Bring function keys back to functions
nx
# or nanox
# Press F1 to see emacs guideA terminal editor designed around two hands, physical keys, and explicit intent.
Nanox(/na.noks/) is a modern, minimalistic, feature-rich fork of uEmacs/PK that brings the intuitive user experience of nano to the professional power of MicroEmacs. It's designed to be NOT Blazingly Fast, Fairly Small, and fully UTF-8 aware, making it the perfect choice for terminal-based editing on any system. It employs a custom memory management strategy that chunks large files and lazily decompresses them via LZ4, maintaining a small RSS footprint even on extremely large files.
Nanox isn't just another text editor. It is built to optimize your workflow by turning raw performance and smart conventions into tangible editing advantages.
Forget the sluggishness of Electron apps or the heavy startup times of LSP-bloated editors. Nanox is written in pure C.
- Deterministic 1:1 Syntax Matching: We use a high-performance state-machine matching engine instead of resource-intensive Tree-sitter. Highlighting is calculated at the speed of raw text processing—no flickering, no context-guessing errors.
- Instant Startup: Nanox opens instantly, ready for your keystrokes before your finger leaves the Enter key.
We’ve ditched complex semantic analysis for lean, convention-driven logic.
- Rule-Based Indentation: Indentation is consistent, fast, and follows established coding conventions without generating massive ASTs, maintaining a microscopic memory footprint.
- Multi-Cursor Support: Manage multiple cursors in command mode using
cursor create <N>,cursor select <N>, andcursor singlefor concurrent multi-line selections. - Fuzzy Autocompletion & LSP Support: Enjoy blazing-fast built-in fuzzy matching for buffer words, and seamlessly tap into LSP (Language Server Protocol) when you need deep language intelligence.
- Cscope Integration: Navigate massive codebases instantly with native Cscope support.
- Integrated Spell Checker: Built-in Hunspell integration catches typos seamlessly without breaking your flow.
Unlike older Emacs forks that mangle CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) input, Nanox treats global text as a first-class citizen.
- Atomic UTF-8 Minibuffer: A robust Minibuffer Window System with an 8-bit masked output pipeline ensures no "Latin-1 Ghosts."
- Perfect CJK Sync: Integrated cursor positioning correctly calculates double-width characters, so your cursor is always exactly where you expect it to be.
- Race-Condition Free: Implements an atomic "Gate Buffer" logic for ISearch and Replace, ensuring your terminal never "beeps" due to incomplete UTF-8 fragments.
Terminal editors don't have to be plain text only.
- Live Color Code Preview: Working with CSS or UI code? Nanox automatically detects
#RGB,rgb(),rgba(), andhsl()strings, rendering a live color preview box right at the end of the line. - Markdown & HTML Rich Text Rendering: Nanox parses
**bold**,*italic*, and<u>underline</u>tags and renders them with actual terminal styling, bringing your documentation to life without altering the raw markup. - Accessibility-First Themes: Features a colorblind-friendly default theme, with a built-in Python script (
cognitive_themegen.py) to generate accessible custom color palettes.
Designed for human hands and explicit intent.
- File Reservation Slots: Jump seamlessly between 4 distinct workspaces. Bookmark files and instantly switch context using
F9throughF12. No more losing your place in a labyrinth of hidden buffers. - Nano-Style UI: Familiar hint bars at the bottom mean you never have to memorize obscure chord combinations to get started.
- Smart Horizontal Scrolling: The view automatically and intelligently scrolls to keep the cursor visible on long lines, correctly handling CJK characters and emoji widths.
Nanox now includes powerful tools for structured text and data manipulation:
- Visual Block (Viblock) Mode: Perform rectangular editing and replacements (
viblock-edit,viblock-replace). Swap non-overlapping line ranges instantly withviblock-flip. - Smart Numbering: Automatically rewrite or reverse list numbering (1., 2., 3...) while preserving suffixes and indentation using
viblock-set-nr. - Sed-style Replace (^R): Execute powerful regex replacements using the standard
s/pattern/replacement/flagssyntax. - Built-in Lint & Tidy: Automatically fix indentation across the entire buffer using a heuristic-based step detector via the
lintcommand in Command Mode (^V). - Integrated Color Engine: Transform color codes (
#hex,rgb) in real-time. Adjust hue/contrast, invert colors, or simulate colorblindness directly within the editor using thecolorscommand. - Raw Binary Inspection: Analyze files at the byte or bit level with
file raw-sig. Supports offset seeking, endianness switching, and bit-alignment visualization. - Massive File Queuing: The slot system can expand up to 64 concurrent file slots, allowing you to queue dozens of files and cycle through them seamlessly.
