When comparing Textastic vs Yi, the Slant community recommends Textastic for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Textastic is ranked 45th while Yi is ranked 46th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro iOS version available
Pro Supports 80 source code and markup languages
Textastic has support for several script and markup languages.
Pro Very fast
There's no need for hundreds of modules to be loaded on every start of Textastic. It's perfect for the fast editing of files.
Pro Supports online sync
Textastic can sync with iCloud documents.
Pro Code completion
Pro Combines and improves upon the best text-editing features from your favorite editors
Yi has default configurations for Vim, Emacs, as well as CUA. It also makes several improvements that includes Sublime-like (multiple) cursors.
Pro More performant than Vim
Vim can be rather slow due the age of its code base. In particular, running large macros in Vim can be rather painful. Since Yi is being built from scratch it has been engineered for performance and with the benefit of hindsight.
Pro Extensible and modular editing features
As far as extensibility goes, Yi easily outstrips any other open-source text editor. Motions can be built from parser combinators, making them simultaneously flexible and modular - an open source hacker's dream.
Pro Plugins work together
Packages work together because they compile together.
Cons
Con Mac only
Textastic is for Mac only.
Con Proprietary
Textastic is a proprietary software and needs a license which costs $7.99.
Con Very few plugins available
Even though Yi is a general purpose text editor similar to Vim and Emacs, almost all of the plugins that have been written for Yi so far focus on supporting Haskell as a programming environment.
Con No way to reuse your existing customizations and keybindings
If you have spent years crafting your .vimrc
or .emacs
, there's no way to reuse it in Yi. You have to start from scratch.
Con Requires Haskell to compile and configure
GHC + Haskell packages makes for a rather large installation, which is a big ask for a relatively obscure terminal editor.