Feud is a text editor based on Scintilla and written in Nim

The primary focus is performance and minimal memory and CPU usage. All functionality is implemented with the plugin system which exposes the internals for easy extensibility. The feature list is effectively the list of plugins and their capabilities.

Feud is built with Nim which is key in achieving its performance goals - both in terms of user and developer experience.

Feud only supports Windows but aims to be cross-platform once basic functionality is implemented. Syntax highlighting and themes are supported.

Navigation

Use the ^E hotkey to bring up the command popup to run any of the following commands. This runs the togglePopup command internally.

The command popup stores the history of past commands which can be recalled with the Up and Down arrows.

Opening files:

newDoc                 - open a new buffer

open path\to\file.txt  - open specific file
open ..\*.nim          - open all files that match wildcard
open path\to\dir       - open all files in directory
open                   - open selected text

Recursive search
open -r file.txt       - open file.txt in current dir tree
open -r path\to\file.c - open file.c in path\to dir tree
open -r *.nim          - open all nim files in current dir tree
open -r path\to\*.c    - open all c files in path\to tree
open -r                - open selected text recursively

Fuzzy search
open -f fl             - fuzzy find file in current dir tree
open -f path\to\fl     - fuzzy find file in path\to dir tree
open -f                - fuzzy find selected text

reload                 - reload current buffer
reloadAll              - reload all buffers
save                   - save current buffer
saveAs <fullpath>      - save current buffer to new path

Drag and drop of files is supported. The current directory changes to the path of the currently loaded file if file:fileChdir is set to true. Files are also automatically reloaded if they changed while working on another file or application and there are no unsaved modifications.

Changing directories:

cd                     - show current directory
cd path                - change directory to path if it exists
cd file                - change directory to file location
cd $                   - change directory to current buffer's location
cd -                   - change back to previous directory
cd +                   - change back to next directory

Switching buffers:

open path\to\file      - switch to buffer if already open
open 4                 - switch by buffer number
open patfi             - fuzzy search to find buffer
prev                   - switch to previous buffer
next                   - switch to next buffer
last                   - switch to last buffer

Closing files:

close                  - close current buffer
close X                - close buffer similar to switching
closeAll               - close all open buffers

Search & Replace:

search string          - search for string
search -r string       - search backwards for string
search -c strinG       - case sensitive search
search -w word         - whole word search
search -p str\ning     - posix search with escaped chars
search -x re.*?gex     - basic regular expression search
search -X re.*?gex     - full C++11 regex search

replace srch repl      - replace srch with repl
replace -a srch repl   - replace all instances of srch with repl

Windows:

newWindow              - open a new editor window
closeWindow            - close current window

Buffer actions:

toggleComment          - comment / uncomment selection or line

Shell:

! command              - Run command and print output to new buffer
!> command             - Run command and print output in active buffer
| command              - Pipe selected or all text to command stdin and
                         print output to new buffer
|> command             - Pipe selected or all text to command stdin and
                         print output to active buffer

Hotkeys:

! = Alt
^ = Ctrl
+ = Shift
# = Win
* = Global

hotkey ^n newWindow    - create a new app-local hotkey
hotkey ^n              - remove registered hotkey

Special key notation:
F1, F2 ... Tab, PgDn, PgUp, Home, End

Hotkeys can map to a complete command with params to speed up common tasks.

Most of the standard hotkeys are pre-defined in feud.ini.

Aliases:

alias o open           - create a short alias for the open command
alias n open *.nim     - alias with params

Gist:

gist                   - create gist of selection or buffer on http://ix.io and copy URL to clipboard
getGist http://url     - load gist into a new buffer

Configuration file

feud.ini is effectively a list of editor and plugin commands to run on load. This includes setting up hooks that allow customization of plugin and editor behavior.

Reload configuration with command config.

Command Line and Scripting

Any plugin command that can be run from the GUI and configuration file can also be passed to feud via the command line: feud "open file.nim".

It is also possible to create a text file with multiple commands, similar to the configuration file and have it executed via a script command. This can help with automation of frequent tasks.

# cmds.ini
open file.nim
search text
save
quit

script cmds.ini

The script interface will be used to automate testing of all feud capabilities.

Scintilla

The eMsg command can be used to send any message to the current editor window. This allows plugins and the user to perform many common and advanced tasks directly without having to author a plugin.

eMsg SCI_SETUSETABS 0  - set Scintilla to replace tabs with spaces
eMsg SCI_SETTABWIDTH 2 - set Scintilla to set tab width to 2

The -v flag prints the return value of the eMsg call and the -p flag directs the command to the popup associated with the active window.

The full documentation for Scintilla is available here.

Settings and Hooks

Plugin authors can make their plugins customizable by using the settings functionality. The config plugin provides a get command which can be called using handleCommand() in the plugin code. The set command will typically be used in feud.ini or similar configuration files.

set theme:fgColor 0xDDDDDD

Plugin authors can also use hooks to allow users to run custom commands at specific points in their code. For example, the file plugin enables two hooks: postFileLoad and postFileSwitch. This allows a user to run custom commands at that point. For example:

hook postFileSwitch eMsg SCI_SETUSETABS 0
hook postFileSwitch eMsg SCI_SETTABWIDTH 2

This now runs these two eMsg commands whenever you switch buffers. The plugin would need to run the runHook name command internally. Feud also provides a global onReady hook that can be used by plugins to run tasks once everything is loaded and ready to go.

runHook can pass params to the hook to provide relevant context. For example, runHook preCloseWindow winid in the window plugin provides hooks the context of which window is about to close. This can then be leveraged in the unload callback as a param when setup as a hook: hook preCloseWindow unload.

Hooks can be deleted with delHook name.

Remote Navigation

Feud has an RPC plugin that allows remote navigation. The feudc command-line tool can be used to remote control a local or remote GUI instance. It is based on the nng bus protocol so it should be possible to connect from any programming language with nng bindings. Following is an example of connecting from Python:

import pynng
bus = pynng.Bus0()
bus.dial("ipc:///tmp/feud")
bus.send("open test.nim".encode("utf-8"))
bus.close()

All commands that can be run within the editor can be invoked this way.

Commands: initRemote restartRemote stopRemote sendRemote

Feedback

Feud is a work in progress and any feedback or suggestions are welcome. It is hosted on GitHub with an MIT license so issues, forks and PRs are most appreciated.

Credits

https://nim-lang.org https://www.scintilla.org https://github.com/nanomsg/nng https://github.com/forrestthewoods/lib_fts