Very Little Editor

The Very Little Editor, or VLE, is a small text editor with just enough features to do some actual work.

Modern full-featured text editors can be a little daunting, complete with dozens upon dozens of different commands to remember and modes to switch between. It's a lot of power, but that power comes with the cognative load of having to remember which key combination to use or what mode the editor is in at any given time.

Let's try a different approach and see just how few features we need. By restricting our feature set to less than twenty powerful features, we can devote more mental effort to our projects and less mental effort to our tools.

Installation

Installing VLE from source can be done using Cargo:

cargo install vle

VLE compiles to a single self-contained binary which contains everything. Its syntax highlighting for different languages are built-in and it uses no configuration file; its minimal configuration options are done via simple environment variables.

Keybindings

Because we have so few features, non-navigational features have alternative Ctrl-based and F-based keybindings. This also helps maintain compatibility with terminal multiplexers which have many of their own dedicated Ctrl bindings.

Key Features

Multi Cursor-Style Find and Replace

Ctrl-F / F5 to find text will highlight all matches and move your cursor to the next available match, if any. Matches can be cycled between using the up and down arrow keys. This much is unremarkable.

However, you may also edit found matches simply by repositioning the cursor with the left and right arrow keys and typing in new text. New text is inserted simultaneously at all matches interactively as if you'd typed it in at each one.

Text can also be replaced at all matches with Ctrl-R / F6, which removes the contents of all matches and allows you to enter new text.

Additionally, for regular-expression based searches, captured groups can be pasted to all matches simultaneously.

Multi Cursor-Style Line Editing

Similar to find-and-replace, you can simply highlight a selection of lines and use Ctrl-R / F6 to edit each of them simultaneously as a unit.

Bookmarks

Have a spot in your file you'd like to mark and return to later? Place bookmarks with Ctrl-B / Insert, which drops visible positions in the text that remain fixed in place. Ctrl-T / F4 doubles as both a way to jump to a specific line and also a means to cycle between bookmarks using the arrow keys.

Bookmarks can be removed either by Ctrl-B / Insert on the same position, or simply by erasing the text containing the bookmark. Hando for TODO items which are no longer needed.

Split Pane Views

The editor's viewport can be split into two vertical or two horizontal panes using Ctrl-N / F10. Each pane can contain a different file, or different spots within the same file. Switch between them using Ctrl-Arrows. Use Ctrl-N / F10 to un-split the panes. Un-splitting panes is a lossless operation; splitting panes again will maintain the same cursor positions as before.

Configuration

With very little to configure, VLE doesn't use a config file at all. Any configuration is performed with three environmental variables:

No config file means there's one less thing to install, learn the format of, modify or break.

Extension Mapping

Syntax highlighting is determined by a file's extension. If you have files with some non-standard extension, the VLE_EXT_MAP environmental variable can map them from one to another. Its syntax is a comma-separated list of src=target key-value pairs. For example, if one has a file.tpl that's should be highlighted as HTML, try:

VLE_EXT_MAP=tpl=html vle file.tpl

Why Another Editor?

I've tried a lot of different text editors over the years, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. But I could never find the exact text editor I was looking for. Some were a little too overcomplicated. Some were a little too primitive. So rather than continue a seemingly endless search for the exact right text editor for me, I decided to write my own by mixing necessary features (like file saving) and those that impressed me in other editors (like splitting panes or selecting inside quotes).

Whether it's the editor for you depends on your needs and tastes. But VLE has been developed exclusively with itself since version 0.2, so I can confidently say that it's good enough for projects at least as large as itself.