TED — Turbo Editor

A terminal text editor written in Java, styled after Borland Turbo C++ and MS-DOS EDIT. Navy-blue editing surface, silver menu bars, line numbers, syntax highlighting, and multi-tab file editing — all in your terminal.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ File  Edit  Search  Run  Compile  Window  Help               │  ← silver menu bar
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ▶ main.java *   utils.rs                                     │  ← tab bar
│┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
││   1  public class Main {                                   ││
││   2      public static void main(String[] args) {          ││  ← navy editor
││   3          System.out.println("Hello, world!");          ││
││   4      }                                                 ││
││   5  }                                                     ││
│└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│
│ Ln 3, Col 12  |  Java  |  MODIFIED   F1=Help  F2=Save  ...  │  ← status bar
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Features

• Retro UI — DOS silver chrome (#C0C0C0) for the top menu and bottom status bar; deep navy editor background (#000080); Borland-style red hotkey letters
• Syntax highlighting — keywords, strings, comments, numbers, types, preprocessor directives, and markup tags
• Multi-tab editing — open several files at once; modified tabs show a * suffix
• 20+ languages — detected automatically from file extension
• Line numbers — fixed gutter on the left
• Full-screen terminal UI — built with Lanterna

Requirements

• Java 17 or later
• Maven 3.6+
• A real terminal emulator (iTerm2, Terminal.app, Windows Terminal, Kitty, etc.)

Quick start

git clone <repo-url>
cd ted

# Build a standalone JAR (includes all dependencies)
mvn package

# Run the editor
java -jar target/ted-1.0.0.jar

# Open files on launch
java -jar target/ted-1.0.0.jar src/main/java/com/ted/editor/Ted.java README.md

You can also run without packaging:

mvn compile exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="com.ted.editor.Ted"

Keybindings

Function keys

Key	Action
F1	Help
F2	Save
F3	Open file
F4	New tab
F6	Next tab
F10	Exit

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+S	Save
Ctrl+O	Open file
Ctrl+N	New tab
Ctrl+W	Close tab
Ctrl+Q	Exit
Ctrl+Tab	Next tab
Shift+Ctrl+Tab	Previous tab
Alt+1 … Alt+9	Jump to tab 1–9
Ctrl+Insert	Copy current line to clipboard
Shift+Insert	Paste from clipboard

Editing

Key	Action
Arrow keys	Move cursor
Home / End	Start / end of line
Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End	Start / end of file
Page Up / Page Down	Scroll one page
Tab	Insert 4 spaces
Shift+Tab	Unindent (remove up to 4 spaces)
Backspace / Delete	Delete character or join lines

Supported languages

Language mode is chosen from the file extension:

Language	Extensions
C	.c, .h
C++	.cpp, .cc, .cxx, .hpp, .hh, .hxx
Java	.java
JavaScript	.js, .mjs, .cjs
TypeScript	.ts, .tsx
Python	.py, .pyw
Rust	.rs
Go	.go
HTML	.html, .htm
CSS	.css, .scss
JSON	.json
XML	.xml, .svg
Shell	.sh, .bash, .zsh
Markdown	.md, .markdown
SQL	.sql
YAML	.yml, .yaml
TOML	.toml
Properties	.properties, .ini, .cfg
Makefile	Makefile, makefile.*

Files without a recognized extension open in plain-text mode.

Project structure

src/main/java/com/ted/editor/
├── Ted.java                 Entry point
├── TedApplication.java      Application shell, keybindings, file I/O
├── TurboTheme.java          Color palette and chrome constants
├── Language.java            Language detection by extension
├── model/
│   ├── EditorBuffer.java    Text buffer, cursor, save/load
│   ├── EditorTab.java       Tab wrapper
│   └── TabManager.java      Tab collection and switching
├── syntax/
│   ├── SyntaxHighlighter.java
│   ├── Token.java
│   └── TokenType.java
└── ui/
    ├── ChromePanel.java     Menu bar, tab bar, status bar
    ├── EditorPanel.java     Editor rendering and input
    └── FileDialogs.java     Open / save / confirm dialogs

How it works

TED runs as a full-screen Lanterna TUI. The layout is:

1. Top menu bar — gray chrome with File, Edit, Search, etc.; hotkey letters in red
2. Tab bar — open files on the navy background; active tab marked with ▶
3. Editor pane — bordered text area with line-number gutter and syntax-colored tokens
4. Status bar — gray chrome showing cursor position, language, and modified state on the left; function-key hints on the right

Syntax highlighting uses a lightweight regex/lexer per language — no external parser dependencies. Each visible line is tokenized and drawn with colors from TurboTheme.

Development

# Compile
mvn compile

# Run tests (none yet)
mvn test

# Build fat JAR
mvn package

To tweak the look, start with TurboTheme.java. Menu labels and status hints are defined there as constants.

Acknowledgments

Inspired by the editors that shipped with Borland Turbo C++ and MS-DOS EDIT. Built with Lanterna for terminal rendering.