A modern terminal text-editor
Project description
ash is a simple and clean terminal-based text editor, that aims to be easy to use with modern key-bindings. It is capable of handling multiple files simultaneously and has a wide array of modern features. Here is a picture of ash editing this README file:
ash is written in Python 3.8 using the curses library. View this project on GitHub: ash on GitHub
Table of Contents
Note: The latest version is always the nightly build that can be downloaded from the ash website, and the information presented here always refers to that build only. Unless you have any specific reason not to, you should always download the nightly build to get the latest features/updates/bug-fixes.
Features
The following is a list of features available in ash:
- Easy to use, clean and intuitive interface
- Common key bindings (Help on F1, Arrow keys for movement, Shift+Arrow/Home/End/PgUp/PgDown for selecting text, cut/copy/paste using Ctrl+X/C/V, undo/redo using Ctrl+Z/Y, find/replace/goto using Ctrl+F/H/G, etc.) and support for remapping key bindings to your taste
- Common editor features such as undo/redo, line numbers, find-replace, cut-copy-paste, etc.
- True support for wrapping (both hard & soft) with intuitive cursor movements along wrapped text
- Multi-file editing with support for windows and tabs
- Auto-backup
- Support for Unicode
- Project mode (opening a directory instead of individual files)
- Complete session (for projects) and undo persistence (turned on for projects opened directly from command-line)
- Live search
- Support for search/replace in all open files
- Support for searching using regular expressions
- Auto-indentation, Select+Tab/Shift-Tab to increase/decrease indent
- Auto insertion of matching braces/quotes and auto-enclosure when text is selected and braces/quotes are typed
- Support for unlimited splits per tab (subject to screen size) and support for unlimited tabs
- Support for various text-encodings
- Checks (live) and reloads (if user permits) files which have been modified externally
- Selection highlighting (highlights text under selection wherever they occur in the document)
- Color scheme customization
- View list of recent files, view project explorer (in project mode)
- Syntax highlighting (limited)
- Git integration (shows untracked, modified files, etc.)
- Multiple Cursors
- Command palette
- Basic mouse support
- Open terminal / execute shell commands (gnome + bash only)
Roadmap for the future:
The following features will be implemented gradually:
- Plugin system
- Reading from standard input
- Autocompletion/Suggestions
- Macros
- Integrated terminal
Requirements
- You need a resolution of at least 102 x 22 in your terminal emulator
- Your terminal must support Unicode and be able to display at least 256 colors with the capability of remapping color palettes (Works best on:
xterm-256
) - If you are running the source distribution, you need the GNU C compiler collection besides Python 3.8, as some parts of the application are written in Cython. The first time you run the application, Cython will compile and build the
*.pyx
files, which may increase load time (Ignore the warnings during compilation)
This version of ash has been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 with Python 3.8.2 (64-bit)
Installation
Prerequisites
You need certain packages and Python 3 itself to download and run the developmental build. Instructions for Ubuntu:
$ sudo apt install git
$ sudo apt install xclip
$ sudo apt install python3
$ sudo apt install python3-pip
Installing ash
Note: this release may not contain all features listed above. To get the latest updates and bug-fixes, download the latest nightly build from the Website
$ sudo pip3 install ash-editor
To run ash make sure you have :$HOME/.local/bin
appended to your $PATH variable in the file ~/.bashrc
. To execute ash, see the Usage section.
Uninstalling ash
To uninstall ash you can use:
$ sudo pip3 uninstall ash-editor
Colors
If you are using the default Ubuntu terminal, to enable 256 make sure your TERM
variable is set to xterm-256color
. After ash runs for the first time, it creates a theme.txt
file inside your home directory. You can edit that file directly to change how ash looks on your system. The RGB triplets listed in that file range from 0--255. If you want to reset ash to its default colors, delete the configuration file using: rm ~/.ash-editor/theme.txt
.
Usage
Once you have downloaded ash, and set it up as detailed above, you are ready to use it.
NOTES:
- If you have not updated your path variable, you must specify the full path to the ash binary.
- Your terminal resolution should be at least 102 (width) x 22 (height). Opening the editor in a lower resolution may unexpectedly crash the application. This requirement is necessary to properly display the dialog-boxes.
To run ash:
$ ash path/to/file.txt
or, to open an empty buffer:
$ ash
or, to open a project (directory):
$ ash path/to/directory
Key Bindings
See the Key Bindings
Contributing
If you find any bugs, please report them. I am also happy to accept pull requests from anyone for either bug-fixes, performance improvements, or for implementing the not-yet-implemented features listed above. Please consider contributing towards new features only when the features listed above have been fully implemented. For more information visit the project's Github page: ash on GitHub
You can use the GitHub issue tracker to report bugs, ask questions, or suggest new features.
For discussions related to the development roadmap and the ash editor in general, you can join the Gitter chat.
Screenshots
License
Copyright © Akash Nag. All rights reserved.
Licensed under the MIT license.
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