place count after motion and show jump point indicators

[alicealysia]

Something that's always struck me as odd is how despite reversing the action -> motion paradigm of nvim (e.g. ed rather than de) so that you can see what an action will motify before committing to it, helix does not reverse the count -> motion paradigm.

While it may not initially seem like this can provide the same ability to foresee the outcome of your motions, I think a small tweak would allow it to. Specifically, if it rendered some dimmed text next to the location a motion will move the cursor to.

This probably sounds pretty confusing, so I'll provide an example. Let's imagine we have the following passage:

The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog

Now, let's assume we wish to delete the first 4 words, with the cursor starting at the start of the text.

In nvim, we would need to predict the entire action, entering d4e after which it would appear as follows:

jumps over the lazy brown dog

In helix, we can do it somewhat more intuitively, first entering 4e, selecting the first 4 words

The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog

Then pressing d to delete it.

jumps over the lazy brown dog

The same key count, but we were able to confirm whether our deletion would effect the appropriate text.

If we were to reverse the motion/count order, or allow the use of the count following the motion, this would function as follows:

First you press e, jumping to the end of and selecting the first word, but also showing some dimmed numbers beside each following word

The quicke red2 fox3 jumps4 over5 the 6lazy7 brown8 dog9

(Imagine those are in a dimmer colour)

Then you press 3, highlighting till the end of fox

The quick red fox jumpse over2 the3 lazy4 brown5 dog6

Then press d to delete. 0 guess work.

I reckon the idea of numbers sitting next to jump points could be really helpful for newcomers, but it'd need to be togglable or at least only visible after notions where it won't cause a headache. I suspect existing helix users would also want the option to stick with the existing system. I also wonder if it would be worth expanding the idea of placing characters next to jump points to further simplify things for newcomers? But that's a seperate idea.

[mweihs]

I reckon the idea of numbers sitting next to jump points could be really helpful for newcomers

I think it would be confusing especially for newcomers. The layout of the text changes, which confuses them. Lines would be broken up (softwrap), which confuses them even more! And how far should the inlay numbers be displayed? Just the current line? That confuses me, because currently e is not line based (you can e.g. delete the first 300 words spreading multiple lines with v300ed). So to stay consistent you would have to display the numbers on the whole text (or maybe just the currently visible text). That confuses everyone! 😱

Btw, in my years of using vim and now helix, I NEVER used count. For your example (deleting the first 4 words) I would use de... in vim and veeeed in helix. No way of miscounting or mistyping the number, no need for inlays ... it's the better way! 😂

[alicealysia]

In case of the e command, it shows them in place of the spaces between words in a greyed out color, to be as unobtrusive as possible. In other words, it replaces the character at the location the cursor will jump to next to make it easy to tell where the cursor will land

[alicealysia]

Given, it'd probs only make sense for the first 9 points.

Personally, I use count a lot. Spamming the same key repeatedly works too, but something great about helix is that you can reduce your keystrokes significantly if you do use count, due to not needing to input v first, therefore cutting out a mode switch too.