editor

setup

the editor integrates with clangd to support many nice features such as go to definition which makes coding much more enjoyable

• working on cpp projects with tbx on windows

  • install clangd
    • through llvm's download: https://clangd.llvm.org/installation.html
      • note that the download usually comes in a tar.xz, see here: https://superuser.com/questions/390892/how-to-open-a-large-file-with-an-tar-xz-extension
    • through visual studio, go to the installer and use desktop tools in the right panel under optional select the clangd option
  • configure clangd path
    • once you have your clangd installed you must point the editor to that path
  • compiling
    • the code you're working on should not be compiled with msvc, since msvc doesn't have the ability to generate compile commands it makes it impossible to integrate with language servers, this is the reason why editors like clion don't use the msvc compiler
    • because of the above comment a good setup is to use msys2 with the gcc compiler.

• linux

  • install clangd, make sure you can run it

motivation

This editor was created because I wanted to have a good c++ editor for windows. When I'm on windows writing c++ I find that the main editors people use are VSCode, Visual Studio, CLion, neovim/vim. Personally each one has something that annoys me a bit:

• VSCode:

• Visual Studio:

  • pros:
    • built in debugger
    • intellisense and syntax out of the box
    • free
  • cons:
    • very heavy editor
    • takes up a lot of space
    • tries to enforce its own ecosystem onto you (.sln stuff)
    • multiplayer is sketchy requires logging into microsoft accounts

• CLion:

  • pros:
    • robust sofware, has a lot of nice features for refactoring
    • good multiplayer support
  • cons:
    • extremely expensive paid software that requires renewal : (
    • eats up ram quite aggressively and feels heavy to use sometimes

• nvim/vim

  • pros:
    • lightweight
    • very good editing controls
  • cons:
    • learning curve that will cripple your speed until you learn it
    • requires a ton of plugins if you want it to become a c++ ide (LSP, syntax highlighting, etc...)
    • doesn't have native multi-user support (I think someone hacked it in but it requires all parties to know vim controls which could be a reach)

• zed:

  • pros:
    • robust multi-user support
  • cons:
    • there is no binary available for windows at the moment

The point of this editor is to make a simple and performant editor with multi-user capabilities which sits somewhere between vim and an IDE, but it should run on very low spec computers.

configuration

If you want to configure certain settings on your machine create the file ~/.tbx_cfg.ini, here are the available options and some sample values

[graphics]
start_in_fullscreen = false
windowed_screen_width_px = 900 
windowed_screen_height_px = 700

[viewport]
automatic_column_adjustment = false
num_lines = 61
num_cols = 121

[user]
name = your_username_here

todo

• first generate the character callback bs, while also creating the insert character function in the viewport, now we have an editor
• visual selection mode
• a viewport can have many buffers, buffers are rectangles where textual data can be stored, they are like recangles, the cursor is only ever in one at a time, and inside of each one you have your own movement commands, also you can't use movement commands to get into another buffer usually, it takes a special command so that you can control the buffer you want on purpose

funny

This line proves we are self hosted!