Introduction - Textadept

# Textadept

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# Introduction

## Overview

Textadept is a fast, minimalist, and ridiculously extensible cross-platform text editor for programmers. Written in a combination of C and Lua and relentlessly optimized for speed and minimalism over the years, Textadept is an ideal editor for programmers who want endless extensibility without sacrificing speed or succumbing to code bloat and featuritis.

### Fast

Textadept is fast. It starts up instantly and has a very responsive user interface. Even though the editor is mostly written in Lua, Lua is one of the fastest scripting languages available. With the optional LuaJIT version, Textadept is faster than ever before.

### Minimalist

Textadept is minimalist. Not only is this apparent in its appearance, but the editor’s C core was designed to never exceed 2000 lines of code and its Lua extension code is capped at 4000 lines. After more than 5 years of development, Textadept has maintained the same amount of code since its inception while evolving into a vastly superior editor.

### Ridiculously Extensible

Textadept is ridiculously extensible. It was designed to be that way from the very beginning. The features came later. Most of Textadept’s internals use Lua, from syntax highlighting to opening and saving files to searching and replacing and more. Textadept gives you complete control over the entire application using Lua. You can do everything from moving the caret to changing menus and key commands on-the-fly to handling core events. The possibilities are limitless.

## Manual Notation

This manual uses notation that is worth clarifying.

Directories and file paths are represented like this: /path/to/dir/ and /path/to/file. (On Windows machines, ‘/’ and ‘\’ can be used interchangeably as directory separators.) Any relative paths, paths that do not begin with ‘/’ or “C:\”, are relative to the location of Textadept. ~/ is denoted as the user’s home directory. On Windows machines this is the value of the “USERHOME” environment variable, typically C:\Users\username\ or C:\Documents and Settings\username\. On Linux, BSD, and Mac OSX machines it is the value of “$HOME”, typically /home/username/ and /Users/username/ respectively.

Key bindings are represented like this: `Ctrl+N`. They are not case sensitive. `Ctrl+N` means the “N” key is pressed with only the “Control” modifier key being held down, not the “Shift” modifier key. `Ctrl+Shift+N` means the “N” key is pressed with both “Control” and “Shift” modifiers held down. The same notation is applicable to key chains: `Ctrl+N, N` vs. `Ctrl+N, Shift+N`. In the first key chain, “Control” and “N” are pressed followed by “N” with no modifiers. The second has “Control” and “N” pressed followed by “Shift” and “N”.

When key bindings are mentioned, the Mac OSX and curses equivalents are often shown in parenthesis. It may be tempting to assume that some Windows/Linux keys map to Mac OSX’s (e.g. `Ctrl` to `⌘`) or curses' (e.g. `Ctrl` to `^`), but this is not always the case. Please do not view the key equivalents as translations of one another, but rather as separate entities. This will minimize confusion.