kg v1.1.0-rc1

Note

Noteworthy additions since the last major release: visual mark
mode, an ido-style picker for files/buffers/M-x, basic rectangle
commands, C-u, and external shell commands.

Changes

• Visual mark mode. After C-Space the region between point and mark is now drawn in reverse video and tracks the cursor as it moves. The highlight is per-buffer (it survives a C-x b switch and reappears when you return) and lines up across tabs. Following Emacs' transient-mark convention, the region deactivates on C-g, on the first edit, and after a region command (C-w, M-w) has consumed it; the mark itself stays set for the next C-x C-x.

• Shift-select and CUA clipboard shortcuts. Shift+arrow, Shift+Home, and Shift+End drop the mark at point and extend the region as the cursor moves, so anyone coming from a modern GUI editor no longer has to remember C-Space first. The region is transient: a non-shifted key tears it down after the command runs, while region-consuming commands (C-w, M-w, C-x C-x) still see the mark intact during their dispatch. Mixing styles works: an explicit C-Space mark stays sticky when extended with Shift+motion.

  The classic CUA clipboard trio is wired up alongside, mapping to the same kill ring as C-w / M-w / C-y:

  Shift+Delete   cut    (kill-region) Ctrl+Insert    copy   (kill-ring-save) Shift+Insert   paste  (yank)
  

  Note that some terminals (Terminator, gnome-terminal, ...) intercept Shift+Insert and Ctrl+Insert for their own clipboard handling; unbind them in the terminal preferences if you want kg to see them.

• Emacs ido-style picker for M-x, file, and buffer operations. In all three (M-x, C-x C-f, C-x b), type any fragment of the name to narrow the list (substring matching, with prefix matches ranked first). Use backspace to go up a directory, arrow keys to select a file or descend a directory with enter.

• Rectangle mode and operations. C-x SPC sets a rectangle mark at point and turns the highlight rectangular: every row in the row range gets reverse-video on the same column span, lined up across tabs. The same transient-mark tear-down rules apply.

  C-x r prefixes a small set of column-wise operations:

  C-x r k    cut rectangle into the rect kill ring C-x r y    paste at point, padding short rows with spaces and appending new rows when the buffer is too short C-x r d    delete rectangle, no save C-x r c    clear rectangle, replacing chars with spaces and padding short rows out
  

  Each op is one undo step; C-_ restores the entire affected range, including any padding or row appends.

  The Delete key also picks up region semantics: with an active mark it deletes the region (rectangle or linear) without saving, matching the muscle memory of every modern editor. Without a region it remains the usual forward-character delete.

• Run external shell commands and pipe regions through them. M-! prompts for a command, runs it, and inserts its standard output at point. M-| pipes the active region through the command and replaces the region with the output. Standard error is discarded so it cannot disturb the editor display, and no terminal is shared with the child; these are for non-interactive filters (sort, fmt, jq, sed, ...).

• Tab completion in the minibuffer for the four filename prompts (C-x C-f, C-x C-r, C-x C-w, C-x i). Matching directory entries appear live in the echo area as you type; Tab extends the typed text to the longest common prefix; a trailing '/' is appended on a sole directory match so the next Tab descends into it. Dotfiles stay hidden unless the typed prefix starts with '.'.

• Detect external changes to open files. When something else rewrites a file you have open, kg now shows a "(changed)" tag in the mode line within a couple of seconds, no keystroke needed. C-x C-s against such a buffer prompts to confirm before overwriting. Two new M-x commands turn the warning into Emacs-style auto-revert: auto-revert-mode for the current buffer, global-auto-revert-mode for all of them. A clean buffer whose file has changed on disk is silently reloaded with cursor and viewport preserved; modified buffers are never auto-reverted.

• C-q quoted-insert. Reads the next byte from the terminal verbatim and inserts it, bypassing auto-indent and bracket completion. Useful for embedding a literal Tab, Escape, or other control byte when editing terminfo, sendmail.cf, or any file where a specific byte the regular key bindings would intercept matters.

• C-u universal-argument. C-u alone runs the next command four times; stack more C-u presses to multiply by four each (C-u C-u for 16, C-u C-u C-u for 64); follow C-u with digits for an explicit count (C-u 80 - inserts eighty dashes). Cursor motion, character and word deletion, line opening, kill-line, yank, undo, join-line, word-case, and plain character insertion all honour the count. C-g cancels a half-typed prefix; the echo area shows what has been accumulated. Kill-line and yank batch their N iterations under a single undo record so one C-_ reverses the whole operation.

• More Emacs-style cursor motion: M-< / M-> jump to start/end of buffer; M-{ / M-} walk paragraphs (aliases for C-up / C-down); M-m goes to the first non-whitespace character on the current line; M-a / M-e walk by sentence; M-r cycles the cursor through top, middle, and bottom of the visible window without scrolling.

• The mode line now shows only the file's basename, Emacs-style, rather than truncating a long path at 30 characters. The directory part is still available via C-x C-b.

Bug Fixes

• Fix a crash when opening any Markdown file that contains an unmatched ** marker. The highlighter wrote one byte past the row's highlight buffer; opening doc/TODO.md itself was a reliable repro.

• Fix two memory-safety bugs surfaced by AddressSanitizer: an out-of-bounds read in the C keyword matcher on short lines, and a use-after-free in the undo handler for join-line where editor_insert_row's realloc could leave a stale row pointer.

• Pasting a block whose lines already have leading whitespace no longer produces a staircase: auto-indent now defers to the raw newline path when a paste is in progress.

First release of kg, a small terminal text editor with Emacs key bindings, based on kilo by Salvatore Sanfilippo.

Changes

• Emacs-style key bindings for navigation, editing, search, and file operations; see kg.1 for the full reference
• Multiple buffers (C-x b, C-x C-b) with a shared kill ring
• Split-window support (C-x 2 / C-x 3, cycle with C-x o)
• Syntax highlighting for C/C++, Python, Shell, Ruby, Lua, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, HTML, Markdown, and Makefile; language detected by file extension and #! shebang line; includes hexadecimal (0x), binary (0b), and octal (0o) integer literals
• Multi-level undo (C-_)
• Incremental search (C-s / C-r) and query-replace (M-%)
• Paragraph reflow to 72 columns (M-q)
• Auto-indent and bracket/quote autocompletion
• Suspend to shell (C-z)
• C-l recenters the view; repeated presses cycle top/center/bottom; also probes terminal size, useful on serial console connections
• M-x command dispatcher with interactive Tab completion
• Keyboard macros: record with C-x ( or F3, stop with C-x ) or F4, replay with C-x e or F4
• Comment-dwim (M-;), join-line (M-^), word-case (M-u / M-l / M-c)
• Exchange-point-and-mark (C-x C-x) and open-line (C-o)
• Write-file (C-x C-w), insert-file (C-x i), revert-buffer (M-x revert-buffer)
• Built-in key binding reference (C-h)
• Man page (kg.1) and make install / make uninstall support