GitHub - xyproto/orbiton: Config-free text editor and IDE limited to VT100. Suit...

Orbiton 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 poetry with the help of ChatGPT, directly in the editor.
• Being placed on a live image for a Linux or BSD distro, since it supports VT100, is small and self-contained, has a built-in log, man page and image viewer, can be used as EDITOR=o visudo and has built-in support for editing and formatting /etc/fstab files.

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 og 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:

Editing a C source file in og using the "synthwave" theme:

Packaging status

Quick start

With Go 1.17 or later, the development version of o can be installed like this:

go install github.com/xyproto/orbiton/v2@latest && mv -i ~/go/bin/orbiton ~/go/bin/o

Adjust the mv flags and the ~/go/bin path as needed. Perhaps go install will have an -o flag in the future.

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

curl -sL 'https://github.com/xyproto/orbiton/releases/download/2.60.4/orbiton-2.60.4-linux_armv7_static.tar.xz' | tar axC /tmp && sudo install -Dm755 /tmp/orbiton-2.60.4-linux_armv7_static/o /usr/bin/o && sudo install -Dm644 /tmp/orbiton-2.60.4-linux_armv7_static/o.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/o.1.gz

Setting o as the default editor for git

To set:

git config --global core.editor o

To unset:

git config --global --unset core.editor

Generate code automatically

• Make sure the CHATGPT_API_KEY environment variable is set. An API key can be aquired at openai.com.
• Press return after writing ie. !write a function that adds two numbers or // Write a function that adds two numbers.
• Watch syntax highlighted code being generated in front of your eyes. ChatGPT generates the code.
• Press Esc to stop code from being generated.
• Set CHATGPT_TEMPERATURE to ie. 0.75 to make the output more random. It's a value from 0 to 1 and the default for code is 0.

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-w or 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.
• When jumping to a specific line in a file with ctrl-l, jumping to a percentage (like 50%) or a fraction (like 0.5 or .5) is also possible.
• 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.
• Search by pressing ctrl-f, entering text and pressing return. Replace by pressing tab instead of return, then enter the replacement text and press return. Searching for unicode runes on the form u+0000 is also supported.
• 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.
• For C-like languages, missing parentheses are added to statements like if, for and while when return is pressed.
• Generate code by using the ChatGPT API, directly in a source file. See the section above.

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.
• Can preview .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .ico, .bmp or .webp images directly in the terminal (using a scaled down version and up to 16 colors).
• 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, konsole, st, urxvt, xfce4-terminal, xterm and zutty.
• Tested on Arch Linux, Debian, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
• 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. And for browsing up and down, ctrl-n and ctrl-p must be used. PgUp and PgDn can be used with the GUI frontend, but are not recognized by VT100.
• 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, wl-clipboard for Wayland or pbcopy for macOS needs to be installed to access the system clipboard.
• 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.
• If the editor executable is renamed to a word starting with s (or have a symlink with that name), the default theme will be the "synthwave" theme.
• Want to quickly convert Markdown to PDF and have pandoc installed? Try o filename.md, press ctrl-space and quit with ctrl-q.
• 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.
• 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.
• Can load, edit and save gzipped text files or man pages that ends with a .gz extension.
• Has fewer hotkeys to learn than GNU Nano.

Known issues

• Using tmux and resizing the terminal emulator window may trigger text rendering issues. Try pressing esc to redraw the text, or ctrl-f to search for 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). To sidestep this issue, the ctrl-o menu can be used instead, 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.
• Pressing 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.
• Pressing cmd-v, cmd-x and cmd-c on macOS only works when using the og GUI frontend. For o, ctrl-v, ctrl-x and ctrl-c must be used instead, for now.
• 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), or cycle git rebase keywords.
• 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 Esc 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.

Build and format

• Press ctrl-space to build or export the current file.
• Press ctrl-w to format the current file, in an opinionated way. If the current file is empty, a "Hello, World!" template will be inserted, for some file extensions.

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

• 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.

Manual installation on Linux

git clone https://github.com/xyproto/orbiton
cd orbiton
make && sudo make install

And optionally:

make gui && sudo make gui-install

It is also possible to install the symlinks that are suggested further down in this document.

OpenBSD installation instructions

Install dependencies (use doas if needed):

add_pkg git gmake go vte3

Build both the editor o and the GUI frontend og:

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

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

PREFIX=/usr/local gmake install og-install

It is also possible to install the symlinks that are suggested further down in this document.

Dependencies

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

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

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

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

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 files 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

Scala

For Scala, this is the code that is used 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 need scala to run.

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 being installed, and will only work for some PKGBUILD files.

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

• The o executable is 1.5M when built with GCC 12.60.4 (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 (in the v2 directory):

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

If the o executable is built with Go 1.20 instead, the size can be 8.7M, or just 2.8M when packed with upx:

go build -mod=vendor -ldflags='-s -w' -trimpath -o o && upx --best --lzma o

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 o {} $2 \;; }

If too many files are found, it is possible to stop opening them by selecting Stop parent and quit without saving from the ctrl-o menu, which will quit the editor and also kill the parent find process.

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 eggs

• Press the Konami code keys while in the ctrl-o menu to start a silly little game about feeding creatures with pellets before they are eaten. Alternatively, create a symlink for starting it directly with ie.: ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/feedgame.
• Press right, down, left or left, down, right in rapid succession followed by either down to save or up to save and quit. The only purpose of this unusual shortcut is to help avoid the painful Emacs pinky.

Included executables

• o - for terminal emulators that supports at least VT100
• og - for the VTE GUI (optional)

Recommended symlinks

# For starting o with the Light theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/li
# For starting o with the Red/Black theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/redblack
# For starting o with the Synthwave theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/sw
# For starting o with the Blue Edit theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/edi
# For starting o with the Light VS theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/o /usr/bin/vs

# For starting the GUI version of o with the Light theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/og /usr/bin/lig
# For starting the GUI version of o with the Red/Black theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/og /usr/bin/redblackg
# For starting the GUI version of o with the Synthwave theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/og /usr/bin/swg
# For starting the GUI version of o with the Blue Edit theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/og /usr/bin/edig
# For starting the GUI version of o with the Light VS theme
ln -sf /usr/bin/og /usr/bin/vsg

The GUI frontend og

Build:

make og

Install (use sudo, if needed):

make og-install

Terminal settings

Konsole

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

About the name

Stars

General info

• Version: 2.60.4
• License: 3-clause BSD
• Author: Alexander F. Rødseth <[email protected]>