When comparing Kakoune vs Chocolat, the Slant community recommends Kakoune for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” Kakoune is ranked 27th while Chocolat is ranked 44th. The most important reason people chose Kakoune is:
Kakoune first started as a rewrite from scratch of vim, but then ended up being another text editor altogether. So it's inspired in a lot of ways from vim.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Will be familiar to vim users
Kakoune first started as a rewrite from scratch of vim, but then ended up being another text editor altogether. So it's inspired in a lot of ways from vim.
Pro More modern than vim
Pro Good UNIX citizen
It follows the UNIX philosophy by doing one thing well (text editing) and interfaces nicely with other CLI tools.
Pro Text selection mechanism
Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive range of characters, selections have an anchor and a cursor character. Most commands move both of them, except when extending selection where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor one moves around.
Pro Very expressive
Kakoune provides a very expressive set of commands, including various objects selection (paragraph, blocks, words), alignment support, conditional selection filtering...
This set of command is expressive enough to implement all the provided auto indentation logic.
Pro Actively developed and supported
Pro Self-documenting
A helper pops up when typing commands.
Pro Simpler and more consistent than Vim
Some keys select, other keys operate on the selections. Shift
is used to extend the selection, alt
is used for alternative behavior, e.g. reverse the search direction. No inconsistencies like Y
which means yy
and not y$
in Vim.
Pro Built-in access to MDN
Chocolat offers integrated web-based documentation, so you can quickly look up anything you might need clarification on.
Pro Unlimited split viewing
Chocolat allows you to view as many files side-by-side as you'd like, rather than limiting you to two.
Pro Live error checking
Chocolat supports live error checking.
Pro Great look
The native Mac looks awesome.
Pro Excellent theme support
Themes can be tweaked in various ways, such as in terms of font-size, colors, and highlighting colors.
Pro Code completion
Chocolat will auto-complete JS variables, keywords, methods, functions, and parameters.
Cons
Con Small community
Con No real Windows support
Will compile under CygWin.
Con Default bindings do not play nice with OS X (Alt+???)
Con Written in C++
Con Mac only
Chocolate is only available for Mac.