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Ask HN: Anyone using their own custom text editor?

17 points by vasko ↗ HN
I don't think I've ever been truly happy with a text editor, the closes I got is my current neovim setup that has just way too many plugins but it still just isn't quite what I want. So I thought, how hard could it be to write one? Anyone gone down this road before?

8 comments

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marssaxman
I wrote my own editor, many years ago. I have been using it every day ever since, for all the coding work I do. It is a terminal program, so maintenance has not been burdensome.

https://www.github.com/marssaxman/ozette/

If I did it over again, I might use a rope instead of a line array as the central data structure, but it works well enough that I've never bothered to change it.

trashface
I made one using fltk for rust, but I only use it for my diary. They have an editor sample to get you started. I think its not a bad choice if you like rust. Like a true nerd, I also integrated my own homebrew scripting language.
MilnerRoute
Many years ago I wrote a "bespoke" blogging CMS just for a friend of mine. (The big innovation I'd wanted to try is JavaScript that would preview your post while you were typing it in...)

What I learned is it's fairly simple to make a text editor - but there's also the occasional fiddly little bug that has to be sorted out. (It could've also had security holes -- it was protected by obscurity...)

I was frustrated with downtime at my blogging site at the time -- but in the end I just switched to "live-editing" my blog posts directly on the server using Pico.

abstractspoon
Related: I wrote my own task manager which I've been using and maintaining 20+ years straight.
mircerlancerous
I feel the same as you on this. There's always something not quite right with one editor or another. I did start down the custom path by finding a very bare bones editor, so that I want starting from scratch. I was able to make changes and get it to good enough, but what I found is that there are lots of simple things that aren't always so simple. Things like auto-indenting for example look simple but can be fiddly, especially if you've mixed tabs and spaces. I might come back to it but for now, the other editors are also good enough.
haute_cuisine
You can check out the book "The Craft of Text Editing" by Craig A. Finseth
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