Acme text editor

Acme is a Zen-style text editor.

Using Acme you sacrifice:

• configuration files
• themes
• syntax highlighting
• autocompletion
• specific language support
• your favourite Vim/Emacs/Sublime feature

What you gain is that instead of spending too much time configuring your editor, you will focus on actual working.

The killer feature of Acme is how it integrates into surrounding system. Acme is not trying to be a complete environment by itself. Acme acts as a glue which links together other programs and tools. With Acme the OS becomes your IDE.

Install

macOS

mkdir $HOME/9 && cd $HOME/9
git clone https://github.com/9fans/plan9port/ && cd plan9port
./INSTALL

Debian

sudo apt-get install gcc libx11-dev libxt-dev libxext-dev libfontconfig1-dev
git clone https://github.com/9fans/plan9port $HOME/plan9
cd $HOME/plan9/plan9port
./INSTALL -r $HOME/plan9

Environment setup

export PLAN9="/path/to/plan9port"
export PATH="$PATH:$PLAN9/bin"

Font

Run font server:

fontsrv

In case it's not installed:

cd /path/to/plan9port/src/cmd/fontsrv/
9 mk install

Have a look at all available fonts:

9p ls font

Try one of them:

acme -f /mnt/font/'Droid Sans Mono'/13a/font

Run

I spawn Acme by running a script.

Scripts

Who is who in bin directory:

• a start Acme
• b create an indented C-like block { ... }
• c SYMBOL/uc SYMBOL comment/uncomment selection
• commit MESSAGE commit and push to master
• css and cssify transform abbreviations into CSS properties
• f TEXT find TEXT using The Silver Searcher
• hd SYMBOL draw a pretty heading
• htm feed selection to Pug
• html HTML boilerplate
• i/ui indent/unindent selection
• lstrip remove leading whitespace
• t2s N_SPACES/s2t N_SPACES tabs <=> spaces
• upper/lower convert selection to uppercase/lowercase

Put these guys in your $PATH.

Random notes

• Edit = find out the current line number
• :13 goto 13th line
• :0 goto file beginning
• :$ goto file end
• :1,$ or :, or Edit 1,$ or Edit , select all lines
• :1,5 or Edit 1,5 select lines 1..5
• Edit , d clear window
• Edit , < echo hello world replace window body with some text
• Edit , < erl -man maps replace window body with erlang manual
• Edit , s/text/TEXT/g or Edit , | sed 's/text/TEXT/g' global replace
• $% or $samfile current file name
• $winid current window id
• echo some text | 9p write acme/$winid/body append to the end of current window
• keyboard shortcuts:
  • ctrl-u delete from cursor to start of line
  • ctrl-w delete word before the cursor
  • ctrl-h delete character before the cursor
  • ctrl-a move cursor to start of the line
  • ctrl-e move cursor to end of the line
  • ctrl-i tab
  • ctrl-j enter
  • ctrl-f filepath autocompletion
  • fn-*left arrow* go home (macOS)
  • fn-*right arrow* go end (macOS)
• search with right click:
  • :+/foobar, :/foobar and just foobar search forward
  • :-/foobar search backwards
• press esc to select the last typed text
• press esc again to delete any selected text
• Font switch between fonts
• :/^hel regexp match: lines starting with 'hel'
• :/lo\n/ regexp match: lines ending with 'lo'
• :/^b/,/^e/ regexp match: lines between starting with 'b' and starting with 'e'
• Dump write the state of acme to the file
• Load restore from the dump
• Edit , > python pipe window body through python interpreter
• three-finger tap emulates middle click (macOS)

Sam commands

• Edit +/hello search 'hello' forward
• Edit -/hello search 'hello' backward
• Edit , > wc -l count lines in file
• Edit , | sort sort lines
• Edit 3,5p print lines 3..5 in new window
• Edit 3,5 | upper lines 3..5 upper cased
• Edit 3,5 s/HE/he/g replace on 3..5 lines only
• Edit 2 d delete 2nd line
• Edit 2 c/new change 2nd line
• Edit 2 a/new append text after 2nd line
• Edit 2 i/new insert text before 2nd line
• Edit 2 < date replace 2nd line with the output of date
• Edit ,x/^TODAY$/ < date replace matching lines with the output of date
• Edit ,x/Plan9/ |tr a-z A-Z replace all instances of Plan9 with upper case
• Edit 3,5x/^/ a/ / indent lines 3..5 with 1 tab

You can do amazing things with Sam commands:

Edit ,x/Acme/ {
  i/I love 
  c/Sam
  a/ editor!
}

Cut / Copy selection to a file

• select some text
• cut: | sed '' > file.txt
• copy: > sed '' > file.txt
• pipe selection to a file: > awk '{ print(toupper($1)) }' | sort | nl > file.txt

Games!

• Tic-tac-toe
• Mini sea battle

Other Plan9 goodies

• win start shell in a new window
• page FILE view graphics files
• web URL open url in your browser

Wanna use bash inside win?

Put in your .bashrc

## If inside Acme...
if [ "$winid" ]; then
  ## ... then patch the `cd` command
  _cd () {
    \cd "$@" && awd
  }
  alias cd=_cd
fi

Resources

• Acme homepage
• A Tour of the Acme Editor
• Plan 9 Acme Intro
• On using Acme as a day-to-day text editor
• Let’s Try Acme
• Plan 9 configuration
• Extensibility in the Acme text editor
• Plan 9 from User Space
• Community: 9fans
• Google group: plan9port-dev
• Plan 9 and FreeBSD