NAME

sued - the shut up editor

SYNOPSIS

sued [file]

DESCRIPTION

sued is a minimalist line-based text editor written in Rust, inspired by classical Unix text editors, such as the ed text editor from the '70s, and its descendants, such as Vim, while in part modernising those editors with features from the text editors and IDEs of today.

Instead of providing you with a graphical interface like most text editors nowadays, sued operates using a REPL-style interface, where you enter text, run commands, and work with textual data, all in one command prompt environment.

sued aims at bringing back the line editing styles of the past with the sort of modern-ish features you would expect from a text editor today - where ed had to be extremely minimalist to run on practically any Unix box under the sun, sued has no such limitation. It takes full advantage of today's computers' capabilities, all while staying as minimalist and distraction-free as is reasonably possible.

SITE NAVIGATION

This website supports vi-style key navigation.

• k - Scroll up
• j - Scroll down
• u - Scroll up by the window height
• d - Scroll down by the window height
• g - Scroll to the start
• G - Scroll to the end

OBTAINING

sued is available on crates.io - you can get it with
cargo install sued --features=repl.

Go to the Codeberg page if you want to check out sued for yourself, or if you want to help me work on it.

OPTIONS

The following options are available:

file - Specify the name of a file to read. If set, sued will store the file name.

DEMO

You can view an asciinema demo showing sued in action.

This demo used to be embedded, but I couldn't get it to work right. Plus it kind of spoils the man page-ness of this website.

USAGE

To run sued, simply run sued at the command line.

Upon starting sued, you'll be greeted by the startup message.

sued v0.21.0 - the shut up editor
type ~cmds or ~help for commands, otherwise just start typing
1›

Begin typing your file up - your input will be stored in the file buffer.

1›hello, world
2›this text is
3›written in
4›sued
5›

The ~show command will show you the contents of the file buffer.

5›~show
1│hello, world
2│this text is
3│written in
4│sued
5›

The ~point command with a line_number argument will set the cursor position to that line.

5›~point 3
set cursor position to 3
3›

Or ~up and ~down will move the cursor up and down instead.

3›~up
set cursor position to 2
2›~down 2
set cursor position to 4
4›

Need to see what commands are available? Run ~cmds for an abstract list or ~help for a more detailed list.

4›~cmds
about, bsod, butterfly, clear, cmds, copy, delete, doc, down, help, indent, nothing, open, point, prefix, run, runhere, save, search, shift, show, substitute, test, up
4›~help
press up and down to navigate through command history
type `~help [command]` to get information about a command
all `range` arguments use tilde range syntax (X~, ~X, X~Y)
...
4›

sued also contains self-documenting features, similar to Emacs.

Run ~help [command] or ~doc [command] to receive documentation for a specific command.

4›~help point
point - set the cursor position on the y axis
arguments: position
scope: global
documentation:
this command will set the cursor position to a specific [position], setting the cursor to the specified line number
so that any text typed will be inserted at that point
specify a relative position (+n or -n) to move the cursor down or up by n lines
if no [position] is passed, it defaults to the end of the file buffer
4›

To save your work, run ~save [filename]

4›~save hello-world
saved to hello-world
4›

Finally, to leave sued, run ~quit. There. Now you know how to sued. I hope this helps you learn how the editor works!

TILDE RANGE SYNTAX

Tilde Range Syntax (TRS) allows you to specify a range of lines to operate on using simple tilde syntax.

• X - Selects only line X.
• ~X - Selects all lines from the beginning of the buffer to line X, inclusive.
• X~ - Selects all lines from line X to the end of the buffer, inclusive.
• X~Y - Selects all lines from line X to line Y, inclusive.
• file - Selects every line in the file.
• this or point - Select the line that the cursor is currently on.

TRS was implemented into sued v0.17.0 as a way to concisely represent line ranges without having to deal with argument trouble, while also making it feel sued-y.

FAQ

• Why a line editor?

I like ed. It's really nice, and the minimalism is really what sells it. I wanted to try my hand at writing a similar text editor, just a lot less complex.

Plus, I don't want to go insane trying to develop a Vim-like editor. Especially not when projects like Helix exist.

• If it's ed-like, why not copy ed's syntax?

ed has a lot of commands, and like I said, I want sued to be more user-friendly.

Furthermore, sued inherits its command prefix (~) from my earlier project, Streakline.

• What does sued stand for?

It stands for "shut up editor," which alludes to how not-in-your-way it is.

• How do you pronounce sued?

"soo-ed". Don't pronounce it "sood," it's not a law thing, and has nothing to do with GitHub Copilot. (The context behind that statement is weird.)

• Now that you're working on QVSED, will sued be forgotten about?

Pfft. No. QVSED is a graphical editor with a completely different paradigm, and it isn't a sued replacement. It's just another project.

FEATURES

Currently implemented

• Basic command-line editing
• Stateless text buffer
• File reading and writing
• Editing commands
• Brief but user-friendly error messages
• Command history
• Line numbers
• Copying to clipboard
• Indentation
• Regular expression substitution
• Running shell commands
• Running shell commands on the currently open text contents

Working towards

• Full feature set - sued should be able to handle a wide range of text editing tasks
• Effective feature parity with ed - sued should be able to do everything that ed can
• Auto-complete - sued commands and command arguments should support tab completions
• Syntax highlighting - the show command should support syntax highlighting in a lightweight way
• More functional syntax - the sued command set should be modelled after functional programming paradigms
• Scripting features - sued should be able to be used in shell scripts the same way ed/sed can
• True platform independence - sued should be able to run on any platform supported by Rust, not just Windows, Linux and macOS
• Low SLoC - sued should get the most work done with the least amount of code, for efficiency and code readability

SEE ALSO

ed(1), streakline(1)

LIMITATIONS

sued is still 0.x software and probably isn't going to replace your favourite code editor anytime soon.

And as a line editor, it's not gonna have fancy features like a visual editing pane, complex syntax highlighting, an LSP client, AI assistance, code folding, or pretty much anything that's in VS Code.

sued is not a conventional text editor, it isn't a VS Code replacement, it isn't a Vim or Emacs replacement, it isn't even an ed replacement.

What it is, is sued. It edits text. Thanks and have fun.

BUGS

Yes.