xi-term

Formerly xi-tui, xi-term is a terminal frontend for xi.

It is experimental and under development, so don't expect anything magical (yet!).

Installation

The frontend assumes that you have installed the core editor and is available in your PATH. The following should suffice:

git clone https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor
cd xi-editor/rust
cargo install --path .

# if you want syntax highlighting, you need to install the syntect plugin:
cd syntect-plugin
make install

# You need to add ~/.cargo/bin to your PATH
# (this is where `cargo install` places binaries).
# In your .bashrc (or equivalent), add `export PATH=$PATH:~/.cargo/bin`

Then you can clone this repository and run the frontend with cargo run --release -- <your_file>. your_file can be an existing file or any dummy name.

Logging

For debugging, it can be useful to have logs. You can specify a location for log files xi-term with -l <logfile>. Two files will be written:

• <logfile>: all the xi-term logs
• <logfile>.rpc: the RPC messages exchanged between the core and the frontend

Screenshots

Shortcuts

For now, there are only two shortcuts:

• ^w saves the current view
• ^c exits

Commands

xi-term supports a vim-like command prompt for executing commands, accessed via Alt-X.

Currently supported commands:

Short form	Long form	Description
q	quit	Quits xi-term
s	save	Saves the current file
o filename	open filename	Open filename for editing
b	backspace	Delete the previous character and move the cursor one position back
d	delete	Delete the character under the cursor
bn	next-buffer	Switch to the next buffer
bp	prev-buffer	Switch to the previous buffer
pd	page-down	Advance the current view by one page
pu	page-up	Move the current view back by one page
ml	move-left	Move the cursor one position left
mr	move-right	Move the cursor one position right
mu	move-up	Move the cursor one line up
md	move-down	Move the cursor one line down
t theme	theme theme-name	Set the theme to theme
ln	line-numbers	Toggle displaying line numbers

Future commands:

Short form	Long form	Description
c	close	Closes the current view
? string	search string	Search for string
sl	select-left	Move the cursor one position left and update the current selection accordingly
sr	select-right	Move the cursor one position right and update the current selection accordingly
su	select-up	Move the cursor one line up and update the current selection accordingly
sd	select-down	Move the cursor one line down and update the current selection accordingly

Preferences

Xi-core supports several user-configurable options through a preferences.xiconfig file. The default location for this is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xi/preferences.xiconfig, or, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, it defaults to $HOME/xi/preferences.xiconfig.

Caveats

Colors

If you have the syntect plugin installed, colors will be enabled by default, with two caveats:

• you must have true colors enabled. Otherwise, some portions of text won't be displayed
• the default theme is for dark backgrounds