The xi editor project is an attempt to build a high quality text editor, using modern software engineering techniques. It is initially built for macOS, using Cocoa for the user interface, but other targets are planned.

Goals include:

• Incredibly high performance. All editing operations should commit and paint in under 16ms. The editor should never make you wait for anything.

• Beauty. The editor should fit well on a modern desktop, and not look like a throwback from the ’80s or ’90s. Text drawing should be done with the best technology available (Core Text on Mac, DirectWrite on Windows, etc.), and support Unicode fully.

• Reliability. Crashing, hanging, or losing work should never happen.

• Developer friendliness. It should be easy to customize xi editor, whether by adding plug-ins or hacking on the core.

Screenshot (will need to be updated as syntax coloring and UI polish is added):

• Xcode 9.x
• Rust. We test against the latest stable version, and recommend installing through rustup.
• cmake. We recommend installing through homebrew, with brew install cmake.

Note: the front-end and back-end are now split into two separate repositories. This is the front-end, and the back-end (or core) is now in: xi-editor. Make sure to have that checked out as a subdirectory.

> git clone https://github.com/google/xi-mac
> cd xi-mac
> git clone https://github.com/google/xi-editor
> xcodebuild
> open build/Release/XiEditor.app

Or open XiEditor.xcodeproj and hit the Run button.

The most common cause of a failed build is an outdated version of rustc. If you've installed with rustup, make sure Rust is up to date by running rustup update stable.

User settings are currently stored in files; the general preferences are located at ~/Library/Application Support/XiEditor/preferences.xiconfig. This file can be opened from File > Preferences (⌘ + ,).

Users are encouraged to try out Inconsolata, with which Xi is principally tested.

A few theme files are bundled with the application. A theme can be selected from the Debug > Theme menu. There is not yet a mechanism for including custom themes.

The main author is Raph Levien.

We gladly accept contributions via GitHub pull requests, as long as the author has signed the Google Contributor License. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.

This is not an official Google product (experimental or otherwise), it is just code that happens to be owned by Google.