- Slot-based File Cycling: Use the
nextfile [n]command in Command Mode to cycle through open buffers that are not currently displayed in any slots. This allows you to manage hundreds of open files through a limited number of F9-F12 slots, with each slot maintaining its own independent navigation context.
| Key | Action | Key | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | Help Menu | F2 | Save File |
| F3 | Open File | F4 | Quit Editor |
| F5 | Search Forward | F6 | Copy (S:End) |
| F7 | Cut (S:End) | F8 | Yank (Paste) |
| F9-F12 | Jump to Slot | Ctrl+F9-F12 | Set Slot |
| Ctrl+G | Goto Line | Ctrl+V | Execute Command |
On terminals that bind Ctrl+V to bracketed paste, an empty paste now falls back to Command Mode so commands like nextfile still open normally.
Nanox is written in C and has minimal dependencies.
- A C compiler (GCC/Clang)
libncursesortermcaplibhunspell(optional, for spell checking)
git clone https://github.com/gg582/nanox.git
cd nanox
make
make configs-install
sudo make installNanox looks for configuration in ~/.config/nanox/config (or ~/.local/share/nanox/config).
[ui]
hint_bar=true
warning_lamp=true
help_key=F1
help_language=en
[edit]
soft_tab=true
soft_tab_width=4
autocomplete=true
use_lsp=false
[search]
case_sensitive_default=falseSet help_language to a locale code (default en) to make Nanox look for emacs-<code>.hlp before falling back to the bundled emacs.hlp.
Autocomplete defaults to true and now uses fuzzy matching with built-in language keywords and buffer words. Set autocomplete=false to disable it.
Set use_lsp=true to enable extra completion sources when a language server binary is installed for the active file type (clangd, pylsp/pyright-langserver, typescript-language-server, gopls, rust-analyzer, jdtls).
Nanox now ships with first-class syntax rules for 32 widely used languages (C/C++, Python, Ruby, Rust, Go, Java/Kotlin/Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript, SQL, HTML/CSS/JSON/YAML, etc.). These definitions live in syntax.ini and cover accurate flow/type/keyword lists plus bracket, triple-quote, and numeric highlighting where languages support them.
You can extend or override the built-ins without recompiling:
- Create
~/.config/nanox/langs(or~/.local/share/nanox/langs). - Drop one or more
.inifiles there. Each file can hold a single language section using the same keys found insyntax.ini. Usefile_matches = ^regex$when you need to match basenames without reliable extensions (e.g.,Makefile,Kconfig); patterns follow POSIX extended regular expressions and are matched case-insensitively against the filename. - Restart Nanox. The editor will automatically merge everything under the
langs/directory after loading the base profiles.
Example (~/.config/nanox/langs/futhark.ini):
[futhark]
extensions = fth
line_comment_tokens = --
string_delims = ",'
flow = if,then,else,loop,for,while
keywords = let,entry,fn,module,open,import,include
return_keywords = inSample profiles for rarer but still relevant languages (Ada, COBOL, Elixir, Erlang, Fortran) are bundled under configs/nanox/langs and installed alongside the default configuration via make configs-install.
Theme generator is available to handle accessibility issue with enough flexibility.
Please run python3 ./accessibility/cognitive_themegen.py to generate.
Bundled themes now include additional popular and classic presets such as:
one-dark, nord, gruvbox-dark, solarized-dark, solarized-light, and zenburn-classic.
Press F1 inside the editor to open the interactive Nanox help system. You can browse keybindings, configuration options, and deep-dive into the MicroEmacs manual by pressing Enter on any function name.
Nanox is based on uEmacs/PK 4.0, which itself is an enhanced version of MicroEMACS 3.9e (written by Dave G. Conroy and Daniel M. Lawrence). This version carries forward the tradition of extreme portability and efficiency while adding modern terminal capabilities.
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