Man page viewer

[tredesty23]

In nvim there is a man page viewer plugin nvim-man, and i found it very useful for when i coded terminal scripts. It's faster then changing the window/having multiple windows open.

• It would bring a lot of fluidity in workflow
• faster and easier writing scripts

[jloomer]

I second this!

Does anyone have any recommendations for ways to at least be able to open a man page in a split view within helix at all? I haven't had any luck doing so since (I'm guessing) helix doesn't allow you to open read only files. eg when I do the following:

1. Open command pallet (:)
2. Open a new vertical split (vnew)
3. Open command pallet again (:)
4. Type open /opt/homebrew/

Only 22 of the total 35 items are appearing in the list. I need access to /opt/homebrew/share/man in order to access the man folders for my homebrew installations. Even attempting to manually open a man page from here is not possible from what I can tell. Either by running "hx /opt/homebrew/share/man/man1/fzf.1" from my home dir or by cd'ing to /opt/homebrew/share/man/man1 and running "hx fzf.1" directly there.

The same is not true about the man dir's at /usr/share/man. /usr/share/man/man1/kill.1 for instance opens up fine as a read only file, although it is quite difficult to actually use because it opens the raw file. It's not as formatted like it would be running "man kill" so it opens using the default less or some other program like more, and I'm not sure if that is at all possible to achieve in helix without altering the file regardless of whether or not that alteration is temporary.

I think the reasons as to why this feature is beneficial are obvious enough to not need an explanation, but I take it a step further by saying the ability to quickly access man pages from within a text editing application is a make or break feature. If you're expecting to be even slightly competitive towards anything like the vim's, emacs, or. even gui editors like vscode, zed, etc. it's a necessity.

EDIT: Oh and in case it's needed for the homebrew/share issue, the system info is M1Pro Macbook pro, MacOS Sonoma 14.8.2 (23J126), helix 25.07.1 (a05c151)

[jloomer]

Besides that I am struggling to find anything negative to be said about helix. I am not a coder, so I don't spend nearly enough time in a text editor to be able learn vim (I've tried, even when I somewhat get the hang of it I don't use it for a week, and it's like starting from scratch). I find helix's motions to be infinitely more intuitive therefore easier, and the additional keystrokes some movements take don't bother me whatsoever considering I don't have to go out of my way to look up what they are each time. Even when I forget one, it's as easy as trying to start it, it appearing in the popup or pulling up the command pallet with ? on the rare occasion there isn't a popup associated with the keystroke I'm looking for.

Instructions for configuring the lsp/ tree sitter could be made more clear, or even better more automated, but it's doable. I'm still having difficulty in terms of adding lsp's that aren't defined in "hx --health" but I'm sure I could figure it out eventually if I really took the time to dive a bit deeper into it. I won't act as if that is anything unexpected since it's not something a casual user like myself should really need the ability to do.

Thank you to the creator, and all other contributors to helix that read this for your contribution to the world with this excellent FOSS!