owl-write-0.5.0 is not a library.

owl-write

🦉: a TUI for managing your writing

features

This project is a companion for those that find themselves working on projects comprised of directories of markdown: hugo, zola, quarto, mkdocs, zensical, etc.

It offers a project-wide view of potential issues in your files. It is designed for my workflow of editing files (mostly in Helix) and doing editing/cleanup later.

fast hunspell/spellbook-powered spellcheck over entire project:
- per-project & global ignore files
- suggest changes & replace in all files
configurable checkers to ban words/phrases including:
- weasel words
- passive voice
- accidentally repeated words
- TODO/FIXME statements
- any regex pattern
project overview including:
- failed checks per file
- word count & other file metadata
- TOML/YAML frontmatter support
when everything has been resolved, a visit from the cosmic owl

roadmap

owl is still very much a work-in-progress. While I use it daily for my own work, it is my first Rust TUI project and has lots of room to improve.

The focus of the next release will be on improving the UI & error handling.

The release after that will look at integrating Harper for more advanced checking.

I am open to human contributions. If you'd like to contribute please open/comment on an issue first.

usage

owl init

owl operates on projects. A project is a directory containing markdown as well as an owl.toml file.

To initialize a directory as a project run owl init. This will:

write an owl.toml in the current directory if it doesn't exist
download some default dictionaries if needed

owl.toml

A TOML config file with the keys:

lang - language code, used to download a dictionary for spellchecker
extensions - list of extensions to treat as writing
content_dir - subdirectory of project that contains writing
ignored_words - list of ignored words
checks - each check adds a check column to owl check output, each has:
- name - name of the check column
- rule - word_count|repeat|ban_pattern|status - kind of check to perform
word_count: count words in the file
repeat: detect accidental double words, e.g. "the the"
ban_pattern: ban words, requires additional pattern regex. Can also use a pre-defined banned list: '@todo', '@weasel', '@passive'.
frontmatter: extract a frontmatter field, requires additional field

owl check

Run configured checks against the project. The default view is to show a list of all files in the project.

In this view: Tab changes the sort column, Enter shows detailed check output for the selected file.

owl spell

Show a list of all misspelled words in the project. This interactive TUI allows quickly making replacements and adding words to the project ignore list.

While browsing the list you can tap a single key to:

Add the word to a project ignore list stored in plain text, useful for project-specific technical terms or words not found in your default dictionary.
View the word's context.
Replace all occurrences of the word with a suggestion or word of your choice.

--report

There is also a (experimental) non-interactive mode:

$ owl spell --report
8 misspelled words in 5 files

This exits with a nonzero error code if there are misspellings, suitable for use in a CI-type context.

owl word

Quick non-interactive check of one or more words.

Example:

$ owl word good misteak
good ✓
misteak: ✗
   mistake 
   mi steak 
   mi-steak 
   steak

owl help

A TUI for managing your writing

Usage: owl <COMMAND>

Commands:
  init   Initialize a new project's owl.toml
  check  Show all checks for the project
  spell  Show all misspellings
  word   Check a single word
  help   Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Credits

Heavy-lifting done by spellbook, thanks to Helix team.

Dictionaries from wooorm/dictionaries.

Inspiration for weasel words/duplicate checks from Matt Might.

Logo created using licensed Noun Project resources:

owl-write 0.5.0