orbiton

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o is a text editor and a minimalistic IDE.

It might be a good fit for:

• Editing git commit messages (using EDITOR=o git commit).
• Editing README.md and TODO.md files.
• Write Markdown files and then export to PDF.
• Learning programming languages, like Rust or Zig.
• Editing files deep within larger Go or C++ projects.
• Solving Advent of Code tasks.
• Writing and maintaining to-do lists and project documentation in Markdown.
• Testing if your favorite package manager can handle single-letter package names.
• Being on a live image for a Linux distro or BSD, since it supports VT100, is small and self-contained, has a built-in man page viewer, can be used for editing /etc/fstab and for viewing logs.

For a more feature complete editor that is also written in Go, check out micro.

Screenshots

Screenshot of the VTE GUI application that can be found in the ko directory, running the o editor:

Stepping through the assembly instructions of a Rust program by entering debug mode with the ctrl-o menu and then stepping with ctrl-n:

Packaging status

Quick start

With Go 1.18 or later, o can be installed like this:

go install github.com/xyproto/o/v2@latest

Alternatively, download and install a release version. For example, for Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4 running Linux:

curl -sL 'https://github.com/xyproto/o/releases/download/2.55.1/o-2.55.1-linux_armv7_static.tar.xz' | tar JxC /tmp && sudo install -Dm755 /tmp/o-2.55.1-linux_armv7_static/o /usr/bin/o && sudo install -Dm644 /tmp/o-2.55.1-linux_armv7_static/o.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/o.1.gz

• Remember to use tar zxC if the release file for your platform ends with .tar.gz.
• The sudo install commands may be slightly different for FreeBSD and NetBSD.

Setting o as the default editor for git

To set:

git config --global core.editor o

To unset:

git config --global --unset core.editor

Viewing man pages

By setting the MANPAGER environment variable, it's possible to use o for viewing man pages:

export MANPAGER=o

An alternative to viewing man pages in o is to use less:

export MANPAGER='less -s -M +Gg'

Unique features

These features are unique to o, as far as I am aware:

• If the loaded file is read-only, all text will be red by default.
• Smart cursor movement, trying to maintain the X position when moving up and down, across short and long lines.
• Press ctrl-v once to paste one line, press ctrl-v again to paste the rest.
• Press ctrl-c once to copy one line, press ctrl-c again to copy the rest (until a blank line).
• Open or close a portal with ctrl-r. When a portal is open, copy lines across files (or within the same file) with ctrl-v.
• Build code with ctrl-space and format code with ctrl-w, for a wide range of programming languages.
• Cycle git rebase keywords with ctrl-r or ctrl-w, when an interactive git rebase session is in progress.
• Jump to a line with ctrl-l. Either enter a number to jump to a line or just press return to jump to the top. Press ctrl-l and return again to jump to the bottom.
• If tab completion in the terminal went wrong and you are trying to open a main. file that does not exist, but main.cpp and main.o does exists, then main.cpp will be opened.
• For C-like languages, missing parentheses are added to statements like if, for and while when return is pressed.
• Search and replace by entering a search term (or unicode rune on the form u+0000), pressing tab entering the replacement string or rune, and then pressing return.
• When jumping to a specific line or percentage (ie. 50%) of a file with ctrl-l, jumping to a fraction (ie. 0.5) is also supported.
• Press right, down, left or left, down, right in a rapid succession followed by down to save, up to save and quit or type in a command. This shortcut is handy to avoid the emacs pinky.
• Type iferr on a single line in a Go program and press return to insert a suitable if err != nil { return ... } block, based on koron/iferr.

Other features and limitations

• The syntax highlighting is instant.
• Can compile "Hello, World" in many popular programming languages simply by pressing ctrl-space.
• Configuration-free, for better and for worse.
• ctrl-t can jump between a C++ header and source file.
• Can only edit one file at the time, by design.
• Provides syntax highlighting for Go, C++, Markdown, Bash and several other languages. There is generic syntax highlighting built-in.
• Will jump to the last visited line when opening a recent file.
• Is provided as a single self-contained executable.
• Loads faster than both vim and emacs, for small files.
• Can render text to PDF either by itself or by using pandoc.
• Tested with alacritty, st, urxvt, konsole, zutty and xfce4-terminal.
• Tested on Arch Linux, Debian and FreeBSD.
• Never asks before saving or quitting. Be careful!
• The NO_COLOR environment variable can be set to disable all colors.
• Rainbow parentheses makes lines with many parentheses easier to read.
• Limited to VT100, so hotkeys like ctrl-a and ctrl-e must be used instead of Home and End.
• Compiles with either go or gccgo.
• Will strip trailing whitespace whenever it can.
• Must be given a filename at start.
• May provide smart indentation.
• Requires that /dev/tty is available.
• xclip (for X) or wl-clipboard (for Wayland) must be installed if the system clipboard should be used.
• May take a line number as the second argument, with an optional + or : prefix.
• If the filename is COMMIT_EDITMSG, the look and feel will be adjusted for git commit messages.
• Supports UTF-8, but some runes may be displayed incorrectly.
• Only UNIX-style line endings are supported (\n).
• Will convert DOS/Windows line endings (\r\n) to UNIX line endings (just \n), whenever possible.
• Will replace non-breaking space (0xc2 0xa0) with a regular space (0x20) whenever possible.
• If interactive rebase is launched with git rebase -i, then either ctrl-w or ctrl-r will cycle the keywords for the current line (fixup, drop, edit etc).
• If the editor executable is renamed to a word starting with r (or have a symlink with that name), the default theme will be red/black.
• If the editor executable is renamed to a word starting with l (or have a symlink with that name), the default theme will be suitable for light backgrounds.
• Want to quickly convert Markdown to PDF and have pandoc installed? Try o filename.md, press ctrl-space and quit with ctrl-q.
• Press ctrl-w to toggle the check mark in - [ ] TODO item boxes in Markdown.
• o is written mostly in o, with some use of NeoVim for the initial development.
• The default syntax highlighting theme aims to be as pretty as possible with less than 16 colors, but it mainly aims for clarity. It should be easy to spot a keyword, number, string or a stray parenthesis.

Known issues

• Using tmux and resizing the terminal emulator window may trigger text rendering issues. Try pressing esc to redraw the text.
• For some terminal emulators, if o is busy performing an operation, pressing ctrl-s may lock the terminal. Some terminal emulators, like konsole, can be configured to turn off this behavior. Press ctrl-q to unlock the terminal again (together with the unfortunate risk of quitting o). You can also use the ctrl-o menu for saving and quitting.
• Some unicode runes may disrupt the text flow. This is generally not a problem for editing code and configuration files, but may be an issue when editing files that contains text in many languages.
• o may have issues with large files (of several MB+). For normal text files or source code files, this is a non-issue.
• Using backspace near the end of lines that are longer than the terminal width may cause the cursor to jump.
• Middle-click pasting (instead of pasting with ctrl-v) may only paste the first character.
• The smart indentation is not always smart.

