dit

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A console text editor for Unix systems that you already know how to use.

http://hisham.hm/dit

Dependencies

Dit is designed to be light on dependencies. It is developed on Linux, but it should also be portable to other Unix-like platforms. Everything you need should be already installed by default in a typical Linux system.

• ncurses: preferrably newer versions, with Unicode and mouse support
• libiconv: optional, needed for Unicode
• librt: needed for clock_gettime on Linux
• bash: used for generating header files at build-time only
• Lua: it bundles Lua 5.3 for scripting so you don't have to worry about this dependency, but it can also use the system-installed Lua if you have one.

Installing

For stable releases, get the latest version at http://hisham.hm/dit/releases/ -- unpack the .tar.gz file, enter its directory then run:

• ./configure
  • You may want to customize your installation path using --prefix
• make
• sudo make install
  • If you are installing to a custom path where super-user privileges are not needed, use sudo make install

For installing the latest work-in-progress code from the Dit repository, you need Git, Autoconf and Automake. Then you'll be able to build it like this

• git clone https://github.com/hishamhm/dit
• cd dit
• ./autogen.sh
• ./configure
  • You may want to customize your installation path using --prefix
• make
• sudo make install
  • If you are installing to a custom path where super-user privileges are not needed, use sudo make install

Quick reference

• Ctrl+Q or F10 - quit
• Ctrl+S - save
• Ctrl+X - cut
• Ctrl+C - copy
• Ctrl+V - paste
• Ctrl+Z or Ctrl+U - undo
• Ctrl+Y - redo
• Shift-arrows or Alt-arrows - select
  • NOTE! Some terminals "capture" shift-arrow movement for other purposes (switching tabs, etc) and Dit never gets the keys, that's why Dit also tries to support Alt-arrows. Try both and see which one works. If Shift-arrows don't work I recommend you reconfigure your terminal (you can do this in Konsole setting "Previous Tab" and "Next Tab" to alt-left and alt-right, for example). RXVT-Unicode and Terminology are some terminals that work well out-of-the-box.
• Ctrl+F or F3 - find. Inside Find:
  • Ctrl+C - toggle case sensitive
  • Ctrl+W - toggle whole word
  • Ctrl+N - next
  • Ctrl+P - previous
  • Ctrl+R - replace
  • Enter - "confirm": exit Find staying where you are
  • Esc - "cancel": exit Find returning to where you started
    • This is useful for "peeking into another part of the file": just Ctrl+F, type something to look, and then Esc to go back to where you were.
• Ctrl+G - go to...
  • ...line number - Type a number to go to a line.
  • ...tab - Type text to go to the open tab that matches that substring.
• Ctrl+B - back (to previous location, before last find, go-to-line, tab-switch, etc.)
  • You can press Ctrl+B multiple times to go back various levels.
• Tabs of open files:
  • Ctrl+J - previous tab
  • Ctrl+K - next tab
  • Ctrl+W - close tab
• Ctrl+N - word wrap paragraph
• Ctrl+T - toggle tab mode (Tabs, 2, 3, 4 or 8 spaces - it tries to autodetect based on file contents)

This documentation is incomplete... there are more keys! Try around!