Show HN: Fresh – A new terminal editor built in Rust (sinelaw.github.io)
Core Philosophy:
- Ease-of-Use: Fundamentally non-modal. Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve.
- Efficiency: Uses a lazy-loading piece tree to avoid loading huge files into RAM - reads only what's needed for user interactions. Coded in Rust.
- Extensibility: Uses TypeScript (via Deno) for plugins, making it accessible to a large developer base.
The Performance Challenge:
I focused on resource consumption and speed with large file support as a core feature. I did a quick benchmark loading a 2GB log file with ANSI color codes. Here is the comparison against other popular editors:
- Fresh: Load Time: *~600ms* | Memory: *~36 MB*
- Neovim: Load Time: ~6.5 seconds | Memory: ~2 GB
- Emacs: Load Time: ~10 seconds | Memory: ~2 GB
- VS Code: Load Time: ~20 seconds | Memory: OOM Killed (~4.3 GB available)
Development process:
I embraced Claude Code and made an effort to get good mileage out of it. I gave it strong specific directions, especially in architecture / code structure / UX-sensitive areas. It required constant supervision and re-alignment, especially in the performance critical areas. Added very extensive tests (compared to my normal standards) to keep it aligned as the code grows. Especially, focused on end-to-end testing where I could easily enforce a specific behavior or user flow.
Fresh is an open-source project (GPL-2) seeking early adopters. You're welcome to send feedback, feature requests, and bug reports.
Website: https://sinelaw.github.io/fresh/
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh
61 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 82.3 ms ] thread- Homebrew (MacOS)
- Arch Linux AUR
- Debian/Ubuntu .deb
- Fedora/RHEL .rpm
as well as cargo install (which builds from source), npm, npx or building from source by cloning
[1] https://fresh.deno.dev/
I once started writing a text editor on Linux, and first went down a similar route: a piece table over a mmap()'d file. But I abandoned using mmap, because Linux file systems typically don't have mandatory locking enabled, so you can't be sure that the file data won't be modified by another program.
(Then I got bogged down in Unicode handling... so 95% of the code became just about that, and I tired of it)
I'm on MacOS and I have remapped the fn and command keys so it can be more like Windows (I can't undo 20+ years of muscle memory, and also I just don't wanna)
Anyway, Fresh seems to ignore the remapping - it's back to the command key for copy/paste and the command palette.
Is there a way to access the dropdown menus by keyboard? I can see F underlined for File but no modifier key seems to make it happen
Or maybe try using a single tab in your terminal, maybe that will let the key pass through?
Anyway I need to add keybinding UX or maybe a different default set of keys for MacOS? hmm.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9KpW-9Hl_het1V3_dLhG...
Modern developers have lost their mind
Now try opening it in Emacs with vlf [1] ;) Great work overall — looking forward to seeing further development!
[1] https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/vlf.html
It loads instantly, and memory usage is minimal <80 MB.
It does seem like vlf requires configuration and adjustment, e.g. navigation with the normal keys works differently (jumps to beginning/end of current chunk instead of the whole file). Basically it exposes the chunk concept to the user.
In Fresh it's designed into the core and should be more transparent (although there are still limitations).
Because configuring an editor that comes with different plug-in systems in a third programming language is a lot of hassle for people who are too focused at getting the job done and don't want to be distracted with a whole another configuration framework in yet another programming language.
One of my long-standing "would make if I had the time and perseverance" themes has been a terminal text editor that's hugely VSCode-like + compatible, so always glad to hear anyone going anywhere near that, and hence I perked up from these:
> Prioritizes standard keybindings and a minimal learning curve.
> Extensibility: Uses TypeScript (via Deno) for plugins, making it accessible to a large developer base.
Because where you are now with Fresh, you're probably really not far from supporting say `settings.json`, `launch.json`, `tasks.json`, `keybindings.json`, `.tmTheme`s and theme `.json`s, and indeed bringing up a VSCode-API-implementing "extension host" that can load up and run/host most `.vsix`es. Now, being terminal-based you'd skip over certain feature subsets such as webviews, custom (non-text) editors and the like... and might postpone Notebooks and such fancies initially, but:
Consider! 1000s of high-value, capable, tech-specific dev extensions out there, all readily supported by your just-spawned new editor. Doesn't that sound pretty exciting?
After all, there's a huge subset of VSCode fans who'd always switch in a heartbeat to a just-simply-non-Electron version (whether native or terminal) of the very same feature-scape & extensions & UI dev experience if only it was made and to max compatibility (and MS won't ever do so).
All that's missing (from screenshot glance) is the other sidebars & panels in addition to File Explorer =)
Will be putting your Fresh on my Github Watch list, but then again, I never really read the GH feed anyway.. but maybe I'll remember to check back in every quarter or so =)
Keep up the good work !
I feel like sublime text got most of it right and every editor since then has been a reskin of the same (just written in a different stack)
What are the reasons behind going with GPL-2 instead of a more permissive license like MIT or 0BSD?
You will probably at minimum build some neat helper functions and maximum code reuse is IMHO the best thing for the world.
I would for instance be curious on the ANSI routines but hesitate to invest mental energy when the code has limitations on usage.
Lastly cool to see new open source programs being built with heavy help from a code generation model. Inspiring!
Great work on this! Very good performance but also a very good UX and you really nailed the discoverability / accessibility - basically everything works intuitively and needs very little explanation - this is something that I can't say about really any other editor I've tried.
This may finally replace nano as my default utility editor, if not my main IDE.
I was settled on NVim and VSCode, then I discovered Zed, which is fantastic.
I guess you should not keep your life closed for new experiences. Everybody loves fast and responsive software, what can I say.
Thank you for your work, I will enjoy using it, it isn't for everything but that is how I started with Zed.