Ah nice! Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah --preview is a great feature that is good to remember.

And true, it’s better to use find -executable than ls. Although in my case I would use -type f -o -type l since I want to include symlinks (often I will cd into my local bin folder and ln -s $(which ) to add it to my launcher). I’m using ls since I only put executables in there and using relative file paths so that it’s nicer to look at. But cd or sed would work as well

Yeah the xargs + i3-msg part is a bit clunky but I’m not sure what else to do, since the terminal window needs to close immediately, which prevents the application from running. I tried a few variations with nohup and launching in the background, but haven’t found another solution. But I’m sure there’s a way

I use fzf with a popup terminal:

# example for i3
bindsym $mod+Return exec --no-startup-id kitty -T _menu_ -e bash -c 'ls $HOME/.local/bin/ | fzf | xargs -r -I{} i3-msg -t command exec $HOME/.local/bin/{}'
for_window [title="_menu_"] floating enable
for_window [title="_menu_"] resize set 600 800

I like this approach because it’s simple and configurable. I prefer to see only the symlinks/scripts that I put in my local bin folder, but it can easily be extended to support .desktop files, multiple folders, filtering, etc.

I alternate between helix and vim depending on the task, and their key bindings are kind of opposite from each other in a lot of ways. I’ve found that switching back and forth has kept me on my toes a bit and I don’t feel as locked in to one editor as I did with vim before trying helix.

So I’m now stuck with my customized neovim, devoid of any hope of abandoning this strange addiction.

I would also try getting used to the defaults or a minimal config, which is also a good way to feel at home in the editor regardless of the system

If you want to mess around with scripting instead of an editor I would recommend Awk- it works great for CSV files and is really powerful. Usually you can use -F, to separate using commas, but for full CSV support (with potential quoted commas) you need to use something like -vFPAT='[^,]*|"[^"]*"' (which isn’t POSIX compliant but works with gawk)

I’m not sure how to paste directly into a pane, but you can copy by opening up the scrollback in EDITOR from search mode using Ctrl+S e. This creates a file in /tmp so I try to make sure to clear it when I’m done.

I usually only copy and paste between editor windows using a script that mimics xclip (automatically used by helix), and if I need to paste a command I either edit my bash history or write a script.

Great list. Customizing the font is definitely a priority. I recommend one of the Terminus fonts. Also zellij multiplexer + helix editor is a great combo that works well in the tty.

One thing to add is that it took me a while to create a decent 16-color theme for helix and vim, and while they’re okay by default you can actually get a pretty nice looking IDE if you spend some time tinkering with the colors