This project contains the config and skin for configuring Midnight Commander's internal editor (mcedit) to look more like the old MS-DOS Editor and behave more like modern GUI text editors like Visual Studio Code.
Goals of this project are:
- Use keyboard hotkeys known from modern GUI text editors like Visual Studio Code.
- Configure text selection and copy/cut/paste to behave like a modern GUI text editor.
- Support copy/paste between X11/Wayland and mcedit.
- Work in GUI terminal like Gnome Terminal but also on TTY and over SSH.
- Copy the content of
config/mc/to$HOME/.config/mc/. This might override your current configuration, so make a backup if necessary. - Create
~/.local/config/mc/skins/if not already present. - Copy the content of
skins/to~/local/config/mc/skins/.
Alternatively run the install.sh script in this repository.
If you only wan't to use the configuration and keep the default skin of Midnight Commander then remove the skin=mcdos256 line from ~/.config/mc/ini or set it to whatever skin you want to use.
If you want clipboard support then you must install the xclip program. On Debian systems this program is provided by the xclip package which can be installed with sudo apt install xclip.
How you configure your system to use mcedit, is up to you. I would recommend setting this in your ~/.profile file:
if [ "${TERM-}" = "linux" ]; then
export MC_SKIN="mcdos"
fi
export EDITOR=mceditThe TERM check ensures that on a linux terminal (TTY) the standard 16 color mcdos skin is used instead of mcdos256.
The following skin variations are provided:
| Skin | Description |
|---|---|
| mcdos256 | Uses fixed colors of the 256-color palette to be as close to the MS-DOS Editor colors as possible. |
| mcdos | Uses the standard color names which are influenced by the terminal settings. Use this if 256-color palette does not work for you or you like the standard color palette of your terminal. |
The hotkey listings here are not complete lists. They primarily document the hotkeys which are different to the default key mapping of mcedit.
mcedit has a fixed button bar at the bottom which can't be configured and is not affected by the hotkey configuration. This configuration does not mess with function key mappings, so the button bar still makes sense and does not show wrong information. Currently this only has the downside that F3 can't be used for Search Continue.
| Hotkey | Command | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Tab | BlockShiftRight | Indents marked lines |
| Shift+Tab | BlockShiftLeft | Unindents marked lines |
| Ctrl+D | DeleteLine | Delete current line |
| Ctrl+Left | WordLeft | Move cursor one word to the left |
| Ctrl+Right | WordTop | Move cursor one word to the right |
| Ctrl+Home | Top | Move cursor to top of the file |
| Ctrl+End | Bottom | Move cursor to bottom of the file |
| Hotkey | Menu | Command | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+E | Open File | EditFile | Returning from the subshell is hardcoded to Ctrl+O, so we can't use Ctrl+O here and keep it to enter the subshell. Using Ctrl+E because the command is named EditFile anyway. |
| Ctrl+N | New File | EditNew | |
| Ctrl+W | Close File | Close | |
| Ctrl+Alt+E | History | History | Opens/Edits a recent file, so it is an alternate version of Ctrl+E |
| Ctrl+S | Save File | Save | |
| Ctrl+Alt+S | Save File As | SaveAs | Ctrl+Shift+S is not mappable unfortunately |
| Ctrl+I | Insert File | InsertFile | |
| Ctrl+T | Copy To File | BlockSave | T for copy "To" file |
| F12 | User Menu | UserMenu | |
| Ctrl+Q | Quit | Quit |
| Hotkey | Menu | Command | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+Z | Undo | Undo | |
| Ctrl+Y | Redo | Redo | |
| Insert | Toggle ins/overwrite | InsertOverwrite | |
| F3 | Toggle Mark | Mark | Fixed mapping in button bar |
| Ctrl+A | Mark All | MarkAll | |
| Escape | Unmark | Unmark | |
| Delete | Delete | Delete | |
| Ctrl+C | Copy to clipfile | Store | |
| Ctrl+X | Cut to clipfile | Cut | |
| Ctrl+V | Paste from clipfile | Paste | |
| Ctrl+Home | Beginning | Top | |
| Ctrl+End | End | Bottom |
| Hotkey | Menu | Command | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+F | Search | Search | |
| Ctrl+Alt+F | Search again | SearchContinue | F3 has fixed meaning in button bar |
| Ctrl+R | Replace | Replace | Ctrl+H is not mappable |
| Ctrl+Alt+K | Toggle Bookmark | Bookmark | |
| Ctrl+Alt+L | Next Bookmark | BookmarkNext | |
| Ctrl+Alt+J | Prev Bookmark | BookmarkPrev | |
| Ctrl+Alt+I | Flush Bookmark | BookmarkFlush |
| Hotkey | Menu | Command | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alt+G | Go to line | Goto | Ctrl+G is not mappable |
| Alt+N | Toggle line state | ShowNumbers | |
| Ctrl+\ | Go to matching bracket | MatchBracket | Ctrl+Shift+\ is not mappable |
| Alt+H | Toggle syntax highlighting | SyntaxOnOff | |
| Alt+Enter | Find Declaration | Find | Needs emacs style TAGS file to work |
| Alt+Minus | Back from declaration | FilePrev | Needs emacs style TAGS file to work |
| Alt+Plus | Forward to declaration | FileNext | Needs emacs style TAGS file to work |
| Alt+R | Start/Stop record macro | MacroStartStopRecord |
| Hotkey | Menu | Command | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+U | Insert Literal | InsertLiteral | Related to Ctrl+Shift+U which is handled by Terminal |
| Alt+P | Format Paragraph | ParagraphFormat | |
| Alt+T | Sort | Sort | |
| Alt+U | Paste output of | ExternalCommand |
| Hotkey | Menu | Command | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+Tab | Next Window | WindowNext | |
| Ctrl+Shift+W | Window List | WindowList |