Vento Text Editor

Welcome to Vento, the lightweight text editor that's all about keeping things simple and easy to use. Whether you're coding, jotting down notes, or working on your next big writing project, Vento has got you covered.

DISCLAIMER:

Vento is currently in development and should not be considered stable software. This project is under active construction, and as such, it likely contains bugs, incomplete features, and unstable behavior. Use at your own risk. We do not recommend relying on Vento for critical or production use at this time.

We appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or contributions to help improve the project. Thank you for your understanding and support!

Current Version

Version 0.1.3
We are currently in the initial development phase, focusing on building the core functionalities. This is a development version, and while there are no official releases at this time, the source code is accessible on GitHub for download and building.

Current Features

Vento currently supports the following features:

• Basic Editor: Provides essential text editing capabilities.
• Load Files: Press CTRL-L to open a dialog for browsing directories or typing a filename, then edit the selected file.
• Create New File: Start a new document easily.
• Save As: Press CTRL-O or choose "Save As" from the File menu to open a dialog for browsing directories or typing a new filename.
• Save Feature: Press CTRL-S to save changes without being prompted for a filename each time.
• Undo and Redo: Press CTRL-Z to undo and CTRL-Y to redo actions.
• Find: Press CTRL-F to open a search dialog that can stay open so you can repeat searches. Use F3 to jump to the next occurrence of the current search text.
• Replace: Press CTRL-R or choose Edit -> Replace to search and replace text.
• Delete Current Line: Press CTRL-D to delete the current line.
• Word Navigation: Use CTRL-W to move to the next word and CTRL-B to move to the previous word.
• Close Current File: Press CTRL-Q to close the active file.
• Customizable Configuration: Customize settings through a configuration file.
• Interactive Settings Dialog: Open File → Settings and use the arrow keys or mouse clicks to choose options. Mouse support can be enabled or disabled in this dialog, and all dialogs accept mouse input.
• Theme Selection: Choose from predefined color themes. The editor first looks in the directory specified by VENTO_THEME_DIR, then in the compile-time THEME_DIR path (default themes/). Theme names are matched case-insensitively, and the picker shows a live preview of the highlighted colors while you navigate the list.
• Basic Syntax Highlighting: Built-in definitions for C, C#, HTML, JS, CSS, Python, shell, and JSON. Other languages are treated as plain text.
• Status Bar: Displays the current line and column number.
• Scroll Bar: Indicates your position within the document.
• Optional Line Numbers: Toggle line numbers in the settings dialog.
• Adjustable Tab Width: Choose how many spaces the Tab key inserts.
• Keyboard Macros: Press F2 to record a macro and F4 to play it back.
• Help Screen: Press CTRL-H for a guide to Vento's features.
• About Box: Press CTRL-A to view product information, version, and license message.
• Menu System: Intuitive menu navigation for editor features. Press CTRL-T or F10 to open the menu.
• Mouse Support: Click to move the cursor, drag to select text, scroll with the wheel, and click the menu bar and its items.
• Resizes Without Truncation: When the terminal window is resized, Vento preserves all text so nothing gets cut off.

Configuration File

Vento reads settings from a .ventorc file in your home directory. If no home directory can be determined, it falls back to the current working directory. The file is written in the same key order as the defaults. When you exit the settings dialog with changes, the updated configuration is automatically saved back to ~/.ventorc.

You can override the location of this file by setting the VENTO_CONFIG environment variable to an alternate path.

• Set VENTO_MACROS to override the default macros file (~/.ventomacros). For example:

  VENTO_MACROS=$HOME/custom.macros vento

This file is created automatically with default values if it does not exist. Unknown keys are ignored when the file is parsed. You can also change these options interactively using the Settings dialog. Open it from File → Settings (press CTRL-T to open the menu) and navigate with the arrow keys. The recognized keys are:

• background_color
• text_color
• keyword_color
• comment_color
• string_color
• type_color
• symbol_color
• search_color
• theme
• enable_color
• enable_mouse
• show_line_numbers
• show_startup_warning
• search_ignore_case
• tab_width

tab_width controls how many spaces are inserted when you press the Tab key.

Set search_ignore_case to true if you want searches performed with CTRL-F or CTRL-R to ignore case differences.

Set theme to the base name of a file in the theme directory (without the .theme extension). The editor searches for the theme case-insensitively. It first checks the VENTO_THEME_DIR environment variable and falls back to the compiled THEME_DIR path, which defaults to themes. Colors defined in that theme are loaded before any individual color overrides. Set enable_mouse to false if you want to disable mouse input entirely.

Multi-File Support

Vento allows multiple files to be opened at once. Press CTRL-L to open a dialog for browsing directories or typing a filename, and switch between loaded files with F6 for the next file or F7 for the previous one.

