Notepad

A Vim-inspired modal text editor built with Rust and ratatui, providing a lightweight, terminal-based editing experience with familiar Vim keybindings.

Features

Modal Editing

• Normal Mode - Navigate and manipulate text with powerful Vim motions
• Insert Mode - Type and edit text naturally
• Visual Mode - Select text character-by-character for operations
• Visual Line Mode - Select entire lines for batch operations
• Command Mode - Execute Ex-style commands (:w, :q, :wq, etc.)
• Search Mode - Search forward (/) or backward (?) with regex patterns
• Replace Mode - Overwrite existing text character by character

Vim-Compatible Keybindings

Motions

• h/j/k/l - Left/Down/Up/Right navigation
• w/W - Jump forward to word start
• b/B - Jump backward to word start
• e/E - Jump forward to word end
• 0 - Jump to line start
• $ - Jump to line end
• ^ - Jump to first non-whitespace character
• gg - Jump to file start
• G - Jump to file end or specific line
• % - Jump to matching bracket
• f/F/t/T - Find characters forward/backward

Operators

• d - Delete (with motions: dw, dd, d$, etc.)
• c - Change (delete and enter insert mode)
• y - Yank/copy to register
• > - Indent
• < - Outdent

Text Objects

• iw/aw - Inner/around word
• i"/a", i'/a' - Inner/around quotes
• ib/ab, iB/aB - Inner/around parentheses/braces
• i[/a[ - Inner/around brackets
• i</a< - Inner/around angle brackets

Editing

• i/I/a/A/o/O - Enter insert mode at various positions
• x/X - Delete character under/before cursor
• r - Replace single character
• ~ - Toggle case
• s/S - Substitute character/line
• J - Join lines
• u - Undo
• Ctrl+r - Redo
• . - Repeat last change (dot-repeat)

Visual Mode

• v - Enter character-wise visual mode
• V - Enter line-wise visual mode
• Motion keys to extend selection
• Operators (d, y, c) on selected text

Search & Replace

• /pattern - Search forward with regex
• ?pattern - Search backward with regex
• n/N - Repeat search forward/backward
• * - Search for word under cursor
• :s/old/new/ - Substitute on current line
• :%s/old/new/g - Global substitute
• :noh - Clear search highlighting

Marks

• m{a-z} - Set mark
• '{a-z} - Jump to mark (line-wise)
• `{a-z}` - Jump to mark (precise position)

Scrolling

• Ctrl+d/Ctrl+u - Half-page down/up
• Ctrl+f/Ctrl+b - Full page down/up
• zz/zt/zb - Center/top/bottom current line

Command Mode

• :w - Save file
• :q - Quit (fails if unsaved)
• :q! - Quit without saving
• :wq / :x - Save and quit
• :w {filename} - Save as
• :e {filename} - Edit file
• :{line} - Jump to line number
• :noh - Clear search highlights

Additional Features

• Count prefixes - Use numbers before commands (e.g., 3w, 5dd)
• Undo/Redo stack - Up to 1000 undo levels
• Registers - Single register for yank/delete/paste operations
• Regex search - Full regex support via the regex crate
• Auto-indentation - Preserves indentation on new lines
• Status bar - Shows mode, filename, modification status, and cursor position
• Line numbers - Relative line number display in the gutter
• Search highlighting - Visual highlighting of search matches

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.75+ (Edition 2024)
• A terminal emulator with UTF-8 support

Build from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/notepad.git
cd notepad

# Build in release mode
cargo build --release

# Run
./target/release/notepad [filename]

Install via Cargo

cargo install --path .

Usage

# Open a file
notepad myfile.txt

# Start with empty buffer
notepad

Key Commands Quick Reference

Action	Command
Enter insert mode	i (at cursor), a (after), I (line start), A (line end)
Save file	:w
Quit	:q or :q! (discard changes)
Save and quit	:wq or :x
Undo	u
Redo	Ctrl+r
Delete word	dw
Delete line	dd
Copy line	yy
Paste	p (after), P (before)
Search forward	/pattern
Search backward	?pattern
Repeat search	n / N

Architecture

The editor is organized into the following modules:

• buffer - Text buffer management (load, save, insert, delete)
• editor - Core editor state and high-level operations
• mode - Editing mode enumeration and display
• motion - Cursor movement commands (h, j, k, l, w, b, e, etc.)
• operator - Text operators (delete, change, yank, indent) and text objects
• keymap - Key event handling and mode-specific input processing
• command - Ex-style command execution and search/replace
• render - Terminal UI rendering with ratatui

Dependencies

• ratatui (0.28) - Terminal UI framework
• crossterm (0.28) - Terminal manipulation (input, screen control)
• regex (1.x) - Regular expression search
• unicode-width (0.1) - Unicode character width calculation

Configuration

The editor uses optimized release settings for minimal binary size and maximum performance:

[profile.release]
opt-level = "z"      # Optimize for size
lto = true           # Link-time optimization
codegen-units = 1    # Single codegen unit for better optimization
strip = true         # Strip symbols
panic = "abort"      # Abort on panic (smaller binary)

License

MIT License

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by Vim modal editing philosophy
• Built with ratatui terminal UI framework
• Uses crossterm for terminal manipulation