oi

README

oi is a text editor.

It might be a good fit for:

• Editing git commit messages (using EDITOR=oi 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 one-letter package names.

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

Screenshot

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

Packaging status

Quick start

With Go 1.17 or later, oi can be installed like this:

go install github.com/xyproto/oi@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/oi/releases/download/1.0.0/oi-1.0.0-rpi.tar.xz' | tar JxC /tmp && sudo install -Dm755 /tmp/oi-1.0.0-rpi/o /usr/bin/o && sudo install -Dm644 /tmp/oi-1.0.0-rpi/oi.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/oi.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 oi 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 oi for viewing man pages:

export MANPAGER=o

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

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

Unique features

These features are unique to oi, 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, 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.
• All text will be red if the loaded file is read-only.
• 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.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• oi is written mostly in oi, 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 bugs

• 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 oi 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 oi). 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.
• oi 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, 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. The first menu item is always Save and quit.
• 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. Follows by 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.
• esc - Redraw the screen and clear the last search.
• 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.

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.

• The Guessica package update utility is available here: guessica.

Build and format

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

Programming language	File extensions	Jump to error	Build command	Format command ($filename is a temporary file)
Go	.go	yes	go build	goimports -w -- $filename
C++	.cpp, .cc, .cxx, .h, .hpp, .c++, .h++, .c	yes	cxx	clang-format -fallback-style=WebKit -style=file -i -- $filename
Rust	.rs	yes	rustc $filename	rustfmt $filename
Rust, if Cargo.toml or ../Cargo.toml exists	.rs	yes	cargo build	rustfmt $filename
Zig	.zig	yes	zig build-exe -lc $filename	zig fmt $filename
V	.v	yes	v build	v fmt $filename
Haskell	.hs	yes	ghc -dynamic $filename	brittany --write-mode=inplace $filename
Python	.py	yes	python -m py_compile $filename	autopep8 -i --maxline-length 120 $filename
Crystal	.cr	yes	crystal build --no-color $filename	crystal tool format $filename
Kotlin	.kt	yes	kotlinc $filename -include-runtime -d	ktlint
Kotlin, if kotlinc-native is installed	.kt	yes	kotlinc-native -nowarn -opt -Xallocator=mimalloc -produce program -linker-option '--as-needed' $filename	ktlint
Java	.java	yes	javac + jar, see details below	google-java-format -i $filename
Scala	.scala	yes	scalac + jar, see details below	WIP
Lua	.lua	yes	luac	lua-format -i --no-keep-simple-function-one-line --column-limit=120 --indent-width=2 --no-use-tab $filename
Object Pascal	.pas, .pp, .lpr	yes	fpc	WIP
Nim	.nim	WIP	nim c	WIP
Odin	.odin	yes	odin build	N/A
C#	.cs	yes	csc -nologo -unsafe $filename	astyle -mode=cs main.cs
JavaScript	.js	WIP		prettier --tab-width 4 -w $filename
TypeScript	.ts	WIP		WIP
D	.d	yes	gdc	WIP
Clojure	.clj, .cljs, .clojure	WIP	lein uberjar	WIP
Standard ML	.sml	yes	mlton	WIP
OCaml	.ml	WIP	ocamlopt -o $executable $filename	WIP
Agda	.agda	yes	agda -c $filename	N/A

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

Markup language	File extensions	Jump to error	Format command ($filename is a temporary file)
HTML	.htm, .html	no	tidy -w 120 -q -i -utf8 --show-errors 0 --show-warnings no --tidy-mark no --force-output yes -ashtml -omit no -xml no -m -c

• oi 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.

File type	File extensions	Build or export command
AsciiDoc	.adoc	asciidoctor -b manpage (writes to out.1)
scdoc	.scd, .scdoc	scdoc (writes to out.1)
Markdown	.md	pandoc -N --toc -V geometry:a4paper (writes to $filename.pdf)

Manual installation

On Linux:

git clone https://github.com/xyproto/o
cd o
go build -mod=vendor
sudo install -Dm755 o /usr/bin/o
gzip oi.1
sudo install -Dm644 oi.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/oi.1.gz

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. This file can only be run with the scala command.

A note about Agda

• After pressing ctrl-t to insert a symbol:
  • Pressing t is a shortcut for inserting ⊤.
  • Pressing n is a shortcut for inserting ℕ.

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 oi
• 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 oi 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 9.5M when built with Go 1.17 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 oi, which will execute 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.
• Export 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 oi with the light theme: ln -sf /usr/bin/oi /usr/bin/lighted.
• For starting oi with the red/black theme: ln -sf /usr/bin/oi /usr/bin/redblack.

The GUI frontend goi

Build:

make

Install:

make gui-install

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: 1.0.0
• License: 3-clause BSD
• Author: Alexander F. Rødseth <xyproto@archlinux.org>