Hotkeys

• ctrl-s - Save.
• ctrl-q - Quit.
• ctrl-r - Open or close a portal. Text can be pasted from the portal into another file with ctrl-v. For "git interactive rebase" mode (git rebase -i), this will cycle the rebase keywords.
• ctrl-w - Format the current file (see the table below).
• ctrl-a - Go to start of text, then start of line and then to the previous line.
• ctrl-e - Go to end of line and then to the next line.
• ctrl-p - Scroll up 10 lines, or go to the previous match if a search is active.
• ctrl-n - Scroll down 10 lines, or go to the next match if a search is active.
• ctrl-k - Delete characters to the end of the line, then delete the line.
• ctrl-g - Toggle a status line at the bottom for displaying: filename, line, column, Unicode number and word count.
• ctrl-d - Delete a single character.
• ctrl-t - For C and C++: jump between the current header and source file. For Agda and Ivy, insert a symbol. For the rest, record and play back keypresses. Press escape to clear the current macro.
• ctrl-o - Open a command menu with actions that can be performed.
• ctrl-x - Cut the current line. Press twice to cut a block of text (to the next blank line).
• ctrl-c - Copy one line. Press twice to copy a block of text.
• ctrl-v - Paste one trimmed line. Press twice to paste multiple untrimmed lines.
• ctrl-space - Build program, render to PDF or export to man page (see table below).
• ctrl-j - Join lines (or jump to the bookmark, if set).
• ctrl-u - Undo (ctrl-z is also possible, but may background the application).
• ctrl-l - Jump to a specific line number. Press return to jump to the top. If at the top, press return to jump to the bottom.
• ctrl-f - Search for a string. The search wraps around and is case sensitive. Press tab instead of return to search and replace.
• ctrl-b - Toggle a bookmark for the current line, or if set: jump to a bookmark on a different line.
• ctrl-\ - Comment in or out a block of code.
• ctrl-~ - Jump to a matching parenthesis.
• esc - Redraw everything and clear the last search.
• right, down, left in quick succession followed by up to just quit or down to save and quit. This is handy to avoid pinky finger pain (the emacs pinky).

Build and format

• At the press of ctrl-space, o will try to build or export the current file.
• At the press of ctrl-w, o will try to format the current file, in an opinionated way. If the current file is empty, template text may be inserted.

/etc/fstab files are also supported, and can be formatted with ctrl-w if fstabfmt is installed.

• o will try to jump to the location where the error is and otherwise display Success.
• For regular text files, ctrl-w will word wrap the lines to a length of 99.
• If kotlinc-native is not available, this build command will be used instead: kotlinc $filename -include-runtime -d $name.jar

CXX can be downloaded here: GitHub project page for CXX.

Debug support for C and C++

This is a brand new feature and needs more testing.

• If gdb is installed, it's possible to select "Debug mode" from the ctrl-o menu and then build and step through a program with ctrl-space, or set a breakpoint with ctrl-b and continue with ctrl-space.
• Messages printed to stdout are displayed as a status message when that line is reached.
• An indication of which line the program is at has not yet been added, and is a work in progress.
• There are status messages indicating when the debug session is started and ended.
• Therefore o is not only an editor, but also an integrated development environment (IDE).

Manual installation on Linux

git clone https://github.com/xyproto/o
cd o
make
sudo install -Dm755 o /usr/bin/o
gzip o.1
sudo install -Dm644 o.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/o.1.gz

OpenBSD installation instructions

Install dependencies (use doas if needed):

add_pkg git gmake go vte3

Build both the editor o and the GUI frontend ko:

gmake CXX="clang++ -w" o ko

*Install both executables, a man page, an icon and a desktop shortcut file (use doas if needed`):

PREFIX=/usr/local gmake install ko-install

Dependencies

C++

• For building code with ctrl-space, cxx must be installed.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, clang-format must be installed.

Go

• For building code with ctrl-space, The go compiler must be installed.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, goimports must be installed.

Zig

• For building and formatting Zig code, only the zig command is needed.

V

• For building and formatting V code, only the v command is needed.

Rust

• For building code with ctrl-space, Cargo.toml must exist and cargo must be installed.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, rustfmt must be installed.

Haskell

• For building the current file with ctrl-space, the ghc compiler must be installed.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, brittany must be installed.

Python

• ctrl-space only checks the syntax, without executing. This only requires python to be available.
• For formatting the code with ctrl-w, autopep8 must be installed.

Crystal

• For building and formatting Crystal code, only the crystal command is needed.

Kotlin

• For building code with ctrl-space, kotlinc must be installed. A .jar file is created if the compilation succeeded.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, ktlint must be installed.

