Kibi: A text editor in ≤1024 lines of code, written in Rust

A configurable text editor with UTF-8 support, incremental search, syntax highlighting, line numbers and more, written in less than 1024 lines1 of Rust with minimal dependencies.

Kibi is compatible with Linux, macOS, Windows 102, and WASI.

This project is inspired by kilo, a text editor written in C. See comparison below for a list of additional features.

Contributions are welcome! Be careful to stay below the 1024-line limit...

1.: Counted per platform, excluding tests and Clippy directives, see count_loc
2.: Kibi requires the terminal to support ANSI escape sequences. Windows 10 version 1703 (Creators Update, April 2017) and above are supported.

Table of contents

• Installation
  • With cargo
  • Arch User Repository (Arch Linux)
  • Android (with Termux)
  • Fedora/CentOS
  • NetBSD
  • Flatpak
• Usage
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Configuration
    • Global configuration
    • Syntax highlighting
• Comparison with kilo
• Contributing
• Dependencies
• Why Kibi?
• Contributors
• License

Installation

With cargo

You can install Kibi with cargo:

cargo install kibi

Syntax highlighting configuration files are available in the syntax.d directory of this repository. They need to be placed in one of the configuration directories mentioned in the Configuration/Syntax Highlighting section.

For instance:

cd ~/repos
git clone https://github.com/ilai-deutel/kibi.git
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/kibi/
ln -sr ./kibi/syntax.d ~/.local/share/kibi/syntax.d

Arch User Repository (Arch Linux)

2 packages are available on the AUR: kibi and kibi-git.

1. Installation with an AUR helper, for instance using yay:

   yay -Syu kibi  # or yay -Syu kibi-git
   

2. Install manually with makepkg:

   git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/kibi.git  # or git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/kibi-git.git
   cd kibi
   makepkg -si
   

Android (with Termux)

Kibi is available as a Termux package.

1. Install Termux:

   

2. Install Kibi within Termux: pkg install kibi

Fedora/CentOS

The package is available in COPR as atim/kibi.

sudo dnf copr enable atim/kibi -y
sudo dnf install kibi

NetBSD

Kibi is available from the official repos.

Install using:

pkgin install kibi

or build from source:

cd /usr/pkgsrc/editors/kibi
make install

Flatpak

Kibi is available on Flathub.

flatpak install flathub com.github.ilai_deutel.kibi

You can then run Kibi with:

flatpak run com.github.ilai_deutel.kibi

Usage

kibi              # Start an new text buffer
kibi <file path>  # Open a file
kibi --version    # Print version information and exit

Keyboard shortcuts

Configuration

Global configuration

Kibi can be configured using a configuration file. It must follow this format:

# The size of a tab. Must be > 0.
tab_stop=4
# The number of confirmations needed before quitting, when changes have been
# made since the file was last changed.
quit_times=2
# The duration for which messages are shown in the status bar, in seconds.
message_duration=3
# Whether to show line numbers.
show_line_numbers=true

The location of these files is described below.

Linux / macOS

kibi follows the XDG Base Directory Specification:

• A user-level configuration file can be located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kibi/config.ini if environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is defined, ~/.config/kibi/config.ini otherwise.
• A system-wide configuration file can be located at $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/kibi/config.ini if environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is defined, /etc/kibi/config.ini or /etc/xdg/kibi/config.ini otherwise.

Windows

A configuration file can be located at %APPDATA%\Kibi\config.ini.

Syntax highlighting

Syntax highlighting can be configured using INI files which follow this format:

### /usr/share/kibi/syntax.d/rust.ini ###
# Kibi syntax highlighting configuration for Rust

name=Rust
extensions=rs
highlight_numbers=true
singleline_string_quotes="
singleline_comment_start=//
multiline_comment_delims=/*, */
; In Rust, the multi-line string delimiter is the same as the single-line string
; delimiter
multiline_string_delim="
; https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/appendix-01-keywords.html
keywords_1=abstract, as, async, await, become, box, break, const, continue, crate, do, dyn, else, enum, extern, false, final, fn, for, if, impl, in, let, loop, macro, match, mod, move, mut, override, priv, pub, ref, return, self, Self, static, struct, super, trait, true, try, type, typeof, unsafe, unsized, use, virtual, where, while, yield
keywords_2=i8, i16, i32, i64, i128, isize, u8, u16, u32, u36, u128, usize, f32, f64, bool, char, str

The location of these files is described below.

Linux / macOS

kibi follows the XDG Base Directory Specification:

• User-level syntax highlighting configuration files can be located at $XDG_DATA_HOME/kibi/syntax.d/<file_name>.ini if environment variable $XDG_DATA_HOME is defined, ~/.local/share/kibi/syntax.d/<file_name>.ini otherwise.
• System-wide syntax highlighting configuration files can be located at $XDG_DATA_DIRS/kibi/syntax.d/<file_name>.ini if environment variable $XDG_DATA_DIRS is defined, /usr/local/share/kibi/syntax.d/<file_name>.ini or /usr/share/kibi/syntax.d/<file_name>.ini otherwise.

Windows

Syntax highlighting configuration files can be located at %APPDATA%\Kibi\syntax.d\<file_name>.ini.

Comparison with kilo

This project is inspired by kilo, a text editor written by Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez) in C, and this tutorial (also in C).

kibi provides additional features:

• Support for UTF-8 characters
• Compatibility with Windows
• Command to jump to a given row/column
• Handle window resize (UNIX only)
• Parsing configuration files: global editor configuration, language-specific syntax highlighting configuration (38 languages and counting)
• Display line numbers on the left of the screen; display file size in the status bar
• Syntax highlighting: multi-line strings
• Save as prompt when no file name has been provided
• Command to duplicate the current row, to quickly move between words
• Ability to execute an external command from the editor and paste its output
• Memory safety, thanks to Rust!
• Many bug fixes

Contributing

The most important limitation is that the line check the line count remains under 1024. To check this run:

cargo xtask count-loc

Dependencies

This project must remain tiny, so using advanced dependencies such as ncurses, toml or ansi-escapes would be cheating.

The following dependencies provide wrappers around system calls.

• On UNIX systems (Linux, macOS):
  • libc
• On Windows:
  • winapi
  • winapi-util

In addition, unicode-width is used to determine the displayed width of Unicode characters. Unfortunately, there is no way around it: the unicode character width table is 230 lines long.

Why Kibi?

1. Porting the kilo source code from C to Rust and trying to make it idiomatic was interesting
2. Implementing new features while under the 1024-line constraint is a good challenge
3. Most importantly, I wanted to learn Rust and this was a great project to start (thanks Reddit for the idea)

Contributors

This project follows the all-contributors specification (emoji key). Contributions of any kind welcome!

License

This project is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0
• MIT License

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in Kibi by you shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.