Ox is a code editor that runs in your terminal.
Ox is a code editor. It was written in Rust. It is a refreshing alternative to heavy, resource hungry editors such as VS Code and JetBrains. Ox is lightweight so it can be used on older computers.
Bear in mind, this is a personal project and may not be ready to replace your existing tools just yet.
It runs in the terminal and runs on platforms like Linux and macOS but doesn't work on Windows directly (it works if you use WSL) due to a lack of a good command line. There are many text editors out there and each one of them has their strengths.
Ox is not based on any other editor and has been built from the ground up without any base at all.
Ox aims to be an editor that takes features from some of the most popular editors out there, while remaining flexible and versatile.
Vim http://vim.org: Vim provides a plugin system for adding features to it as it is very minimal and only provides basic text editing functionality by default. It is quite extensive and has its own programming language for configuring and writing plugins for it. It has a steep learning curve due to being a “modal” text editor, having special modes for editing text. Ox is easier to use than Vim because it doesn’t have modes where the keyboard is repurposed, however it takes the idea of being a keyboard-only editor and being able to act just like an IDE after some configuration.
Nano https://www.nano-editor.org/: Nano is an editor that is very simple to grasp due to its intuitive key bindings such as Ctrl S to save and Ctrl ? for the help menu etc. Ox took the idea for the key bindings from this editor, they are simple to remember, Ctrl F for “Find”, Ctrl Q for “Quit”, meaning that Ox doesn’t have as steep a learning curve.
Micro https://micro-editor.github.io/: Micro has a plugin system that is programmed with a language called Lua however I can’t seem to find any up to date plugins for it and it lacks features such as a file tree. It is micro that inspired me to look at adding mouse functionality and other features.
Emacs https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/: Emacs is still actively used today due to its freedom to modify and change the source code. Ox took the idea for the customization and extensibility of Emacs and made a configuration system where you can change the colours and appearance of the editor.
Xi https://xi-editor.io/: Xi is also written in Rust but is purely a backend at the moment, I decided to make Ox both a frontend and a backend because Xi has many frontends, but most of them are broken and it lacks a lot of features.
Kiro https://github.com/rhysd/kiro-editor: Kiro is an amazing text editor written in Rust and adds features such as Unicode support, a nicer colour scheme and small things like resizing and it is a very inspiring editor. Ox took the ideas for the improvements from Kiro, however implemented them differently. Kiro’s source code also seems to be quite advanced in some areas, so I decided to keep Ox as simple as I could.
Ox is super minimal and aims to use as few dependencies as possible, allowing for rapid compile time and a small binary.
- Rust language
- Kaolinite
- Synoptic
- Crossterm
- Mlua
- Jargon-args
- Regex
- Unicode-rs
- Quick-error
- Shellexpand
You can currently only build Ox from source. While this may sound daunting to many people, it really isn't that hard and takes 1 minute worst case scenario!
Because Ox is written in Rust, you must have a modern and working version of rustc and cargo.
On Arch Linux, you can run this command:
sudo pacman -S rustup
rustup toolchain install stableIf you are not using Arch, you can easily set it up on other distros by running the distro-neutral command:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
/usr/bin/rustup toolchain install stableYou must have curl installed in order to run this command.
Huge Warning: A lot of these (except manual) are quite out of date, it is quite a huge task having to push to all these sources each time I update
The absolute best way to install Ox, it will ensure you always have the latest version
cargo install --git https://github.com/curlpipe/oxInstall ox-bin or ox-git from the Arch User Repository.
That's all there is to it!
Install ox from the COPR Repository:
sudo dnf copr enable atim/ox -y
sudo dnf install ox
You can also find an rpm file in the releases page
You can find a deb file in the releases page
Install ox from Homebrew core tap.
brew install oxOn macOS, you can install ox via MacPorts
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install oxAt the moment, you can open ox by using the command
oxThis will open up an empty document.
If you wish to open a file straight from the command line, you can run
ox /path/to/fileTo open and edit a file.
You can also open a file from within Ox by using the Ctrl O Key binding
If at any time, you wish to create a new file, you can use Ctrl N to do so.
You can find more command line options for Ox by typing:
ox --helpYou can use the arrow keys to move the cursor around
You can also use:
- PageUp - Go to the top of the document
- PageDown - Go to the bottom of the document
- Home - Go to the start of the current line
- End - Go to the end of the current line
You can use the keys Backspace and Return / Enter as well as all the characters on your keyboard to edit files!
Ox is controlled via your keyboard shortcuts. Here are the default shortcuts that you can use:
| Keybinding | What it does |
|---|---|
Ctrl Q |
Exits the current tab or the editor if only one tab open. |
Ctrl S |
Saves the open file to the disk. |
Alt S |
Prompts you for a file name and saves it to disk as that file name. |
Ctrl A |
Saves all the currently open files to the disk. |
Ctrl N |
Creates a new tab with a blank document. |
Ctrl O |
Prompts you for a file and opens that file in a new tab. |
Ctrl F |
Searches the document for a search query. Allows pressing of ← to move the cursor to the previous occurance fof the query and → to move to the next occurance of the query. Press Return or Esc to leave the search. Note: you can use regular expressions for search queries. |
Ctrl Z |
Undoes your last action. The changes are committed to the undo stack every time you press the space bar, create / destroy a new line and when there is no activity after a certain period of time which can be used to capture points where you pause for thought or grab a coffee etc... |
Ctrl Y |
Redoes your last action. The changes are committed to the undo stack every time you press the space bar, create / destroy a new line and when there is no activity after a certain period of time which can be used to capture points where you pause for thought or grab a coffee etc... |
Ctrl R |
Allows replacing of occurances in the document. Uses the same keybindings as the search feature: ← to move the cursor to the previous occurance of the query and → to move to the next occurance of the query. You can also press Return to carry out the replace action. To exit replace mode once you're finished, you can press Esc. You can also use Space to replace every instance in the document at once. Note: you can use regular expressions for search queries. |
Ctrl K |
Opens the command line. |
Shift Left |
Navigates to the previous tab. |
Shift Right |
Navigates to the next tab. |
Ox features a configuration system that allows modification and personalization of the editor.
By default, Ox will look for a file here: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.oxrc or ~/.oxrc.
Ox's configuration language is Lua.
There is a default config in the 'config' folder for you to refer to. You can either download it and place it in the default config directory or create your own using the example ones as a reference. If you don't have a config file, don't worry, Ox will just use the default settings.
Distributed under the GNU GPLv2 License. See LICENSE for more information.
You can contact me on Discord at my handle curlpipe. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have!
- Curlpipe (Luke), for actually building Ox
- Spike, for the logo
- The community, for the ideas, suggestions and bug reports
