Idea: have editing operations specific to source editing types

[appetrosyan]

So, there are a few things I can do if I’m an AST node (e.g. a variable). I could edit the string that’s the current leaf, e.g.

“Emacs -> emacs”.

I could also try and replace this concrete instance of a variable with a variable of the same kind,

“emacs -> kakoune”

But in the general case, it might make sense to rename all instances of the same string,

“emacs -> editor”

Because you’ve chosen modal editing as a paradigm, it may be useful to replace the c* a* and i* commands.

[kneasle]

Hmm so I'm tempted not to attempt to implement this ourselves - LSP support is a must for any editor to be nice to use, and every self-respecting LSP server can do refactor-replace. Handling local variables would probably be doable, but for languages like Rust with very complex importing rules, we'd end up falling back on LSP anyway. I don't like it as a solution very much, but I think it'd work which is at the end of the day what matters.

[appetrosyan]

This being done via lsp an implementation detail.

The paradigm of sapling is that you’re thinking in terms of other operations. A text editor is mainly concerned with create a UI that allows fast and intuitive access to editing facilities. A code editor has different facilities oft provided by language servers, but sometimes exposable to the editor directly.