Editor
Development repo:
darcs get --partial http://darcs.haskell.org/yi/
We try to keep the repo in a clean state, so it's always in a "testable" state. So if you have darcs installed and are not afraid of Makefiles, this is probably a better choice.
3 The obligatory screenshoot
Gtk frontend:
Vty frontend: (upcoming)
4 NEWS
(Recent items first)
- Console buffer (old news)
- Common buffer backend (across all frontends) (15:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC))
- Overlays (thanks Ben Moseley)
- per-buffer exentsible state (11:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC))
- Synchronous keymaps: the behaviour of the keymap (ie. the underlying parser) can depend on the editor state.
- Full-dynamic Yi
- it's now possible to change any part of the Yi codebase and see the result with a mere 'M-x reconfigE' (take that, Steve Yegge :))
- Yi is now hosted on darcs.haskell.org/yi
- Dired mode (thanks Ben Moseley)
- Yi 0.2 released!
- Buffer-specific code is now contained in BufferM monad
- Multiple marks per buffer
- All keymaps use a unified mechanism! (and are therefore potentially composable)
- Miniwindows for vty frontend
- Miniwindows for GTK frontend
- Basic support for query-replace (emacs)
- Rudimentary support for indentation
- Syntax highlighting in GTK frontend (using SourceView)
- Completion for file names
- Incremental search (emacs)
- Completion for M-x, and buffer switch.
- History for emacs mode minibuffer
- New commands and keybindings can be defined easily and dynamically
- Yi is an haskell interpreter!
- Possibility to run editor actions interactively (similar to emacs M-x)
- Configuration is just a haskell module exporting (yiMain :: Action)
- Possibility to evaluate haskell expressions interactively.
- New, unified way to define Keybindings
- Vty frontend supports Haskell (lexical) syntax highlighting (thanks Stefan O'Rear)
- GTK frontend works in Win32
- GTK frontend (in addition of Vty frontend) (requires gtk>=0.9.10.4)
- Linewrap support
- Bugfixes in scrolling
- Lots of simplifications in the cursor management
- Keymaps can now process typed events instead of Chars (no extra decode step)
- Yi.Debug added for debugging
- Vty frontend replaces Curses frontend
5 Bugs
Check/report bug reports here: http://code.google.com/p/yi-editor/issues/list
6 How to Configure Yi
You can find configuration file examples here:
http://darcs.haskell.org/yi/examples/
A good start is to copy YiConfig.hs in your ~/.yi directory (create it if needed), and hack as needed.
To run the gtk frontend:
- version 0.2 : install and expose the yi-gtk package
- version > 0.2 : use the "-fgtk" option
7 Contribute
Get the repo here:
darcs get --partial http://darcs.haskell.org/yi/
Work on whatever you please, patches are always welcome. :)
Otherwise, see the complete list of open issues here: http://code.google.com/p/yi-editor/issues/list
Also read: http://darcs.haskell.org/yi/TODO
Post your questions and follow up on the mailng list: http://groups.google.com/group/yi-devel
Some other pending tasks are described below.
7.1 Test suite
The test suite has to be made up to date and re-instated.
Build test: vty, gtk, and haddock html doc should be buildable at all times.
7.2 Refactorings
The below describes possible refactorings to investigate:
- Keymaps
- Evaluate "layered components architecture": http://www.cs.uu.nl/research/techreps/UU-CS-2002-030.html
8 Yi ideas
This section is meant to gather ideas people have for Yi.
8.1 Emacs
Coming from an Emacs background, I think a few things are essential, mainly the introspection capabilities of Emacs.
8.1.1 Emacs goodness
The following are things I like about Emacs, as an extensible environment, and miss in Yi:
- Really good online documentation
- Emacs can tell you a lot about a function or variable with a keypress--- the current value, where it is declared, and a hypertext formation string
- Hooks-Extensibility
- All (good) apps allow users to extend, through, e.g., hooks --- a list of functions that are run before/after some event (like saving a file)
8.1.2 Emacs badness
So, why replace it?:
- ELisp
- Dynamically scoped, Dynamically typed, ugly, old. 'Nuff said
- What's a Parser?
- A lot of apps in emacs do stuff with text, usually text that is in some language. There is no standard parser (like, e.g. parsec), so a lot of it is ugly handwritten spaghetti. This also means that adding analysis tools isn't really done (or done nicely).
- ELisp again
- Haskell is a lot cleaner to write, especially because of the large number of libraries.
8.1.3 Emacs maybeness (?)
Some things that are sometimes bad, sometimes good:
- Everything is a buffer
- Makes some sense, but sometimes doesn't. It is nice to have uniform key bindings do the right thing (e.g., C-Space sets the mark, and the region can then be used, e.g. to delete a sequence of emails in Wl) Sometimes, however, you just want some sort of GUI widget.
- OTOH, having the minibuffer be a special kind of buffer is a good idea.
- Properties
- It is possible to associate arbitrary properties with symbols. This means you can annotate a symbol and then use that information at a later date
8.2 Vi ?
What about vi? I believe we want Yi to subsume vi as well.
8.3 Ideas
- An extension to GHCi to support documentation of symbols.
- This seems to be (reasonably) straightforward, as GHCi already has :info. It would mean hacking the type environment (what about values?) to add documentation information. The main problem would seem to be populating this --- maybe hack haddock to produce something from the library docs? I assume that using package GHC uses the parent RTS (package GHC seems to be the way to go, but more investigation is required --- don?)
- Views on data
- Rather than just editing a file, you would open a view onto the file, i.e. there is no longer a 1-1 correspondence between buffers and files. Why? Well, for aggregate buffers (i.e., editing multiple files in the one view), or for multiple views of a file (e.g. AST and source-level). There would be some primitive ops for editing a buffer (insertChar, delete, etc.), which would then call update functions on anything observing that file.
- Remote attach so I can work from home, but still use a remote machine
- Haddock documentation
- (no brainer), maybe associate with .hi files for binaries.
- A class MiniBufferRead (or PromptingRead) which allows the user to
invoke a function similar to M-x in Emacs, but without requiring (interactive)
- This means that given f :: String -> Int -> Action, (makeInteractive f) :: Action would prompt the user for a String then an Int and run the corresponding action.
- Maybe a class YiShow, which all config items must be a member of? This is to emulate describe-variable
8.4 Implementation
Considerations:
- Configuration
- Per mode/file/buffer/whatever Monads, or reload/recompile? Or some hybrid? How does this interact with the documentation aspects? Do we want to have separate sorts of symbols a la emacs (describe-function, describe-variable), or is everything a function? I would think that configuration info doesn't change that frequently --- is this globally true though?
- We can probably use a GHCi-like "let". Rebinding a function would then be synonym to assign a variable, thereby achieve unification between functions and variables.
- Also possible: use something similar to the GHCi debugger to "tune" the behavior of some functions.
- Interface to the runtime
- The scheduler, docs, etc.
- Introspection of e.g. what processes are running.
- There are already libraries in Haskell for processes, but they don't give Yi any extra information --- we really want a layer on top.
...
Sjw 09:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)