I’ve been a vim user for as long as I can remember. I like vim so much that I try to incorporate vim keybindings wherever I can. Like, using Vimium extension in Firefox/Chrome, vim extention in IntelliJ/VSCode, evil mode in Emacs, etc.

I recently stumbled upon Helix Editor which made me rethink vim’s way of navigation. Helix was so much more intuitive for me in terms of selection->action paradigm instead of vim’s action->selection. I liked Helix so much that I started using it as an IDE. Even though I had good muscle memory of vim keybindings, I decided to spend some time and learn Helix’s keybindings.

As I started using Helix more and more, I wanted to have a consistent experience in the two text editors I use the most - Helix (for IDE) and Emacs (for organizing my life). So, I wanted to get rid of Evil on Emacs since it was confusing me quite a lot. So, I started looking for packages that resembled Helix way of navigation and Meow is the one that closely matched it. I did try couple of packages like boon and xah-fly-keys and found Meow to be the closest to what I was looking for in terms of ease of use and customizability.

I’m pleasantly surprised with Meow and how configurable it is and I got used to it real quick. I had to do a few customizations to get it to work to my liking, but that’ll be a different post altogether. But for those that like the Helix/Kakoune way of navigating and want to have the same in Emacs, Meow is a great choice.

Also, I have quite an extensive config in Meow where I had to port most of what I had in General. Some of the custom functions are to mimic Helix behaviors. Other keymap related functions are to mimic what I had in General. I’ll explain some of them in future posts.