When you leave a file that hasn't been fully loaded, Vento now closes its underlying file descriptor. If you later scroll beyond the loaded portion, the file is reopened automatically and more lines are read on demand. This prevents running out of descriptors when editing many large files.

Planned Features

The following features are planned for future releases:

• Syntax Highlighting: Support for more languages and improved highlighting.
• Large File Support: Improved optimizations for handling large files.
• FTP Support: Access files on FTP servers as if they were locally stored.
• Theme Support: Multiple built in themes for easy visual customization.
• Spell Checker Support: Automatically detect and correct typos.
• Git Integration: Integrate with Git for version control.
• Extensions API: Plugin support to extend editor capabilities.

Known Issues

There are too many issues to list at the moment. When Vento isn't stuffed full of bugs I will start a serious known issues list, but for now just know that Vento will currently disappoint you if you try to use it as your primary text editor.

Roadmap

Here's a roadmap for Vento's development milestones:

• 0.1.x - Initial Development Phase:
  These versions are the foundation of Vento, focusing on building and stabilizing core features. We are currently in this phase. Although this version number is occasionally incremented, there are no actual releases during this phase. Current Version: 0.1.3

• 0.2.x - Feature Incomplete Unstable Public Releases:
  These releases will expand the feature set and refine existing capabilities, although they may still be unstable. They will serve as a platform for gathering user feedback as we enhance Vento's functionality.

• 0.3.x - Near Feature Complete Unstable Versions:
  These versions will showcase a more cohesive feature set, though some functionalities may still be under construction. We aim to gather community feedback to polish the editor.

• 0.4.x - Feature Complete Test Builds:
  Vento will be feature-complete, focusing on testing and fixing bugs. These builds will be more stable and are intended for users who want to try the full range of features before the official release.

• 0.9.x - Feature Complete Release Candidates:
  These are pre-release candidates, ready for broader testing. We'll focus on final optimizations, performance improvements, and ironing out any remaining issues.

• 1.0 - Initial Version Final Release:
  This will be the first official release of Vento, marking the culmination of development efforts. It will be stable, fully functional, and ready for general use, featuring a polished and reliable user experience.

Prerequisites

Before you can compile Vento, make sure you have the following installed:

• GCC: The GNU Compiler Collection for compiling the source code.
• Binutils: A collection of binary tools.
• Ncurses Dev Libraries: Development libraries for Ncurses (necessary for text-based user interfaces). The wide-character version (libncursesw) is recommended.

On Debian-based systems, you can install these with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev

Vento prefers the wide-character version of ncurses for full Unicode input support. On systems where only the non-wide libraries are available, the editor will fall back to reading input in byte mode.

Supported Platforms

Vento has been tested on modern Linux distributions and macOS. Building the editor requires a standard development environment including a C compiler and the ncurses libraries.

• POSIX Systems: Vento should compile on any POSIX-compliant operating system, including the BSD variants such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD.

• Linux: Confirmed to build on Debian based systems such as Ubuntu with gcc, make, binutils, and the development packages for ncurses installed.

• macOS: Compiles using the Xcode command line tools. Ensure the ncurses libraries are available through Homebrew or a similar package manager. You may need to pass feature macros like _DARWIN_C_SOURCE to enable certain functionality.

Getting Started

Ready to give Vento a try? Here's how to get started:

git clone https://github.com/splanck/vento.git
cd vento
make
sudo make install

macOS Build Notes

On macOS you may need to pass feature macros when compiling, for example:

make CFLAGS="-D_XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED -D_DARWIN_C_SOURCE"

The code already guards SIGWINCH, but enabling additional feature macros may be required for full functionality.

When building on macOS the non-wide curses library is used automatically. Both the Makefile and test script select -lncurses when uname reports Darwin, while other systems link with -lncursesw.

Command Line Options

You can pass a few simple flags when starting Vento:

vento [options] [file...]

• -h, --help — show a short help message and exit.
• -v, --version — print the current version number and exit.
• -t <name>, --theme=<name> — load the specified color theme before opening files.
• +N, --line=N — start editing at line N.
• --macro=<name>=<key> — create an empty macro bound to <key>.

Any additional arguments are treated as files to load on startup.

Enabling Debug Output

Vento includes optional debug messages within the configuration loader. To see these messages during execution, compile the editor with the DEBUG macro defined:

make CFLAGS="-Wall -Wextra -std=c99 -g -DDEBUG"

Running Tests

To run Vento's unit tests, execute the following command from the project root:

make test

This invokes tests/run_tests.sh, which builds and runs the tests. You can also run the script directly:

sh tests/run_tests.sh

Contributing to Vento

While I am not actively seeking contributors for the Vento project, if the project interests you and you would like to contribute, please feel free to reach out. You can email me at splanck@tutamail.com.

Thanks for checking out Vento! Happy editing!