README (4186B)
1 sled - Simple text editor 2 ========================= 3 4 For installation instructions, see the file INSTALL. 5 6 7 Q&A 8 --- 9 10 Q: Why? 11 A: - Because newcomers don't find vi(m) comfortable. Something akin to EDIT.COM 12 is usually perceived as more familiar: type text straight away, C-S to 13 save, then C-Q. (Sled still has vim-like behavior, but it is "reverse" - 14 default is insert mode, from which you can enter command mode.) 15 - Because nano/joe are still relatively complicated. 16 - As an exercise in programming in C, and to create an editor to my own 17 liking, closer to suckless principles. 18 19 Q: Why can't sled open the file "read only" even if modification is disallowed? 20 A: A text editor's purpose should be to *edit* text files. For just *viewing* 21 text files, there's less(1). This avoids the situation when opening a file 22 one is not allowed to write to with an editor like vi(1), only to have write 23 operation denied after making numerous edits. 24 25 Of course, one could argue that screen editors like vi already double as 26 text file viewers, but I think of displaying the contents of a writable file 27 as being separate from displaying the contents of a non-writable file. 28 29 If this bothers you, you can use something like the included shell script 30 sledv. 31 32 Q: Is editing multiple files planned? 33 A: No, and this is by design. You can edit multiple files at the same time by 34 running multiple instances of sled. You can arrange them on screen through a 35 terminal multiplexer like GNU screen(1) or tmux(1), or just open several 36 terminal emulators like st(1) and have your window manager arrange their 37 windows. Inter-process "clipboard" can be managed by a terminal multiplexer 38 or X.Org itself. 39 40 Q: Is there a ~/.config/sled/config or ~/.sledrc? 41 A: No, and never will be. sled is intended to be configured through editing 42 config.h and recompilation, like suckless software. 43 44 Q: Are plugins planned? 45 A: No. Like suckless software, sled is meant to be extended through patches. 46 47 Q: Why doesn't sled have feature X from text editor Y? 48 A: Most likely because it is not essential to editing text files. However, you 49 are free to offer a patch supporting the feature, which will be included in 50 the repository, with credits to the author. 51 52 Q: How can I configure sled if I installed it (from AUR|through my distro's 53 package manager)? 54 A: You don't. If you want customization/configuration, clone the git repo, 55 customize and compile it from source, just like with suckless software. Some 56 options can be set/overridden per session on the command line, for example -B 57 turns off backups for that session, and -b turns them on. 58 59 Q: Why am I getting a "Permission denied" when trying to edit a file? 60 A: You either can't access the directory for writing and search (execute bit) 61 and haven't disabled the creation of backups nor set backup_fail to 0, or 62 can't access the file itself for writing. 63 64 Q: How to get crontab -e to work? 65 A: Set the backup_fail to 0 in config.h. If that fails, set create_backups to 0 66 in that file. 67 68 Q: Why are some wide characters covering the dialogs (help, search, replace)? 69 A: This is due to how wide characters work. The character is probably one cell 70 to the left of the border, and it needs two cells to be displayed. Writing 71 the border character one cell to the right is not enough, the previous 72 character would need to be overwritten by a single-cell character like Space. 73 Currently, termbox doesn't support getting the character from its display 74 buffer, which would enable testing for this case and handling it (but see 75 [1]). 76 77 78 [1]: https://github.com/termbox/termbox2/pull/65 79 80 81 License 82 ------- 83 84 sled - Simple text editor 85 Copyright (C) 2022-2026 Страхиња Радић 86 87 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under 88 the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 89 Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later 90 version. 91 92 File termbox.h is based on termbox2 TUI library, (c) 2021 termbox developers, 93 which is released under the terms of Expat license, see the file 94 LICENSE.termbox.