This is simple editor in Ruby that works with screen readers, esp. like VoiceOver in Mac OS/X. Viper only attempts an audible interface. Sighted users of the program will only see confusing gibberish on the screen.
Viper has been tested with Ubuntu 14.04, Ruby 2.2 and the terminal type: xterm-256color. Some limited testing has been done on the Mac's OS/X Terminal.app. YMMV!
Clone this repository. Possibly add 'viper/bin' to your PATH or alias viper to your cloned path 'bin/viper'.
./bin/viper file.rb
This executes the main editor loop. To exit, hit Ctrl-Q at any time.
- Ctrl-S: Saves the current buffer.
- Ctrl-Q: Exits the main editor loop and asks to save the current buffer, if dirty.
- Ctrl-H - Brings up Help text. F3 starts keyboard help. Press Ctrl-Q to quit keyboard help and return to the editor session.
./bin/viper --help
- Snippets: Ability to record and playback short snippets of commonly used texts.
- Copy and Paste: Shift+right, left arrows to select text and Ctrl-C, X and V to Copy, Cut and Paste.
- Search and Reverse Search: (Ctrl-F. Ctrl-R). Ctrl-G to continue searching in the last direction.
- Replace: Replace text in conjunction with search.
- Undo/Redo: Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-U will undo the last editor action, and replay them if needed.
- Package Support: Extends Viper with multiple packages including Viper commands,Aliases and Ruby library code.
- Help system: including keyboard help (like VO+k in Mac VoiceOver)
Note: SimpleCov support has been moved to viper_simplecov Viper package. No changes were made to the load_cov, cov or cov_report commands. The only new requirement is to load the viper_simplecov package either with the 'package viper_simplecov' command or use the --package viper_simplecov option to the viper command.
Note: Ruby syntax checking and the Little Linter have been moved to the viper_ruby package. https://github.com/edhowland/viper_ruby
Note: The only actual programming language Viper knows how to syntax check is its own .viper or .viperrc files out of the box. In order to support other programming languages, you will need to install the appropriate Viper package in your local packages folder. E.g. '~/.viper/packages'. So far, only one of these exist: viper_ruby. This package can be used for Ruby language and MiniTest _spec files.
Note: Language snippet support have been moved to Viper language packages. This means that default snippets for a given language will be found in the installed package for that language. E.g. Ruby and MiniSpec snippets can be found in ~/.viper/packages/viper_ruby/snippets. This creates a snippets load order in the following manner:
- Loaded packages in ~/.viper/packages//snippets
- In ~/.viper/snippets
- In Viper's config directory: /config/
Since the search enter area is another buffer, can use regular editor commands within it. E.g. Ctrl-V to paste in some text to be search to be for. Also, up and down arrows work like in Bash readline to recover the last thing you searched for.
Ctrl-A: Selects the entire buffer. Ctrl-Y - Yanks the current line into the clipboard. Fn4: Sets/Unsets a mark. Cursor movements from there selects and highlights text. The Meta key is Alt or Option depending on your keyboard layout. Meta+D - Starts a Delete sequence:
- 'd' - Deletes the current line.
- Shift+Home - Deletes to the front of the current line.
- Shift+End - Deletes to end of the current line.
- Shift+PgUp - Deletes to the top of the buffer.
- Shift+PgDn - Deletes to the bottom of the buffer.
Option/Alt+';' enters command mode where you can run some some editor functions. These are very vim-like in form and syntax. E.g. w filename - writes the current buffer to filename. rew! re-reads the current file back into the current buffer, overwriting any changes. check - performs a Ruby syntax check on the current buffer. lint - performs limited lint on current buffer. Ensures every line is indented with an even number of spaces.
Meta help brings up a help buffer. You can return to the previous buffer with either Ctrl-T or meta+n, meta+p to rotate through buffers. k! will delete the current buffer without saving it first. This is like Close Tab in a browser.
Initially, there are no snippets loaded, but there is a default snippet collection. Viper ships with a number of snippet collections: ruby, spec and markdown. These collections are stored in ./config/*.json. You can create new snippets and play them back using the command interface which is invoked with Option/Alt+; . Snippet collections can be automatically associated with path/file/ext patterns. E.g. '.rb' can be associated with the ruby collection. These associations can be either file part literals or regular expressions. E.g. /.+_spec.rb/ can be associated with the spec collection. The most specific association wins in any constest between loaded associations. For example, in the above association, if it was loaded along with the ruby association, myfile_spec.rb would be associated with the spec collection, not the ruby collection. But any other file.rb would still be associated with ruby.
Here is an example session with creating a snippet, saving it and using it in a file.
load markdown markdown
assocx .md markdown
# now create a new snippet: the h6 heading
new
# enter: \n###### \n
snip h6 markdown
dump markdown markdown
# Ctrl-T to return to previous buffer with Markdown content
h6TAB
# snippet h6 is played back and cursor is positioned at start of typing
In the above session, we loaded the ./config/markdown.json and loaded into the markdown collection. Then we associated it with the '.md' file extension. Next, we created a new scratch buffer with the :new command. After creating our snippet, we saved it with the 'h6' abbreviation name into the markdown collection with the :snip command. Next, we saved our current markdown collection back to the ./config/markdown.json file. Lastly, we returned to our previous file buffer and invoked the snippet with the h6+TAB combination.
That's all there is to it!
Use the :sedit command to load an existing snippet into a buffer to edit it. Use the :snip when done editing it to return it to the collection. You can return to your previous buffer to test it out. When satisfied, remember to dump it back into the .json file.
Here is a sample editing session:
new
sedit h6 markdown
# Now edit the snippet's contents.
snip h6 markdown
k!
# You are now in your previous buffer. Try out the new h6 snippet with:
h6TAB
# It works! Now save it
dump markdown markdown
Within the contents of the snippet, you can set Tab points (stops) with the '^.' combination. You can set as many of these as you need. For example, ifelif might have 5 of these for the if condition, the if stanza, the elsif condition, the elsif stanza and the else stanza. When a snippet is first invoked, the buffer will automatically advance to the first tab point, if any.
Note: Remember to make sure to keeping hitting the tab key to advance to any subsequent tab points. Tab will first erase the '^.' in the buffer so you can start typing from the tab point. If you forget to clear all the tab points, you might get a syntax error in your code. You can find any left over tab points by Ctrl-F and entering ^.Return
Viper will check for a ~/.viperrc file. If it exists, it will attempt to execute commands contained within, one per line. You can also create a .viperrc file in any directory. It will be loaded last. You should only put any commands there that do not require a buffer to operate. Also, any quiting commands with not operate. Also, you will not hear any output in audio, so do not put list, reporting commands there.
You can use the 'load_cov coverage/coverage.json' command to load a JSON file generated with the simplecov gem. You should put this in a local .viperrc file so it will be available to the program whenever you generate the coverage report. Once loaded, use the 'cov_report' command to get an overall report of the project coverage. The file list in this new buffer is sorted in ascended numerical order by code coverage percent. Search forward for 100.0 to get the first file that was covered completely. Then work backward from there. Once you have determined a file that needs to be covered, load that file with the 'o filepath' command. Next, run the 'cov' command. This will open another buffer with the individual file report. Search forward for 'hits: 0' to find the lines you should address.
Please see the file CONTRIBUTING.md for information on contributing to the Viper project. I am looking forward to your support and welcome any help. Together, we can make Viper a great project for all visually impaired or blind programmers. I am especially requesting help from programmers in other programming languages like Python, Golang, Javascript, etc.