Java

• For building code with ctrl-space, javac and jar must be installed. A .jar file is created if the compilation succeeded.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, google-java-format must be installed.

Scala

• For building code with ctrl-space, scalac and jar must be installed. A .jar file is created if the compilation succeeded.
• The jar file can be executed with java -jar main.jar. Use scalac -d main.jar MyFile.scala if you want to produce a jar that can be executed with scala main.jar.
• For formatting code with ctrl-w, scalafmt must be installed.

D

• For building code with ctrl-space, gdc must be available.

JSON

• The JSON formatter is built-in. Note that for some files it may reorganize items in an undesirable order, so don't save the file if the result is unexpected.

fstab

• For formatting fstab files (usually /etc/fstab) with ctrl-w, fstabfmt must be installed.

JavaScript

• For formatting JavaScript code with , prettier must be installed.

A note on Java and Scala

Since kotlinc $filename -include-runtime -d builds to a .jar, I though I should do the same for Java. The idea is to easily compile a single or a small collection of .java files, where one of the file has a main function.

If you know about an easier way to build a .jar file from *.java, without using something like gradle, please let me know by submitting a pull request. This is pretty verbose...

javaFiles=$(find . -type f -name '*.java')
for f in $javaFiles; do
  grep -q 'static void main' "$f" && mainJavaFile="$f"
done
className=$(grep -oP '(?<=class )[A-Z]+[a-z,A-Z,0-9]*' "$mainJavaFile" | head -1)
packageName=$(grep -oP '(?<=package )[a-z,A-Z,0-9,.]*' "$mainJavaFile" | head -1)
if [[ $packageName != "" ]]; then
  packageName="$packageName."
fi
mkdir -p _o_build/META-INF
javac -d _o_build $javaFiles
cd _o_build
echo "Main-Class: $packageName$className" > META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
classFiles=$(find . -type f -name '*.class')
jar cmf META-INF/MANIFEST.MF ../main.jar $classFiles
cd ..
rm -rf _o_build

For Scala, I'm using this code, to produce a main.jar file that can be run directly with java -jar main.jar:

#!/bin/sh
scalaFiles=$(find . -type f -name '*.scala')
for f in $scalaFiles; do
  grep -q 'def main' "$f" && mainScalaFile="$f"
  grep -q ' extends App ' "$f" && mainScalaFile="$f"
done
objectName=$(grep -oP '(?<=object )[A-Z]+[a-z,A-Z,0-9]*' "$mainScalaFile" | head -1);
packageName=$(grep -oP '(?<=package )[a-z,A-Z,0-9,.]*' "$mainScalaFile" | head -1);
if [[ $packageName != "" ]]; then
  packageName="$packageName."
fi
mkdir -p _o_build/META-INF
scalac -d _o_build $scalaFiles
cd _o_build
echo -e "Main-Class: $packageName$objectName\nClass-Path: /usr/share/scala/lib/scala-library.jar" > META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
classFiles=$(find . -type f -name '*.class')
jar cmf META-INF/MANIFEST.MF ../main.jar $classFiles
cd ..
rm -rf _o_build

• If /usr/share/scala/lib/scala-library.jar is not found scalac -d run_with_scala.jar is used instead.
• If scala-library.jar was not found, then the resulting jar file will scala to run.

Agda

ctrl-t brings up a menu with a selection of special symbols.

There are also these shortcuts:

• Insert ⊤ by pressing ctrl-t and then t.
• Insert ℕ by pressing ctrl-t and then n.

Updating PKGBUILD files

When editing PKGBUILD files, it is possible to press ctrl-o and select Call Guessica to update the pkgver= and source= fields, by a combination of guesswork and online searching. This functionality depends on the Guessica package update utility.

