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digitalmars.D - Writing text editor from scratch in D & Raylib

reply madwebness <qount25 protonmail.com> writes:
Hi everyone. Decided to share my work after almost a year of slow 
grind.

"ick" is a text editor I am writing in D. One of my main goals is 
to keep the codebase small, readable, and easy to understand -- 
so it's not just features, but about making an editor that stays 
hackable and maintainable over time and avoid  turning into a 
mess.

Here's a short [video 
demonstration](https://qount25.dev/video/ick_syntax_highlihght_2.mp4)

If you're still here and interested, here's an overview of what 
ick can currently do and how it's designed:

* Internally, it's a pretty simple model: there's document, 
lines, cursor, viewport, grid, syntax spans...

* A lot of behavior is config-driven. Key bindings, syntax 
schemes, syntax themes, GUI theme, fonts are all loaded from 
files.

* Syntax highlight doesn't use tree-sitter (too complex) or LSPs 
(complex & slow). Instead I picked an unusual approach wherein I 
use "steps" of small regexes and custom D functions which pick 
spans on each line, which are then highlighted. There are 
"schemes", "themes" (applies to schemes) and also "editor 
themes", which are planned to basically modify themes on the fly 
so colors match better. This makes it extremely flexible and 
fast. Also, because I don't care about LSPs or tree-sitter, 
syntax highlight doesn't actually have to follow language syntax 
- this enabled a lot of interesting things.

* Rendering is based on a grid/cell model, which keeps the GUI 
side conceptually simple. It's not the bestest, as they say, but 
I think simplicity is more important. Also yes, it only works 
well with mono fonts.

* Commands... Firstly, you get the usual kind of editor behavior 
you'd expect from Vim or Kakoune or Helix: different modes, 
movement, editing, numeric prefixes, leader-style sequences, 
staged commands (they work a bit differently than Vim, better I'd 
say) that wait for a motion or selection etc. All bindings are 
loaded from a config file. Every binding executes one or more 
commands, and while commands themselves are D functions -- 
because you can stack one on top of another, it's very 
composable. For example, this would be the equivalent of Vim's 
"o" (adding new line) taken from ick's bindings config file: `o   
       
move_right(-1);insert_newline;move_down;move_line_start;switch_to_insert`

So, folks, while I can't say it's very useful as of the moment 
(I'm still writing my code in Vim), it's getting there. I can at 
least say I outlined some major design, architecture and features 
so that the development direction is more or less clear.

Would appreciate your thoughts about the code and editor itself. 
I don't expect anyone to be so interested as to help out with the 
development - and, besides, like many other programmers, it's 
pretty hard for me to let go of control. But I think it might be 
worth it to start building a small community around it, so that 
people at least discuss it and contribute ideas. I have a 
personal Element/Matrix server, where I can invite anyone who 
wants to contribute one way or another, even if with just the 
occasional conversations - so ping here or in DM if you'd like to 
be added.

Tank you for your attention to this matter :)
Apr 04
next sibling parent reply madwebness <qount25 protonmail.com> writes:
 Writing text editor from scratch in D & Raylib


Oh, I completely forgot to post the link to the source code: 
https://code.qount25.dev/qount25/ick
Apr 04
next sibling parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 09:40:00 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Writing text editor from scratch in D & Raylib


 Oh, I completely forgot to post the link to the source code: 
 https://code.qount25.dev/qount25/ick


Looks cool. I never was a fan of vim motions, but I will try it 
out.
Apr 04
parent madwebness <qount25 protonmail.com> writes:
 I never was a fan of vim motions


You can re-assign everything to you liking conf/cmdmap.conf, it's 
very customizeable. NOTE: I haven't translated all of vim stuff 
in there, just the basics for now. So take it as a starting point 
and then you can invent your own bindings as you go. I will 
probably be adding more Vim-like bindings later though, but the 
idea is to let users easily re-assign all of them.
Apr 04
prev sibling parent reply Sergey <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 09:40:00 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Writing text editor from scratch in D & Raylib


 Oh, I completely forgot to post the link to the source code: 
 https://code.qount25.dev/qount25/ick



Recently I found an interesting project in C + Clay + SDL
Could be interesting for you to check 
https://dylancobb.github.io/sev/
Apr 05
parent reply madwebness <qount25 protonmail.com> writes:
 Recently I found an interesting project in C + Clay + SDL
 Could be interesting for you to check 
 https://dylancobb.github.io/sev/


Yep, thank you, interesting project. One thing I wish I could do 
is to be able to ship to WASM and the browser - which this editor 
can do because it's in C, but ick cannot. Raylib itself supports 
WASM, but D with GC doesn't, correct? Does anybody know if D + GC 
+ maybe parts of stdlib will ever be compiling for wasm?

I've also browsed through their dir structure, it's funny that I 
can't actually map it very well to what I've done with ick, which 
kinda made me feel like a hack. Their source and editor itself 
(from the screenshots) look more polished, but at the same time 
it must lack something I've implemented, because there's 
definitely less code as far as I can tell. I also didn't see any 
unit tests - don't know how is it even possible to NOT have unit 
test coverage for a project like text editor.

Their usage of this "Clay" lib for layout is what also picked my 
eye. Has anyone tried it? I guess it could simplify things 
greatly when I get to implementing things like splits, tabs and 
other small UI elements, but I'm not sure I want to go that way - 
what if I want to support GOP rendering or some other backends 
later, I better have my own tiny UI lib. How hard can it be for 
an editor?

Anyway, good link, made me think about things. And also about 
building proper small community, which this "sev" editor is 
definitely also doing.
Apr 05
next sibling parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 6 April 2026 at 01:06:37 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Does anybody know if D + GC + maybe parts of
 stdlib will ever be compiling for wasm?


