Getting started (downloading executable)

If you simply want to quickly have a look at eddy, you can download the most recent binary from releases, but note that these aren't entirely up to date with the commits, and since they've all been built on an ubuntu subsystem on Windows, they won't necessarily work on your computer. In most cases, it's better to build the program yourself for the time being.

Getting Started (development)

Want to develop or test eddy? Follow these instructions to do so!

Prerequisites

• Preferrably UNIX like OS (e.g. Linux, MacOS, However, Windows users can use this too, with extra steps)
• ncurses
• g++

Debian (or Debian based distros e.g. ubuntu)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev

And if you don't already have g++

sudo apt-get install g++

Other linux systems, or MacOS

• Debian, centos, fedora
• MacOS

brew install curses

Windows

If running eddy on windows, it'd be a good idea to not use cmd, since some bits (such as dialog boxes) don't work particularly well with it. Use a third party terminal emulator - I'd suggest Hyper.js since it looks pretty, but an emulator with more features is Cmder.

The best way to get started on Windows is by installing the Windows subsystem for Linux. Basically this is a way of opening up an ubuntu shell in Windows! You can find out more about that here, but

Your PC must be running a 64-bit version of Windows 10 Anniversary Update or later (build 1607+).

Once you've got the bash shell up and running, you can follow the steps for debian

Installing for development

Now you're ready to get the development environment set up!

Run these commands in your terminal

git clone https://github.com/j4cobgarby/eddy

cd path/to/repository/root

make clean

make

Now you can simply run it

./eddy

Built With

• g++ - The c++ compiler
• ncurses - To do graphical stuff in a terminal

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create a new branch for your new feature
3. Develop this branch - comment (briefly or in detail) how it all works
4. Make sure you've changed all the necessary bits and pieces to reflect the new version. These are

• In main.cpp: the title bar's text, and the title of the splash dialog.
• Made relevant changed to README.md (commands, etc..)

5. Push your fork

How to use

Similar to vim, eddy has different modes for editing files. eddy has two modes:

• NORMAL
• INSERT

NORMAL mode

When you open up eddy, you'll be in NORMAL. This is the mode in which you can make use of eddy's different commands. To switch from NORMAL to INSERT, simply press i.

INSERT mode

Once you're in INSERT, you can start writing text in the file. You may enter text just as in any other editor. When you want to go back into NORMAL, press escape.

NORMAL mode commands

Key	Action	Notes
x	Quits eddy	Doesn't prompt to save. Make sure you've already saved if you want to keep what you've done.
s	Saves the current file	If you're not editing a file and instead writing a new file from scratch, eddy will open a dialog box asking for you to name your new file.
i	Enters insert mode.
[	Scroll up by one character.	You can of course scroll normally by getting near to the bottom or top of the viewport using the arrow keys.
]	Scroll down by one character.	See above.
{	Scroll up by 10 characters.
}	Scroll down by 10 characters.
f	Find and replace	The find field takes a regex, but you can find a simple word too. Also, in the replace field, you can include things such as $1 or $2 to get capture groups from the regex.
o	Opens a file from a given path.	You're prompted to write the path in a dialog box. If you write nothing, or something which can't be a filename, the file will be named untitled once saved.
O	Opens a file from a URL on the internet.	Note that you must type a capital O. You obviously need internet for this to work.

Opening files

You can open files in many different ways:

• Local file, from command line

eddy path/to/file

• Local file, from eddy

Press o when in NORMAL mode.

• File from URL, from eddy

Press O when in NORMAL mode.

Note at the moment, file paths can't include spaces. This is a known issue.

Creating new files

You can create a new file the same way you'd open one which already exists. Suppose you want to create a file called new_file.txt, you could do this

eddy new_file.txt

And then, once it's loaded, press s to create it.

Alternatively you could rely on your operating system's commands

touch new_file.txt
eddy new_file.txt

or something like that. If that doesn't work, you could always do

echo> new_file.txt
eddy new_file.txt

Authors

• Jacob Garby - Initial development - j4cobgarby

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.