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https://github.com/google/xi-editor

A modern editor with a backend written in Rust.
https://github.com/google/xi-editor

Last synced: 3 months ago
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A modern editor with a backend written in Rust.

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README 

        
# Xi editor



***Maintenance status:*** *The xi-editor project is currently discontinued. Although we will happily accept bug fixes, no new features are currently planned. You may be interested in [the Lapce editor](https://github.com/lapce/lapce), which can be considered a spiritual successor to the xi-editor.

— The Editors



***Note:*** *This repo contains only the editor core, which is not usable on its own. For editors based on it, check out the list in [Frontends](#frontends).*



The xi-editor project is an attempt to build a high quality text editor,

using modern software engineering techniques. It is initially built for

macOS, using Cocoa for the user interface. There are also frontends for

other operating systems available from third-party developers.



Goals include:



* ***Incredibly high performance***. All editing operations should commit and paint

  in under 16ms. The editor should never make you wait for anything.



* ***Beauty***. The editor should fit well on a modern desktop, and not look like a

  throwback from the ’80s or ’90s. Text drawing should be done with the best

  technology available (Core Text on Mac, DirectWrite on Windows, etc.), and

  support Unicode fully.



* ***Reliability***. Crashing, hanging, or losing work should never happen.



* ***Developer friendliness***. It should be easy to customize xi editor, whether

  by adding plug-ins or hacking on the core.



**Learn more** with the creator of Xi, Raph Levien, in this [Recurse Center Localhost talk](https://www.recurse.com/events/localhost-raph-levien

).



Screenshot:



![xi-mac screenshot](/docs/docs/img/xi-mac-screenshot.png?raw=true)



## Getting started



This repository is the core only. You'll also need a front-end, from the list

below.



### Building the core



Xi-editor targets 'recent stable Rust'. We recommend installing via [rustup](https://www.rustup.rs).

The current minimum supported version is 1.40.



To build the xi-editor core from the root directory of this repo:



```

> cd rust

> cargo build

```



## Frontends



Here are some front-ends in various stages of development:



* [xi-mac](https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-mac), the official macOS front-end.



* [xi-gtk](https://github.com/eyelash/xi-gtk), a GTK+ front-end.



* [xi-term](https://github.com/xi-frontend/xi-term), a text UI.



* [xi-electron](https://github.com/acheronfail/xi-electron), a cross-platform front-end based on web-technologies.



* [Tau](https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Tau), a GTK+ front-end written in Rust. Forked from https://github.com/bvinc/gxi, which was abandoned.



* [xi-win](https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-win), an experimental Windows front-end written in Rust.



* [kod](https://github.com/linde12/kod), a terminal frontend written in Golang.



* [xi-qt](https://github.com/sw5cc/xi-qt), a Qt front-end.



* [vixi](https://github.com/Peltoche/vixi), a Vim like front-end in Rust.



The following are currently inactive, based on earlier versions of the front-end

protocol, but perhaps could be revitalized:



* [xi_glium](https://github.com/potocpav/xi_glium), an

experimental GL-based front-end in Rust.



* [XiEditorVS2015](https://github.com/Sineaggi/XiEditorVS2015), C#.



* [xi-android](https://github.com/adrientetar/xi-android), an Android frontend.



There are notes (I wouldn’t call it

documentation at this point) on the protocol at

[frontend.md](https://xi-editor.github.io/xi-editor/docs/frontend-protocol.html). If you're working on a front-end, feel free to

send a PR to add it to the above list.



## Design decisions



Here are some of the design decisions, and motivation why they should

contribute to the above goals:



* ***Separation into front-end and back-end modules***. The front-end is responsible for presenting the user interface and

  drawing a screen full of text. The back-end (also known as “core”) holds the file buffers and is

  responsible for all potentially expensive editing operations.



* ***Native UI***. Cross-platform UI toolkits never look and feel quite right. The

  best technology for building a UI is the native framework of the platform.

  On Mac, that’s Cocoa.



* ***Rust***. The back-end needs to be extremely performant. In particular, it

  should use little more memory than the buffers being edited. That level of

  performance is possible in C++, but Rust offers a much more reliable, and

  in many ways, higher level programming platform.



* ***A persistent rope data structure***. Persistent ropes are efficient even for

  very large files. In addition, they present a simple interface to their

  clients - conceptually, they're a sequence of characters just like a string,

  and the client need not be aware of any internal structure.



* ***Asynchronous operations***. The editor should never, ever block and prevent the

  user from getting their work done. For example, autosave will spawn a

  thread with a snapshot of the current editor buffer (the persistent rope

  data structure is copy-on-write so this operation is nearly free), which can

  then proceed to write out to disk at its leisure, while the buffer is still

  fully editable.



* ***Plug-ins over scripting***. Most text editors have an associated scripting

  language for extending functionality. However, these languages are usually

  both more arcane and less powerful than “real” languages. The xi editor will

  communicate with plugins through pipes, letting them be written in any

  language, and making it easier to integrate with other systems such as

  version control, deeper static analyzers of code, etc.



* ***JSON***. The protocol for front-end / back-end communication, as well as

  between the back-end and plug-ins, is based on simple JSON messages. I

  considered binary formats, but the actual improvement in performance would

  be completely in the noise. Using JSON considerably lowers friction for

  developing plug-ins, as it’s available out of the box for most modern

  languages, and there are plenty of the libraries available for the other

  ones.



## Current status



This is still a project in its early stages. The Mac build has basic editing

functionality (it was used to write this README), but looks very spare and

is still missing essentials such as auto-indent. At the moment, it’s expected

that its main community will be developers interested in hacking on a text

editor.



## Authors



The xi-editor project was started by Raph Levien but has since received

contributions from a number of other people. See the [AUTHORS](AUTHORS)

file for details.



## License



This project is licensed under the Apache 2 [license](LICENSE).



## Contributions



We gladly accept contributions via GitHub pull requests. Please see

[CONTRIBUTING.md](.github/CONTRIBUTING.md) for more details.



If you are interested in contributing but not sure where to start, there is an

active Zulip channel at #xi-editor on https://xi.zulipchat.com. There is also

a #xi channel on irc.mozilla.org. Finally, there is a subreddit at

[/r/xi_editor](https://www.reddit.com/r/xi_editor/).