NotVim is a fast way to edit text files. It works entirely on your terminal, making it very convenient for terminal-based workflows. The project was developed in Java and inspired by Vim.

The objective of this project was to create an entire text editor from the ground. This includes every aspect of it, from the way the cursor wraps around the text to the logic of how files are loaded and written.

All the interfaces, such as the home screen or the error alerts, were made without using any framework. The program only uses JNA library to enter raw mode on the terminal, by using the native shared libraries required.

NotVim has four different modes, each one is used to perform different actions in the editor.

• Normal mode: Accessed by pressing the ESC key at any time. Use it to move the cursor through the text and access other modes.

• Insert mode: Used to insert text into a new or existing file. You can access it by pressing the letter i while in normal mode.

• Command mode: Used to type commands, it is accessed by pressing : while in normal mode. Here is the list of commands.

• Visual mode: Brings the capability of highlighting text to copy and paste it. This mode hasn't been implemented yet, but it will be in a future release. It will be accessed by pressing the letter v while in normal mode.

Tip: You can open a file directly by passing it as the first argument when running the program.

Example: $ notvim path/to/file

The program counts with all the basic features you would expect from a text editor. Including:

• The cursor can only move through the text and react to user inputs, such as: inserting new characters, creating new lines, and deleting lines.
• The cursor has column memory. This means that if the user moves to a line that doesn't have enough text to maintain its previous column position, the cursor will move to the end of that line. If the cursor moves again to a new line and this time it has enough characters, it will restore its original column position.
• If a line with text is deleted, the text from the line will be concatenated to the end of the line above it.
• If a new line is created between text, the text will be divided in two. Bringing the segment from the cursor to the end of the current line to the new line created.
• The program can: open, edit, write, and create text files.

• :q or :quit

  Quits the program.

• :open (requieres arguments)

  Open files and print their content on the screen. Pass as an argument the name of the file you want to open.

• :write or :w (accepts arguments)

  Writes all data inserted into the file passed as arguments. It remembers what file has been written, so it isn't necessary to explicitly tell it again where to write it. Just call the command without arguments and it will be written. This also works for files that have been opened.

• :n or :new

  Creates a new empty screen. Same as launching the program without arguments.

Make sure you have installed at least Java 21 on your system and your terminal recognizes the command java. You can check your Java version by running this on your terminal.

$ java --version

In case you have Java installed but your terminal doesn't recongnize the command you will need to set up your JAVA_HOME.

1. Create a script at ~/.local/bin/, or at any directory you want, that is accessed by your system's $PATH. You can name it notvim, keep in mind that the name of the script will be the name of the command you will use to run the program.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
java -jar ~/.local/bin/not-vim-1.0.jar "$@" # Change the file name to match the NotVim version you are using.

2. (skip if your system's $PATH is already configured) Add this line to your shell configuration file, commonly located at ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc (depending on your shell).

export PATH=$PATH:/home/juojo/.local/bin # Replace the path to match yours in case you used something different

3. Make your script executable by running this on your terminal.

$ chmod +x ~/.local/bin/notvim # Replace the path to match yours in case you used something different

4. Download the program package from Github releases and save it in the same directory of your script.

NotVim was developed for unix systems. It doesn't work on Windows machines yet, but I'm working to make it possible.