A Tour of the Acme Editor

What Hacker News said

Strong rec teeray · 2014-06 · on “Why Atom Can’t Replace Vim – Learning the lesson of vi”

It's sad that Acme hasn't been mentioned at all. While its mouse-oriented nature is a little strange coming from Vim, there are some very awesome ideas in it. For one: It lets you write plugins in anything you like. This is because all aspects of the editor are exposed as a filesystem a la /proc. Need to create a new window with some custom contents? Create a new file. Other awesome ideas: The text in that custom window can be actions because any text can invoke commands by using another mouse button. Russ Cox has a great video tour of Acme's features here: [this video]

Strong rec marttt · 2022-07 · on “Ask HN: Is there other software similar to Vim and Emacs?”

Rob Pike's acme text editor for the Plan 9 operating system: [LINK] [this video] (excellent overview of the editor by Russ Cox) And acme's predecessor sam: [LINK] You'll need plan9port to run acme on Linux, though. But the core ideas are very simple and powerful (sam: everything is a huge string; acme: everything is a clickable file) and thus hopefully long-lasting. I would also mention edbrowse, a line-oriented web browser initially for blind people. Maybe this is too far on the fringe, though. It does have a lot of depth (excellent scripting capabilities); it's an amazing project actually: [LINK]

Strong rec alganet · 2025-06 · on “Starship: A minimal, fast, and customizable prompt for any shell”

On tmux, I use split panels more often than tabs. Usually, there will be from 2 to 8 panels of different sizes. This gives me spacial short term memory: I know what each shell is by the panel position. I can zoom on then to bring them full screen (ctrl+b z) if I'm going to do anything that requires more space, then zoom out to the panel arrangement when I'm done. Sometimes I'll name prompts (eg `PS1='stg$ '`), specially when working with ssh, but that's rare. What inspired me to work this way was this video on the acme editor: [this video]

Recommends mdonahoe · 2012-10 · on “UsesThis: Rob Pike”

If you haven't seen acme in action, it is pretty crazy and interesting. Basically it makes heavy use of the mouse, and any typed word can be invoked like a command. Here is a tutorial. [this video]

Recommends muraiki · 2016-02 · on “Why GNU Emacs?”

I found [LINK] (no affiliation) to be the best way to finally learn vim in the sense of actually developing automatic muscle memory. It teaches you how to use vim using a 2d game. It's worlds better than the built in vim tutorial, to say the least. :) For a really different take on editors+shells, check out acme: [this video]

Recommends Esau · 2016-10 · on “Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers?”

I have to say that I had no use for YouTube until I realized that these kind of talks were on there. In addition to what you mentioned, some I like: The Gruqg on OpSec: [LINK] Russ Cox's ACME tutorial: [this video] Jessie Frazelle on running containers on the desktop: [LINK]

Recommends black_knight · 2017-02 · on “Adventures in /usr/bin and the likes”

Acme, the text editor from Plan 9 has this. Piping, inputing and outputing from commands are some of the most basic operations there. Check out: - [LINK] - Russ Cox' tour: [this video]

Recommends hawski · 2017-02 · on “A curated list of Terminal frameworks, plugins and resources”

Pretty close to what you describe is Acme [0] the text editor/shell from Plan 9. It is mouse oriented edit. You can right click on words to search them in file or open text files, directories or compiler errors. I recommend viewing this [1] introduction video. I miss few things in Acme. A bit more WIMP-y familiarity and a 3 button mouse. That's why I'm working on experimental text editor inspired by Acme [2]. [0] [LINK] [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]