A proof-of-concept GUI wrapper around the terminal based editor Helix
I became interested in Helix while searching for alternatives to JetBrains' AppCode after it was announced that it would be no longer be developed. There's a lot to like, but personally I prefer my editor to support standard operating system affordances such as access to the system clipboard, drag-and-drop (including a draggable proxy icon), etc. I have been using vim for years on the Mac - mainly through the excellent MacVim. I wanted the same thing for Helix. Discussions on developing a gui wrapper for Helix are ongoing, but so far, afaik, development has not yet started.
So I had the idea that maybe I could do a sort of poor-man's wrapper by embedding a terminal in a Mac app to run Helix in, and communicating between the wrapper app and Helix via some sort of IPC. MacHelix is the result.
- Drag and drop
- Titlebar shows filename and draggable proxy icon for the file in the active view
- Copy/Paste with ⌘C and ⌘V
- Select All with ⌘A
- Window background changes with helix theme changes
The project is prototype quality. It exists mainly to satisfy my curiosity that such an app is
possible/practical. It will take quite a bit of work to bring this to production quality. It
includes an embedded custom build of hx with rudimentary IPC implemented via named pipes.
The terminal layer comes from my fork of SwiftTerm, with some really rough fixes for sgr mouse support (with code borrowed from iTerm).