syn-edit

A text editor that is modal in a terminal and modeless in a window, with syntax highlighting in both. The same engine is underneath, so a file edited one way behaves the same the other way.

Editing

syn-edit file.c              # the terminal editor: i to insert, :w, :q
syn-edit gui file.c          # the window
syn-edit langs               # every language that is highlighted

The terminal editor is vi-shaped — motions, operators, counts, registers, : commands. The window is not: it types where you click, Ctrl+S saves, and the modal keys are available through gui insert and friends for anyone who wants them.

Scripting the same engine

The editor's engine runs without a terminal, which makes it useful in a pipeline and is how it is tested:

syn-edit run file.txt -k 'ggdG'          # apply keys, print the result
syn-edit run file.txt -c '%s/a/b/g' -w   # an ex command, written back
syn-edit ex file.txt -c '1,5d'           # only ex commands
syn-edit highlight file.c                # the syntax spans it scans to

--status prints the cursor, mode and message as records, so a front end can drive the engine and draw its own screen.

Notes

The graphical window needs quickshell. wl-clipboard gives it the desktop clipboard, reached as the + register ("+y, "+p). syn-edit about says which of these are present on the machine it is run on.

Install

git clone https://github.com/velle999/syn-edit
cd syn-edit && makepkg -si

makepkg fetches the source for this PKGBUILD's exact version from this repository's releases, so a clone can only ever build the source it was written against. .SRCINFO lists what it needs.

Where this comes from

Developed in the SynapseOS monorepo, in syn-edit/. This repository is generated from it — the PKGBUILD, a generated .SRCINFO and this README — so issues and patches belong there.

syn-edit 0.1.0-27 · GPL-2.0-or-later