First impressions confusion feedback

[hippietrail]

Just dropping my first impressions that might lead to better first impressions for new users later...

I installed the extension easily in Windsurf (VS Code fork) and Zed. I think one had a new tab with a sentence full of deliberate mistakes. The other had just a blank tab.

I saw no squigglies on the mistakes that were already there. As I typed deliberate mistakes in the blank tab, no squigglies appeared.

I looked in the command palette for Harper commands but there was only restart.
I looked in the status bar and couldn't find anything.
I looked in the home page and github page for something like "getting started" but couldn't find anything. I looked in the FAQ for similar but found nothing.
I looked for a Discord server for realtime feedback but there doesn't seem to be one.

I thought, maybe it only works in source code files and not plain text files? I opened a recent file which happened to be a .md file and finally I got squigglies.

I saved the other tab that just had deliberate mistakes and chose the .txt file extension to test if the tab has to be saved or has to have a known file extension. No change.
I saved it again with the .md file extension. It didn't trigger squigglies.

I went back to the other tab and hovered over squigglies. A little popup told me what was wrong. Clicking on it didn't offer a fix. Right clicking on the squigglied word didn't seem to have any extra proofing related options.

My overall impression is that due to apparent lack of "getting started" it's intended to be intuitive and "just work" in the obvious way.

I'm still not sure if it's supposed to offer corrections and I just haven't figured out how yet, or if it's only intended to point out mistakes.

I hope this feedback is useful. Please let me know if I foolishly missed obvious things.

---

Updates

I see now that I do get suggestions in Windsurf, but not in Zed.
I think I didn't realize that it's only intended to work in JavaScript/TypeScript files - is this right?

[mcecode]

Hi, thanks for the feedback!

Am I getting it right that the main problem you encountered was that the extension wasn't properly working for untitled/unsaved files in Windsurf, even after saving them as .txt or .md? I just tried it in VSCode and there does seem to be a problem there that needs to be looked into. I'll try to find the cause and fix it when I get the time.

I see now that I do get suggestions in Windsurf, but not in Zed.

I'm glad you got that working in Windsurf. The Zed extension is community maintained so maybe @Stef16Robbe can give some input on that.

I think I didn't realize that it's only intended to work in JavaScript/TypeScript files - is this right?

Ah, no. It should work for the languages listed here.

[hippietrail]

In Windsurf didn't even get any errors marked while editing .txt files. I've now read that that's the case in some issues I think.

In Zed I get errors marked in .md files but I do not get any corrections.

[mcecode]

In Windsurf didn't even get any errors marked while editing .txt files.

I assume that these are saved .txt files? If so, can I ask what ID Windsurf uses for .txt files? Since it's a VSCode fork, you can probably check by clicking the "Select Language Mode" in the lower right corner of the editor and typing "plain" in the dialogue that opens. You should get an output like this:

Does Plain Text (plaintext) appear for you?

[hippietrail]

I've done a bit more testing. I opened the same random .txt file from my SSD in VS Code, Windsurf, and Zed. The first two are indeed both Plain Text (plaintext) and Zed is Plain Text also. VS Code and Windsurf both display squigglies but Zed does not.

In all three editors if I open a new blank tab, type in random text, but don't save it, they all say Plain Text but no squiggles are displayed.

If I then go and save them with .txt extensions, WindSurf and VS Code both start showing squigglies but Zed does not.

[mcecode]

I've done a bit more testing. I opened the same random .txt file from my SSD in VS Code, Windsurf, and Zed. The first two are indeed both Plain Text (plaintext) and Zed is Plain Text also. VS Code and Windsurf both display squigglies but Zed does not.

I think this is expected, the language server does support plain text (.txt) but only if the editor identifies it as plaintext, which AFAIK, is VSCode specific. We can also support it for Zed, but we'd need to know what language id they use for it.

In all three editors if I open a new blank tab, type in random text, but don't save it, they all say Plain Text but no squiggles are displayed.

If I then go and save them with .txt extensions, WindSurf and VS Code both start showing squigglies but Zed does not.

I'm not sure about Zed, but for now, this is expected behavior for VSCode as I've noted in #382.

[Stef16Robbe]

As for the Zed issue with plain text files, I'm curious if/how this works with neovim. Zed does not have a built-in file type for plain text files AFAIK[1]. But in the neovim config I sent earlier[2] it's also not present, whilst in the VSCode extension config it is [3].

I'll probably have to ask around in the Zed communities.

1: https://zed.dev/docs/languages
2: https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/blob/master/lua/lspconfig/configs/harper_ls.lua#L4-L26
3: https://github.com/Automattic/harper/blob/master/packages/vscode-plugin/package.json#L48

[elijah-potter]

I looked for a Discord server for realtime feedback but there doesn't seem to be one.

Just an update on this. I've set up a Discord server for this at: https://discord.com/invite/JBqcAaKrzQ

[krupan]

My first impressions are similar. I tried the emacs integration with eglot that is linked to from the harper website, but nothing is happening. I'd really be just fine even if I could do

harper-cli lint some-text-file.txt

But I get:

Error: Could not detect language ID.

Same with a python file that doesn't have a .py extension.

Interestingly, if I convert the text file to markdown and do this:

harper-cli lint some-text-file.md

Then it works.

Questions that arise from this:

• should I be using a different extension for text files?
• do I need to rename my python file to have a .py extension?
• is there any way to tell harper-cli to interpret a file as text or python or whatever instead of relying on it to figure it out?

[hippietrail]

I was confused by the Error: Could not detect language ID. at first, thinking it was trying to detect English vs Spanish, etc. But it's trying to detect programming/formatting language, which plain text files don't have. So this is also why your Python file isn't detected as Python.

I believe harper-cli doesn't work on plain text files yet, but the language server, harper-ls does if you use it inside a text editor that has a harper extension.

I looked at cli language detection code a couple of times but there were things I didn't understand. I might be able to add a switch to override the filename extension though. Out of interest, which kinds of Python files don't have the .py extension?

---

I hacked something up but it's not good enough for a PR since the handling of file extensions vs language id's and file formats vs comments in source files is a bit involved.

But if you want to try it let me know and I'll publish a branch on my fork.