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Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon Nimaoth
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Text editor. Projectional programming environment.

Absytree

Build and tests

This is still very early in developement and very experimental!

Written in Nim

Programming Language + Editor

Absytree is a text editor + programming languange workbench where instead of writing the source code as text in text files, the abstract syntac tree (AST) is edited directly (or rather through projections, which are still trees) Languages will be extendable with custom AST node types, by either translating those to nodes of other languages or by implementing code generation for the backend (at the moment only WASM).

The editor is available for the terminal, as a desktop GUI app and in the browser. You can try the browser version here (old version). There is also a very experimental Unreal Engine Plugin.

ast is the gui version, astt is the terminal version

Goals

  • For the text editor:
    • Sit somewhere inbetween Vim and VS Code
    • The most important tools are built in (e.g. syntax highlighting with tree-sitter, LSP support)
    • Can be used purely as a text editor (ignoring the AST language framework)
    • Little to no configuration needed to get nice experience out of the box
    • Support Vim motions
  • General goals:
    • Keyboard focused (only basic mouse support)
    • Easily extendable with scripting
    • Good performance

Inspirations

Building

Setup

  • Requires OpenGL 4.1 for the GUI version
  • Install Nim version 2.0.2. (we need some file from the compiler source so you need to install nim using choosenim, the prebuilt binaries from the nim website or build nim from source, because some linux package repositories, e.g. arch, don't seem to include the compiler source code, which this editor needs for nimscript)
  • Clone the repository
  • Run nimble setup

Desktop version

  • Use nimble buildDesktop or nimble build to compile the desktop version of the editor.
  • The release builds are built with:
    • For the gui version: nimble buildDesktop --app:gui -D:forceLogToFile -D:enableGui=true -D:enableTerminal=false
    • For the terminal version: nimble buildDesktop --app:console -D:forceLogToFile -D:enableGui=false -D:enableTerminal=true

Browser version

  • Run nimble buildBrowser
  • Embed the generated file ast.js
  • See absytree_browser.html for an example

Compiling tree sitter grammars to wasm

  • Go into the tree-sitter repositories root directory
  • Make sure the cli is built
    • cargo build
  • Compile the desired language to wasm. The specified directory is the one containing the src folder which in turn contains the grammar.js
    • target/release/tree-sitter build-wasm ../dev/nimtreesitter/treesitter_nim/treesitter_nim/nim

Compiling tree sitter wasm binding

  • Go into the tree-sitter repositories root directory
  • Build the binding:
    • script/build-wasm
  • Copy the generated files to the AbsytreeBrowser directory:
    • cp lib/binding_web/tree-sitter.js <.../AbsytreeBrowser> && cp lib/binding_web/tree-sitter.wasm <.../AbsytreeBrowser>

Configuration

options.json

options.json contains simple values which are used by the editor. This file is automatically created when exiting the editor with the current options. When the editor launches it loads the current options from this file again (before running any scripts/plugins)

Scripts/Plugins

Absytree supports different scripting languages/mechanisms. The editor API is exposed to each one and can be used to create new commands, change options, etc.

  • NimScript: Only supported in the desktop version. The editor bundles part of the Nim compiler so it can run NimScript code. Allows easy hot reloading of the config file, but right now only one nimscript file is supported. Slightly increases startup time of the editor.
  • Wasm: Works on the desktop and in the browser. In theory any language can be used to write plugins if it can compile to wasm. Probably better performance than NimScript.
  • In the future the builtin language framework will be usable as a scripting language as well by compiling to wasm.

At startup Absytree loads the following scripts in order:

  • config/absytree_config_wasm.wasm
  • config/absytree_config.nim (NimScript, only in desktop version)

At the moment config/absytree_config_wasm.wasm is generated from config/absytree_config.nim by compiling it to wasm using config/config.nims (uses Emscripten). So absytree_config.nim can be used as NimScript or as a wasm plugin.

The editor API is exactly the same in both cases.

Inside absytree_config.nim one can check if it's being used in wasm or NimScript using the following check:

when defined(wasm):
  # Script was compiled to wasm
else:
  # Script is being interpreted as NimScript

absytree_config.nim must import absytree_runtime, which contains some utility functions. absytree_runtime also exports absytree_api, which contains every function exposed by the editor. absytree_api is automatically generated when compiling the editor.

There are a few utility scripts for defining key bindings.

  • import keybindings_normal: Standard keybindings, like most text editors. (e.g. no modes)
  • import keybindings_vim: Vim inspired keybindings, work in progress. Will probably never be 100% compatible.
  • import keybindings_helix: Helix inspired keybindings, work in progress. Will probably never be 100% compatible.

Each of these files defines a load*Bindings() function which applies the corresponding key bindings. After calling this function one can still override specific keys.

More details in Getting Started

Compiling Nim config files to wasm

  • You need to have Emscripten installed.
  • Run nimble buildNimConfigWasm from the root folder of the repository

Screenshots

alt alt alt

Todo

  • get [https://github.com/treeform/vmath/pull/67] merged and change vmath back to original repo

  • finish [https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/pull/2091]

  • add nicer way to write:

    • StringGetPointer, StringGetLength
    • <, <=, etc

  • add bool type

  • make [] work with strings

  • add char literal

  • add string escape and/or allow entering \n

  • auto open completion window?

  • auto accept completion exact match even if other/longer completions exist

  • render actual types in type placeholders

  • add text based search (fuzzy?)

  • add validation for all ast node types

  • allow deleting selection in e.g. property cells

  • make node reference not editable

  • don't allow node substitution keys on empty expressions

  • improve auto parenthesis for cells

  • add struct scoped functions

  • support copying multiple nodes

  • fix deleting e.g struct member type bug

  • negative number literal, float literal

  • render cell indentation guides

  • invalidate models using language X when X gets rebuilt

  • finish/revise using string as parameter type for wasm functions (see createWasmWrapper, createHostWrapper)

  • fix potential issues because of loading order when loading test-language and test-language-playground

  • fix rendering of _

Vim Keybindings

  • Repeat f/t motions with ,/;

  • Search/Replace

  • toggle case

  • fix e.g. dw deleting one character to much because it's inclusive

  • in visual mode highlights are incorrect

  • pasting text replaces the current char even if not in insert mode

LSP

  • Handle rust lsp paths with lowercase letter like d:/path/to/file
  • command for inserting the inlay hint under the cursor
  • snippets
  • workspace symbols
  • rename

text editor

  • includeAfter names should be named includeLineLen or something like that

Test report

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verified publisher icon Nimaoth

Metadata

Text editor. Projectional programming environment.

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