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Vis a vim-like text editor
==========================
[](https://travis-ci.org/martanne/vis)
[](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/martanne/vis/branch/master)
[](https://scan.coverity.com/projects/3939)
[](https://codecov.io/gh/martanne/vis)
[](irc://irc.freenode.net/vis-editor)
Vis aims to be a modern, legacy free, simple yet efficient editor
combining the strengths of both vi(m) and sam.
It extends vi's modal editing with built-in support for multiple
cursors/selections and combines it with [sam's](http://sam.cat-v.org/)
[structural regular expression](http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/structural_regexps/)
based [command language](http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/).
As an universal editor it has decent Unicode support (including double width
and combining characters) and should cope with arbitrary files including:
- large (up to a few Gigabytes) ones including
- Wikipedia/OpenStreetMap XML / SQL / CSV dumps
- amalgamated source trees (e.g. SQLite)
- single line ones e.g. minified JavaScript
- binary ones e.g. ELF files
Efficient syntax highlighting is provided using
[Parsing Expression Grammars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing_expression_grammar)
which can be conveniently expressed using [Lua](http://www.lua.org/)
in the form of [LPeg](http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/).
The editor core is written in a reasonable amount of clean (your mileage
may vary), modern and legacy free C code enabling it to run in resource
constrained environments. The implementation should be easy to hack on
and encourage experimentation. There also exists a Lua API for in process
extensions.
Vis strives to be *simple* and focuses on its core task: efficient text
management. As an example the file open dialog is provided by an independent
utility. There exist plans to use a client/server architecture, delegating
window management to your windowing system or favorite terminal multiplexer.
The intention is *not* to be bug for bug compatible with vi(m), instead
we aim to provide more powerful editing features based on an elegant design
and clean implementation.
[](https://asciinema.org/a/41361)
Getting started / Build instructions
====================================
In order to build vis you will need a
[C99](http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf)
compiler, a [POSIX.1-2008](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/)
compatible environment as well as:
* [libcurses](http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/), preferably in the
wide-character version
* [libtermkey](http://www.leonerd.org.uk/code/libtermkey/)
* [Lua](http://www.lua.org/) >= 5.2 (optional)
* [LPeg](http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/lpeg/) >= 0.12
(optional runtime dependency required for syntax highlighting)
* [TRE](http://laurikari.net/tre/) (optional for more memory efficient regex search)
Assuming these dependencies are met, execute:
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install
By default the `configure` script will try to auto detect support for
Lua. See `configure --help` for a list of supported options. You can
also manually tweak the generated `config.mk` file.
Or simply use one of the distribution provided packages:
* [ArchLinux](http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?q=vis)
* [Alpine Linux](https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=vis)
* [NixOS](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/editors/vis/default.nix)
* [Source Mage GNU/Linux](http://download.sourcemage.org/grimoire/codex/test/editors/vis)
* [Void Linux](https://github.com/voidlinux/void-packages/tree/master/srcpkgs/vis)
* [pkgsrc](http://pkgsrc.se/wip/vis-editor)
Documentation
=============
End user documentation can be found in the [`vis(1)` manual page](http://martanne.github.io/vis/man/vis.1.html)
and the [Wiki](https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki). Read the [FAQ](https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/FAQ)
for common questions.
[Lua API Documentation](http://martanne.github.io/vis/doc/) is also available.
Non Goals
=========
Some features which will *not* be implemented:
- tabs / multiple workspaces / advanced window management
- file and directory browser
- support for file archives (tar, zip, ...)
- support for network protocols (ftp, http, ssh ...)
- encryption
- compression
- GUIs (neither x11, motif, gtk, win32 ...) although the codebase
should make it easy to add them
- VimL
- right-to-left text
- ex mode, we have more elegant structural regexp
- diff mode
- vimgrep
- internal spell checker
- lots of compile time configurable features / `#ifdef` mess
Future Plans / Ideas
====================
This section contains some ideas for further architectural changes.
Event loop with asynchronous I/O
--------------------------------
The editor core should feature a proper main loop mechanism supporting
asynchronous non-blocking and always cancelable tasks which could be
used for all possibly long lived actions. Ideally the editor core would
never block and always remain responsive.
Client/Server Architecture / RPC interface
------------------------------------------
In principle it would be nice to follow a similar client/server approach
as [sam/samterm](http://sam.cat-v.org/) i.e. having the main editor as a
server and each window as a separate client process with communication
over a unix domain socket.
That way window management would be taken care of by dwm or dvtm and the
different client processes would still share common cut/paste registers
etc.
This would also enable a language agnostic plugin system.
How to Help?
============
There are plenty ways to contribute: writing core editor features using
C or extension in Lua, improving documentation or tests, packaging for
your favorite distribution, ...
Checkout the [Developer Overview](https://github.com/martanne/vis/wiki/Developer-Overview)
to get started and do not hesistate to ask question in the `#vis-editor`
IRC channel on freenode.
|
