Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/greenfork/kisa

Text editor of the new world
https://github.com/greenfork/kisa

console-application editor kisa modal-editing tui zig

Last synced: about 1 month ago
JSON representation

Text editor of the new world

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# Kisa



Kisa is a hackable and batteries-included text editor of the new world.



Home repository is on [sourcehut] but there's also a mirror on [GitHub].



[sourcehut]: https://git.sr.ht/~greenfork/kisa/

[GitHub]: https://github.com/greenfork/kisa



Kisa is in its early stage and it is not usable at the moment. See [roadmap]

for the current progress.



[roadmap]: https://greenfork.github.io/kisa/ROADMAP.html



There's a growing set of [design documents](design_docs/), beware most

of it is not implemented.



## Purpose



I, greenfork, the one who started this project, would like to have a

supreme code editor. I want to edit code with pleasure, I want to know

that whenever I feel something is not right - I have enough power to fix it,

but with great power comes great responsibility. I shall wield this power

with caution and I shall encourage my peers and empower them to follow

my steps and eventually let them lead me instead of simply being led.



## Zen



* Programmer must be able to perfect their tool.

* Choice is burden.

* Choice is freedom.



## Goals



* Provide a powerful and flexible code editor - obvious but worth saying,

  we should not provide anything less than that.

* Identify common workflows and set them in stone - text editing has become

  quite sophisticated in this day and age, we have already discovered a lot

  of editing capabilities. Now is the time to make them easy to use and fully

  integrated with the rest of the features of the editor, not rely on

  third-party plugins to emulate the necessary features.

* Adhere to hybrid Unix/Apple philosophy - programs must be able to communicate

  with each other, the editor must make integrations with other tools possible,

  this is from Unix philosophy. At the same time the editor must be built from

  ground-up and have full control of all its core features to provide a

  single and uniform way of doing things, this is from Apple philosophy.

* Make it infinitely extensible by design, no hard assumptions - the only types of

  unimplementable features are those which were not accounted for from the

  very beginning and got hardblocked by design decisions which are interleaved

  with the rest of the editor, so changing it is not feasible. The solution

  is simple - layers and layers of abstractions, assumptions are strictly

  kept to minimum by careful thinking about the public API design of each layer.

* Make it hackable - I believe there are several key points to make an editor

  hackable: interesting design, clean code, extensive development documentation,

  friendly attitude to anyone trying.



## Communication



* <~greenfork/[email protected]> - readonly mailing list for rare

  announcements regarding this project, [web archive][announce-list]. Subscribe

  to this list by sending any email to

  <~greenfork/[email protected]>.

* <~greenfork/[email protected]> - mailing list for discussions and

  sending patches, [web archive][devel-list]

*  - my personal email address

* [Discord] - real-time chatting experience

* [Twitch] - occasional streams including editor development

* [YouTube] - recordings of past streams and other related videos



Please be kind and understanding to everyone.



Are you new to mailing lists? Please check out [this tutorial](https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/).

There's also the [in-detail comparison video](https://youtu.be/XVe9SD3kSR0) of pull requests

versus patches.



[announce-list]: https://lists.sr.ht/~greenfork/kisa-announce

[devel-list]: https://lists.sr.ht/~greenfork/kisa-devel

[Discord]: https://discord.gg/p5892XNmAk

[Twitch]: https://www.twitch.tv/greenfork_gf

[YouTube]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinLbIxD_iIrByWR9fvO2kQ/videos



## Contributing



Ideas are very welcome. At this stage of the project the main task is to

shape its design and provide proof-of-concept implementations of these ideas.

Code contributions without previous discussions are unlikely to be accepted

so please discuss the design first. Ideas should be in-line with the current

goals and values of this editor. Many ideas will likely be rejected since not

all goals and values are identified, but nevertheless they will help us to

shape the editor.



For structured discussions please use <~greenfork/[email protected]> mailing list.



## How to build



Currently it is only relevant for the development, there's no usable

text editor (just yet).



Requirements:

- Zig master, currently 

- git



```

$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/greenfork/kisa

$ cd kisa

$ zig build test

$ zig build run

```



## Is this a task for a mere mortal?



Code editor is a big project. I have a habit of abandoning projects, I moderately

lose interest to them. I am not religious but God give me strength.



In the interview on [Zig Showtime] Andreas Kling, the author of [SerenityOS],

talks about how important it is to lay just one brick at a time. Let's try that.



[Zig Showtime]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_hCJI__q_4

[SerenityOS]: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity