I have looked into plugins, but nothing I've found suggests to contain/offer the desired functionality.

Thank you so much for this information! It confirms that Kate is very competent, yet clears where it may fall short compared to Zed.

Aight, I'll keep Kate around for the time being. And I'll definitely take Zed into consideration whenever I'm in search of an IDE.

I use it because it feels a lot snappier than other editors/IDEs I’ve tried when browsing large files.

Snappiness is definitely something I appreciate. So, if it blows everything else out of the water in this respect, that I might have to concede. Thank you for mentioning this particular aspect of it!

On the one hand, it’s a shame that it’s not open-source, but on the other hand, developers have to make a living from something.

I wholeheartedly agree. But, I prefer the capability to donate to the open-source software developers that I love to support.

On the one hand, it’s a shame that it’s not open-source, but on the other hand, developers have to make a living from something.

I'm pretty sure most people here, at least I hope, who use open source and free software directly money donate to developers. I know of plenty of developers who do get paid writing open source through such donations or via funding, e.g. NLNet or grants. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement, are you saying Sublime Text isn't open source because they believe those ways are not appropriate for them?

Sorry fam for the late response! I was writing up a draft a couple of days ago, but that one somehow disappeared. Which..., is kinda peculiar as I don't recall the last time a draft spoofed out of existence. Regardless, it really puts me off to start a reply all over. As such, I've been mustering motivation since 😅. Anyhow, thank you for your patience!

Thank you (also) for sharing your journey around the many text editors! If anything, it reminds me how life has got many surprises for us. As such, being wed to any software, regardless of how powerful it may be, may still result in a break later down the line.

Thank you (once more) for touching on ergonomics! I haven't mentioned it, but I do experience some RSI-related pains/aches.

Hey, yeah, I know the feeling, every time I lose an already typed reply I completely lose motivation to rewrite it.

Hehe, as a precaution, I wrote this up in Emacs instead 😜.

Yeah, my pinky strain issue is completely gone

Glad to hear that!

Using i3/sway as my WM for a keyboard centric usage

Curious to see this at the very top of your list. Perhaps I should make my switch to Sway rather sooner than later. Thank you for the endorsement!

learning touch typing properly

I intend to learn this with the alt keyboard layout after the more ergonomic split keyboard has arrived. Wish me good luck 😉!

Trackball instead of mouse

Hmm..., this is lower on your list. So I suppose that by effectively removing most need for a mouse, the switch to a trackball has been less impactful. Btw, perhaps related, would you happen to be aware of hints? If so, could you touch upon its relevance?

a good chair to prevent issues with my back

Curious. Is this a special ergonomic chair (or something)?

It was a slow process of making one change here, few months later another z etc

Did you advance/progress in increments because you were testing out the latest addition to the setup? And thus, only introduced a subsequent change after judging that you were not 'done' yet?

all of my pains in wrist, lower back, neck, etc have disappeared.

I am so glad to read this! While the journey until I am able to interact with my systems without any pain seems far away right now, success stories like yours make me so pumped to pull through.

I figured if I'm going to ve sitting in front of a computer typing stuff for 8h a day I need to make that as comfortable as possible to be able to do it for longer.

Couldn't agree more.

e.g. <space>srq" (Surround Replace Quotes with ") to replace the next quotes for " (e.g. changing var = 'some text' to var = "some text"). That same plugin allows me to also do <space>srb[ to Surround Replace Bracket/Braces with [ (to change the surrounding [, (, or { to [ ).

Interesting. FWIW, I did test this out and I believe that OOTB Doom Emacs does utilize the evil-surround package. However, I don't think it's as powerful as what you describe. Though, this could also be on me 😅.

Another plugin allows me to move to any part of the screen in 4 keystrokes, I press s the two characters of where I want to move, and a third disambiguation character and the cursor moves there.

Hmm..., this very closely resembles what evil-snipe does. Though, unless I'm doing something wrong, the functionality is not a single s away, but rather a g s SPC away. At least, OOTB*.

May I ask why emacs in evil-mode instead of Nvim?

Of course you can. Unfortunately, though, I don't exactly recall my reasonings 😅. Thankfully, I did note some of my thoughts from back when I was actively trying to decide between the two. From there, I was able to gather the following:

• I would only try out Emacs or Neovim through a opinionated config.
• For Emacs, Doom had kinda won over Spacemacs based on the opinions (and experiences) of others . Though, I still wanted to try out Spacemacs to judge for myself.
• While for Neovim, LazyVim and LunarVim were the winning configs.

What follows is not based on my notes, but from what I can remember. Shortly after I came to the above conclusions, I went out and tried to install them. But, I wanted to 'test' them without 'polluting' my system. As such, I tried to install them within a distrobox. This is where Neovim came short because of this imposed limitation. I don't 100% remember what it was, but IIRC there might have been more than 1 issue; one of which had to do with fonts. Regardless, my Neovim adventures were prematurely terminated 😅. By contrast, Emacs didn't budge an inch under these circumstances. So I was able to test out both Doom and Spacemacs without any significant issues. Since then, I have dabbled in Emacs. But the folding mentioned in the original post is what has led me to commit more seriously than ever. So, in short, it was mostly out of practical reasons.

Btw, it's funny, but most of what you just read about my reasonings were buried memories 😂. Like, if I had to answer it on the spot -so without thinking it over or look through my notes or dig through my memories- , I would probably have stated some arbitrary technical reason (e.g. org-mode FTW) OR its proven longevity OR I don't know... something. But it couldn't be further from the truth 😅. Granted, I'm still very much enjoying Emacs. But, I shouldn't disregard/dismiss Neovim any longer. It's time to revisit this rabbit hole 😂. I should also thank you for asking the question that brought this to my attention 😊!