Vitor's Editor

Vitor's Editor (VED) is a MicroEmacs-inspired terminal editor for POSIX systems. It is written in C23, runs in raw terminal mode, requires no external dependencies and uses an event-driven, non-blocking input loop.

Features

• Emacs-style navigation and editing
• UTF-8 aware cursor movement and word operations
• Kill ring (C-k, C-w, M-d, M-Backspace) + yank (C-y, M-y)
• Region selection with mark (C-Space / C-@) and mouse drag
• File finder (M-p) with .gitignore-aware fuzzy matching
• Tree-sitter highlighting for C (.c, .h)
• OSC 52 clipboard copy on region copy/kill
• Mouse scrolling and selections

Requirements

• POSIX system
• make
• C compiler with C23 support

Installing

Install to /usr/local/bin by default:

make
sudo make install

Use a custom prefix:

make PREFIX="$HOME/.local/bin" install

Uninstall:

sudo make uninstall

Usage

Open an existing file:

./ved path/to/file.c

Start with an empty buffer:

./ved

Save the current buffer:

• C-x C-s
• If no file is associated yet, VED opens a Save as: prompt

Exit VED with C-x C-c.

Keybinds

Movement

• C-p / C-n: previous / next line
• C-b / C-f: previous / next character
• C-a / C-e: beginning / end of line
• M-b / M-f: previous / next word
• Arrow keys: move cursor (or navigate finder list)

Editing

• Enter: insert newline
• C-o: insert an empty line above the current line
• Tab: insert tab in Makefile mode, otherwise 2 spaces
• Backspace: delete backward
• C-d: delete forward

Mark, Region, Kill Ring

• C-Space (C-@): set/clear mark
• C-w: kill region
• M-w: copy region
• C-k: kill to end of line (or join with next line)
• M-d: kill next word
• M-Backspace: kill previous word
• C-y: yank (paste last kill)
• M-y: rotate kill ring after C-y

Features

• M-p: open file finder (from project root containing .git/)
• C-s: incremental search forward
• C-r: incremental search backward
• C-x C-s: save file
• C-g: cancel pending C-x, close prompt, clear mark, clear state
• C-x C-c: exit editor

Mouse

• Left click: move cursor and set mark anchor
• Drag: update region selection
• Scroll wheel: scroll buffer

tmux

When using VED from inside tmux, you'll want to enable terminal passthrough and clipboard integration:

set -g allow-passthrough on
set -g set-clipboard on

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Vitor Manuel de Sousa Pereira. All rights reserved.

Distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE.