Initially it had been a faithful implementation of the text editor built in the Hecto tutorial. But I have enhanced and changed it into something which I can use as a writer and also it is also to challenge myself as a programmer. For detailed notes please refer to /notes.md
Instead of jumping directly into features, the editor was built in layers:
- Terminal control
- Rendering
- Editing
- Search
- Highlighting
- Extensibility
Each phase builds on the previous one, gradually evolving the editor from a simple terminal viewer into a fully functional text editor.
Some guiding principles during development:
- Keep core editor synchronous and stable
- Prefer simple data structures first
- Unicode correctness over premature optimization
- Stateless rendering where possible
- Design for extensibility (plugins later)
This allowed the editor to evolve organically while keeping complexity manageable.
- Rust (stable)
- Terminal with UTF-8 support
git clone https://github.com/akshayrivers/Text_Editor.git
cd Text_Editor
cargo run| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl-S | Save file |
| Ctrl-Q | Quit |
| Ctrl-F | Search |
| Arrow Keys | Move cursor |
| Ctrl-Z. | Undo |
| Ctrl-R. | Redo |
| Component | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Editor | Command dispatch and state |
| Buffer | Text storage and manipulation |
| Line | Grapheme-aware text representation |
| Highlighter | Syntax + search highlighting |
| Renderer | Terminal drawing |
| Terminal | Crossterm abstraction |
This separation keeps the core editor logic clean and extensible.
| Feature | GNU Nano | Vim | Visual Studio Code | Yonro's Editor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Terminal | Terminal | GUI | Terminal |
| Architecture | Simple | Modal + Complex | Plugin-driven | Layered + Extensible |
| Learning Curve | Very Easy | Hard | Easy | Moderate |
| Editing Model | Direct editing | Modal editing | Direct editing | Direct editing |
| Buffer Structure | Line-based | Advanced internal structures | Rope / Piece Table | Line-based (future rope planned) |
| Rendering | Full screen redraw | Optimized redraw | GPU / UI framework | Incremental terminal rendering |
| Unicode Support | Limited | Good | Excellent | Unicode + Grapheme aware |
| Syntax Highlighting | Basic | Advanced | Very advanced | Basic → Improving |
| Plugin Support | Very limited | Extensive | Extremely extensive | Planned architecture |
| LSP Support | No | Yes (plugins) | Built-in | Planned |
| Multi-pane UI | No | Yes | Yes | Planned |
| File Explorer | No | Plugin | Built-in | Planned |
| Performance | Fast | Very fast | Heavy but optimized | Fast |
| Memory Usage | Very low | Low | High | Low |
| Configuration | Minimal | Very powerful | GUI + config | Planned |
| Philosophy | Simple editor | Power user editor | IDE-like editor | Learning + architecture exploration |
This project started as an implementation inspired by the hecto tutorial: https://www.flenker.blog/hecto/
However, the current implementation has diverged significantly and includes additional features, architectural changes, and enhancements.
This project is licensed under the MIT License.