Ptext: A Nano-like text editor built with pure C

[JonChesterfield]

Cool. Compiled easily, made a binary that does look like a text editor, let me make new files and edit an existing one. Only linked against libc, about a thousand lines of C.

So yeah, that is indeed a working text editor that doesn't link against ncurses and the like. Smaller than I would have expected it to be.

[kamranjon]

Most of that is probably attributable to being based on Kilo: https://github.com/antirez/kilo - a tiny text editor written by antirez who notably also created Redis. Antirez has a bunch of really interesting side projects if you dig into their github repo.

[linhns]

Yep. Fit for my sole purpose of using other editors: Editing vim Makefile when I decide to recompile.

[gdevenyi]

Don't forget about Micro

https://micro-editor.github.io/

[rahen]

It's written in Go though, so quite a bit less portability.

[pjmlp]

Not really pure C, plenty of #include that aren't part of ISO C standard.

Pure UNIX/POSIX C, more likely.

[djur]

"Pure C" doesn't really mean anything, but if it did mean something it would mean "only C", not "only standard C", wouldn't it?

[halayli]

they aren't part of whatever standard yet they are still pure C. Pure C is not a well defined term but it refers to the fact that only the C language was used for the project. Which C version and whether other libs have been used is not part of the term.

[teo_zero]

I'll not enter the pure-C vs. non-pure-C debate, but this heavily depends on a Unix-like OS and VT100-like terminal. Forget to compile it for Windows, for example.

Very nice project, well organized, with a terse style. Comments are missing but not necessary.

[Underphil]

Is it a reasonably common thing for Windows users to operate a text editor from a terminal? (Outside of WSL)

[mise_en_place]

Neat, I am a fan of minimalist text editors. There is also uEmacs: https://github.com/torvalds/uemacs

[schemescape]

I’ve been wanting to make a library for Pico-like interfaces, with the commands and key combinations listed at the bottom of the screen.

I thought something like that must exist, but I haven’t found it yet…

[Aloha]

I'd love something like this that could be called from sh like dialog can.

[WesolyKubeczek]

I guess it’s hardcoded to run in something shaped like xterm or better.

[nine_k]

Now that hardware terminals are gone, it's a very safe bet.

But xterm is,way rich, it supports esoteric advanced stuff like sixels, etc. For a basic text editor, without split windows, colors, and such, a subset of VT-52 capabilities may suffice.

[MobiusHorizons]

My guess would be it targets VT-100, but it wouldn't have to be hardcoded, non-curses applications can still make use of the terminfo database to determine the capabilities of whatever terminal they are attached to.

[6R1M0R4CL3]

read the code. and i liked doing that. while i do mostly java, c++ and rust. there is an elegant beauty in pure C code.

[mogoh]

pure? Is nano not pure enough?

[queuebert]

Too bloated. The ultimate goal will be "planck" with zero lines of code. :-)

[tyingq]

It seems like the author is trying to say "no dependencies other than libc, not even ncurses".

[nittanymount]

cool, maybe, like to sharpen C skills with a side project ?

[tekla]

We call that vim

[stevekemp]

Like many I appreciated seeing Antirez's kilo project, and went my own direction with a trivial fork: adding support for an embedded lua scripting language, allowing multiple buffers, and flexible syntax highlighting for different languages, etc.

For me one of the challenges was getting UTF8 support, since I live in Finland and am exposed to ä, ö, and other characters. It was a fun learning experience, even though I never intended it to become a "real editor" and I continue to use emacs on a daily basis.

Quickly looking over the (closed) bug reports I see the discussion I had with myself back in 2016 which largely caused me to rewrite the core in C++ so I could take advantage of modern facilities to make UTF8 work more easily:

https://github.com/skx/kilua/issues/49

[pharrington]

I think you're reading intent that isn't there with this project. The author states its a WIP, and is writing it as a learning experience for building text interfaces without ncurses.

[JonChesterfield]

Can unicode be implemented in a thousand lines or so of C?