List of optional runtime dependencies

• agda - for compiling Agda code
• asciidoctor - for writing man pages
• astyle - for formatting C# code
• autopep8 - for formatting Python code
• brittany - for formatting Haskell code
• cargo - for compiling Rust
• clang - for formatting C++ code with clang-format
• clojure - for compiling Clojure
• crystal - for compiling Crystal
• cxx - for compiling C++
• fpc - for compiling Object Pascal
• fstabfmt - for formatting /etc/fstab
• g++ - for compiling C++ code
• gdc - for compiling D code
• ghc - for compiling Haskell code
• go - for compiling Go code
• go-tools - for formatting Go code and handling imports with goimports
• google-java-format - for formatting Java code
• jad - decompile .class files on the fly when opening them with o
• java-environment - for compiling Java code and creating .jar files with javac and jar
• kotlin - for compiling Kotlin
• ktlint - for formatting Kotlin code
• lua - for compiling Lua to bytecode
• lua-format - for formatting Lua code
• mlton - for compiling Standard ML
• mono - for compiling C# code
• ocaml - for compiling and formatting OCaml code
• odin - for compiling Odin
• pandoc - for exporting Markdown to PDF
• prettier - for formatting JavaScript, TypeScript and CSS
• python - for compiling Python to bytecode
• rustc - for compiling Rust
• rustfmt - for formatting Rust
• scala - for compiling Scala
• sdoc - for writing man pages
• tidy - for formatting HTML
• v - for compiling and formatting V code
• zig - for compiling and formatting Zig code

Size

• The o executable is only 989k when built with GCC 11.1.0 (for 64-bit Linux) and compressed with upx.
• This isn't as small as e3, an editor written in assembly (which is 234k), but it's reasonably lean.

One way of building with gccgo and upx:

go build -mod=vendor -gccgoflags '-Os -s' && upx o

It's 11M when built with Go 1.19 and no particular build flags are given.

Jumping to a specific line when opening a file

These four ways of opening file.txt at line 7 are supported:

• o file.txt 7
• o file.txt +7
• o file.txt:7
• o file.txt+7

This also means that filenames containing + or :, and then followed by a number, are not supported.

Spinner

When loading files that are large or from a slow disk, an animated spinner will appear. The loading operation can be interrupted by pressing esc, q or ctrl-q.

Find and open

This shell function works in zsh and bash and may be useful for both searching for and opening a file at the given line number (works best if there is only one matching file, if not it will open several files in succession):

fo() { find . -type f -wholename "*$1" -exec /usr/bin/o {} $2 \;; }

If too many files are found, it is possible to stop opening them by selecting Kill find from the ctrl-o menu in o, which will execute the equivalent of pkill find.

Example use:

fo somefile.cpp 123

Pandoc

When using pandoc to export from Markdown to PDF:

• If the PAPERSIZE environment variable is set to ie. a4 or letter, it will be respected when exporting from Markdown to PDF using pandoc, at the press of ctrl-space.
• The --pdf-engine=xelatex and --listings flags are used, so xelatex and the listings package needs to be available. A standard installation of LaTeX and Pandoc should provide both.
• Render to PDF with pandoc will only appear on the ctrl-o menu when editing a Markdown file and pandoc is installed.

Easter egg

Try the Konami code while in the ctrl-o menu to start a silly little game about feeding creatures with pellets before they are eaten.

Recommended symlinks

• For starting o with the Light VS theme: ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/vs.
• For starting o with the Blue Edit theme: ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/edit.
• For starting o with the Red & black theme: ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/redblack.

The GUI frontend ko

Build:

make ko

Install (use sudo, if needed):

make ko-install

Installing a symlink for launching ko with a light theme:

ln -sf /usr/bin/ko /usr/bin/lo

Terminal settings

Konsole

• Untick the Flow control option in the profile settings, to ensure that ctrl-s will never freeze the terminal.

Stars

General info

• Version: 2.55.1
• License: 3-clause BSD
• Author: Alexander F. Rødseth <[email protected]>