wafiwadud / cano

Text Editor Written In C Using ncurses

Cano

Cano (kay-no) is a VIM inspired modal-based text editor written in C using the ncurses library.

Icon made by LocalTexan

Quick Start

Cano has the following dependencies:

• GCC
• Make
• ncurses

1. Navigate to the Cano directory

cd path/to/cano

2. Run the make command

make -B

3. Launch Cano with the file you want to edit

./build/cano <filename>

Modes

Normal - For motions and deletion
Insert - For inserting text
Visual - For selecting text and performing actions on them
Search - For searching of text in the current buffer
Command - For executing commands

Keybinds

Mode	Keybind	Action
Global	Ctrl + Q	Quit (regardless of mode)
Global	Esc	Enter Normal Mode
Normal	h	Move cursor left
Normal	j	Move cursor down
Normal	k	Move cursor up
Normal	l	Move cursor right
Normal	x	Delete character
Normal	g	Go to first line
Normal	G	Go to last line
Normal	0	Go to beginning of line
Normal	$	Go to end of line
Normal	w	Go to next word
Normal	b	Go to last word
Normal	e	Go to end of next word
Normal	o	Create line below current
Normal	O	Create line above current
Normal	Ctrl + o	Create line below current without changing mode
Normal	%	Go to corresponding brace
Normal	i	Enter insert mode
Normal	I	Go to beginning of line
Normal	a	Insert mode on next char
Normal	A	Insert mode at end of line
Normal	v	Enter visual mode
Normal	V	Enter visual mode by line
Normal	u	Undo
Normal	U	Redo
Normal	/	Enter Search mode
Normal	n	Jump to next search
Normal	Ctrl + S	Save and exit
Normal	r	Replace current char with next char inputted
Normal	(n) + motion	Repeat next motion n times
Normal	(d) + motion	Delete characters of next motion n times
Normal	Ctrl + n	Open file explorer

Visual

Visual mode works the same as Normal mode, except it works on the entire selection, instead of character by character.

Keybind	Action
>	Indent current selection
<	Unindent current selection

Search

Search mode takes a string and finds it in the file. if prepended with 's/' then it will replace the first substring with the second.

Example: Using the following command

s/hello/goodbye

Will replace hello with goodbye.

Commands

Command	Action
set-output	change output file
echo (v)	echo value (v) where v is either an ident or a literal
we	Write and exit
e	Write without exiting
set-var (var) (value)	Change a config variable
set-map (a) "(b)"	Map key a to any combination of keys b
let (n) (v)	Create variable (n) with value (v)
!(command)	Execute a shell command

Special Keys

There are a couple special keys for the key remaps.

Key
<space>
<esc>
<backspace>
<enter>
<ctrl-t>

Config file

The config file is stored in ~/.config/cano/config.cano by default, or can be set at runtime like so:

./cano --config <config_file>

The format of the file is the same as commands, it is line separated, which is important. Example:

set-var syntax 1 
set-var indent 2 

There is a secondary config file, which is for custom syntax highlighting. It is stored in the same folder as the regular config, but uses a different naming format. An example is ~/.config/cano/c.cyntax (spelled cyntax, with a c). The c can be replaced with whatever the file extension of your language is, such as go.cyntax for Golang. Here is an example of a cyntax file:

k,170,68,68,
auto,struct,break,else,switch,case,
enum,register,typedef,extern,return,
union,continue,for,signed,void,do,
if,static,while,default,goto,sizeof,
volatile,const,unsigned.
t,255,165,0,
double,size_t,int,
long,char,float,short.
w,128,160,255.

There's a bit to unpack here, basically the single characters represent the type of the keywords: k - Keyword t - Type w - Word The type is then followed by the RGB values, all comma separated without spaces. After the RGB values, there is the actual keywords. End each type with a dot '.' as seen above, to indicate to Cano that the list is finished. The words are meant to be left blank, as it will highlight any words not found in the keywords above with the chosen RGB color. If you wish to only set the color, you can provide no keywords to any, and it will fill in the keywords with C keywords by default.

Config Variables

relative # toggle relative line numbers
auto-indent # toggle auto indentation on-off
syntax # toggle syntax highlighting on-off
indent # set indent
undo-size # size of undo history 

Installation

Arch

A package is provided within this AUR. You can install it using your preferred aur helper:

For instance, if using yay, do the following:

yay -S cano-git

Nix / NixOS

If you are using NixOS or have installed the nix package manager, you can run cano using the following command:

nix run github:CobbCoding1/Cano

A flake has been provided within the repository, including the package and a devShell.