acheronfail / xi-electron

A front-end for the xi-editor built with modern web technologies.

Xi Electron

A front-end for the xi-editor built with modern web technologies.

NOTE: This is still a WIP!

Demo

Goals of this Repo

• Make a front-end for xi-editor that is consistent across platforms
• Experiment with different editor rendering techniques on the web, specifically:
  • 2d - <canvas>
  • DOM - direct use of the DOM (have a look at how CodeMirror tackled some of the challenges of using the DOM)
  • WebGL - GPU accelerated rendering (via <canvas>)
• Hopefully create a functional mobile friendly version that is also fast and pleasant to use
  • once all three views are implemented we can benchmark them against each other

The main motivation for this repo is to experiment and profile the speeds and performance of different rendering techniques for text editors in the browser, specifically with modern HTML5 APIs and the like. The final goal would be a fully cross-platform (desktop+mobile) text editing experience, but that's still a long hope at this stage.

Getting started

To build and run xi-electron you'll need to have NodeJS installed (Node version 6 or greater) as well as Git.

To get started:

> git clone https://github.com/acheronfail/xi-electron --recursive
> cd xi-electron
> yarn            # or: npm install

# Build xi-core:
> yarn core:build

# If you just want to run in dev mode then run:
> yarn start      # or: npm run start

# To build xi-electron into an application:
> yarn make       # or: npm run make

The yarn build:core script will attempt to build xi-editor, so you'll need Rust (see below for details). The built app will be output to xi-electron/out/.

Building xi-core

Keep in mind you'll need Rust (version 1.30+ is recommended at the moment). On macOS platforms you'll need Xcode 8.2 and other relevant build tools.

You can build and install xi-core via yarn build:core. You can re-run this script anytime you like. xi-editor is currently placed in this repository as a submodule, so we can have a "somewhat" stable experience.

If you run into build issues ensure the submodule is present, ie:

> git submodule update --init

Alternatively, if you'd like to clean and re-build everything again, you can run:

# Deletes all build artefacts:
> yarn core:clean
# Rebuilds the core:
> yarn core:build

If you'd like to build and use a more recent version of xi-editor then just place it under src/xi-core. For building xi-editor manually refer to its instructions.

Contributing

Please! 🙏

Credits

• All credits for the xi-editor go to Raph Levien.

License

MIT