It has worked in OpenD for over a year now. What doesn't work 
today is exceptions and threads, and exceptions are likely coming 
soon, a patch was submitted yesterday and is undergoing testing 
soon.
Apr 05
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 6 April 2026 at 01:06:37 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Recently I found an interesting project in C + Clay + SDL
 Could be interesting for you to check 
 https://dylancobb.github.io/sev/


 Yep, thank you, interesting project. One thing I wish I could 
 do is to be able to ship to WASM and the browser - which this 
 editor can do because it's in C, but ick cannot. Raylib itself 
 supports WASM, but D with GC doesn't, correct? Does anybody 
 know if D + GC + maybe parts of stdlib will ever be compiling 
 for wasm?


Parin includes some information about compiling raylib-d projects 
that use the GC and std to Wasm: 
https://github.com/Kapendev/parin?tab=readme-ov-file#how-do-i-make-a-web-build

Just ctrl-f raylib and you will find the part I'm talking about. 
Feel also free to make an issue if it does not work and I will 
try to help.
Apr 06
parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 6 April 2026 at 08:24:18 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 On Monday, 6 April 2026 at 01:06:37 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Recently I found an interesting project in C + Clay + SDL
 Could be interesting for you to check 
 https://dylancobb.github.io/sev/


 Yep, thank you, interesting project. One thing I wish I could 
 do is to be able to ship to WASM and the browser - which this 
 editor can do because it's in C, but ick cannot. Raylib itself 
 supports WASM, but D with GC doesn't, correct? Does anybody 
 know if D + GC + maybe parts of stdlib will ever be compiling 
 for wasm?


 Parin includes some information about compiling raylib-d 
 projects that use the GC and std to Wasm: 
 https://github.com/Kapendev/parin?tab=readme-ov-file#how-do-i-make-a-web-build

 Just ctrl-f raylib and you will find the part I'm talking 
 about. Feel also free to make an issue if it does not work and 
 I will try to help.


This might also help: https://github.com/crazymonkyyy/raylib-2024

Just a small last note: anything sdl or raylib related on the web 
is not really the most stable thing **in my opinion** in any 
language. It's better than not being able to have a web build, of 
course. Also worth trying.
Apr 06
prev sibling parent Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Monday, 6 April 2026 at 01:06:37 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Their usage of this "Clay" lib for layout is what also picked 
 my eye. Has anyone tried it? I guess it could simplify things 
 greatly when I get to implementing things like splits, tabs and 
 other small UI elements, but I'm not sure I want to go that way 
 - what if I want to support GOP rendering or some other 
 backends later, I better have my own tiny UI lib. How hard can 
 it be for an editor?


Don't know much about text editors,
but me and the author of the repo are trying to play with D 
bindings for clay..
Join the fun :)
https://github.com/zkxjzmswkwl/clayd
https://github.com/zkxjzmswkwl/clayui


 Anyway, good link, made me think about things. And also about 
 building proper small community, which this "sev" editor is 
 definitely also doing.


Glad that you found it useful!
Apr 06
prev sibling parent reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 09:37:25 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 Hi everyone. Decided to share my work after almost a year of 
 slow grind.

 "ick" is a text editor I am writing in D...


Do you use any kind of model like buffer gap or anything like 
that or you developed your own ?

I used to write games but when going to text editor it was a nice 
challenge, for example loading big files, editing etc.

In my case I use my own algo, where I had an array of pointers to 
strings of some kind of buffer gaps. Deleting/Adding lines was 
pretty fast, just moving pointers around.

In my case even though I wrote syntax highlighting for it, I 
wasn't (Still not) fan of this feature, usually I use text editor 
in 2 colors white over black that's fit me more.

Have you tried to load and compare big files against other 
editors?

I remember a feature I had in linux where I could load files in 
steps and editing big files without wait to finish it, because my 
editor had "page files" with buffer between them, so it was a 
trick that made it load big files instantly while there was a 
multi thread job loading other pages. =]

I pretty sure I used some existing linux feature for this, and 
since I only used linux I couldn't care for windows, but I 
believe this one existed there too.

Good luck on your project,

Matheus.
Apr 04
parent reply madwebness <qount25 protonmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 13:44:35 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 09:37:25 UTC, madwebness wrote:
 Have you tried to load and compare big files against other 
 editors?


Deliberate choice on my part: I don't care about large files. 
Maybe I'll optimize for it in the future, but over my 20 year 
programming career, I've rarely opened a file with more than a 
few thousand lines of code (maybe I've been lucky). I thought 
it's better to have a simpler model for documents (linked list of 
lines) then optimize for large files and end up with something 
less manageable.
Apr 04
parent matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 13:50:01 UTC, madwebness wrote:

 On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 13:44:35 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 09:37:25 UTC, madwebness wrote:
 Have you tried to load and compare big files against other 
 editors?


 Deliberate choice on my part: I don't care about large files. 
 Maybe I'll optimize for it in the future, but over my 20 year 
 programming career, I've rarely opened a file with more than a 
 few thousand lines of code (maybe I've been lucky). I thought 
 it's better to have a simpler model for documents (linked list 
 of lines) then optimize for large files and end up with 
 something less manageable.


Not only big source files, well there was this source (Build 
engine from Ken Silverman 2 or 3 big C files). But one thing 
there is more common is to open big log files which use to be a 
pain in some code editors.

But yes, maybe is not something common, what could be common is 
to open a project with a lot of files to parse. But maybe with AI 
this could be resolve differently these days.

Matheus.
Apr 04