kakoune

Kakoune Table of Contents TL;DR Introduction Features Screenshots Getting started Building Installing Running Basic Interaction Selections Normal Mode Insert Mode Movement Appending Using Counts Disabling Hooks Changes Goto Commands View commands Marks Jump list Multi Selection Object Selection Commands Basic Commands Multiple commands Configuration & Autoloading Kakrc Color Schemes Options Advanced topics Faces Registers Macros Search selection Regex syntax Exec and Eval Insert mode completion Escape to normal mode Highlighters Hooks Key Mapping Defining Commands and Aliases FIFO Buffers Credits TL;DR https://kakoune.org Modal editor — Faster as in fewer keystrokes — Multiple selections — Orthogonal design git clone https://github.com/mawww/kakoune.git cd kakoune make ./src/kak See https://github.com/mawww/golf for Kakoune solutions to vimgolf challenges, regularly beating the best Vim solution. See the design document for more information on Kakoune’s philosophy and design. Introduction Kakoune is a code editor that implements Vi’s "keystrokes as a text editing language" model. As it is also a modal editor, it is somewhat similar to the Vim editor (after which Kakoune was originally inspired). Kakoune can operate in two modes: normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode. Kakoune has a strong focus on interactivity. Most commands provide immediate and incremental results, while being competitive with Vim in terms of keystroke count. Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive ranges of characters. Selections have an anchor and a cursor. Most commands move both of them except when extending selections, where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor moves around. See https://vimeo.com/82711574 Join us on libera IRC #Kakoune Features Multiple selections as a central way of interacting Powerful selection manipulation primitives Select all regex matches in current selections Keep selections containing/not containing a match for a given regex Split current selections with a regex Text objects (paragraph, sentence, nestable blocks) Powerful text manipulation primitives Align selections Rotate selection contents Case manipulation Indentation Piping each selection to external filter Client-Server architecture Multiple clients on the same editing session Use tmux, zellij, kitty, wezterm or your X11/Wayland window manager to manage splits/panes by spawning clients connected to the same session Simple interaction with external programs Automatic contextual help Automatic as you type completion Macros Hooks Syntax Highlighting Supports multiple languages in the same buffer Highlight a buffer differently in different windows Screenshots Figure 1. Kakoune in i3 Figure 2. Kakoune in tmux Getting started Building Kakoune’s dependencies are: A C++20 compliant compiler (GCC >= 10.3 or clang >= 11) along with its associated C++ standard library (libstdc++ >= 10 or libc++) To build, just type make in the root directory. To generate man pages, type make man in the root directory. Kakoune can be built on Linux, MacOS, and Cygwin. Due to Kakoune relying heavily on being in a Unix-like environment, no native Windows version is planned. Installing In order to install kak on your system, rather than running it directly from its source directory, type make install. You can specify the PREFIX and DESTDIR if needed. Tip Homebrew (macOS) or Linuxbrew brew install kakoune Tip MacPorts (macOS) sudo port selfupdate sudo port install kakoune Tip Fedora supported versions and Rawhide dnf install kakoune Tip Fedora daily builds Use the copr repository. dnf copr enable jkonecny/kakoune dnf install kakoune Tip RHEL/CentOS 8 Kakoune can be found in the EPEL8 repositories. dnf install kakoune Tip Arch Linux Kakoune is found in the repositories. pacman -S kakoune Tip Gentoo Kakoune is found in portage as app-editors/kakoune. emerge kakoune Installation and Gentoo specific documentation is available. Tip Exherbo cave resolve -x repository/mawww cave resolve -x kakoune Tip openSUSE Kakoune can be found in the repositories. sudo zypper install kakoune Tip Ubuntu Kakoune can be found in the Ubuntu repositories. sudo apt install kakoune If you want to compile from source on 20.04 or earlier, you must force the build to use GCC 10, which is not the default. Also, make sure you have .local/bin in your path so that kak is available after the installation. git clone https://github.com/mawww/kakoune.git && cd kakoune/src CXX=g++-10 make make PREFIX=$HOME/.local install Tip Debian Kakoune can be found in Debian 9 (Stretch) and later releases. sudo apt install kakoune Tip FreeBSD Kakoune is available in the official ports tree as editors/kakoune. A binary package is also available and can be installed with pkg install kakoune Tip OpenBSD Building on OpenBSD 6.7 amd64. # pkg_add git gmake # git clone https://github.com/mawww/kakoune # cd kakoune # export CXX=clang++ # gmake install Kakoune is available in the 6.7-current port tree as editors/kakoune A binary package is also available for -current snapshot and can be installed with # pkg_add kakoune Running with support for plugins. # pkg_add dash $ export KAKOUNE_POSIX_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/dash $ kak Tip Solus Kakoune is available in the Solus stable repository. It can be installed with eopkg install kakoune Tip Void Kakoune is available in the repositories. It can be installed with xbps-install -S kakoune Tip Term