! CHATGPT GENERATED ROADMAP !

VLang Text Editor Development Roadmap

If you want to build a text editor in VLang, the best approach is to break the project into levels of difficulty so you’re not overwhelmed trying to make a “VSCode clone” right away. You’ll go from a minimal “toy” to something that actually feels usable.

COOL ADDS

• markdown renderer
• git integration
• plain text/ markdown linting
• v + v-analyzer self contained

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Level 0 — Bare Minimum Terminal Editor

🎯 Goal: Display text, let the user type, and quit.

• Render static text in terminal
  • Use println or term module to output text.
• Basic input loop
  • Capture keystrokes using os.input() or (better) term.read_key().
• Quit command
  • Example: Press Esc or Ctrl+Q to exit.

Skills learned: event loop, capturing keyboard input, refreshing the screen.

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Level 1 — Editable Text Buffer

🎯 Goal: Let the user insert and delete text in a single buffer.

• Store text as []string (lines) or []rune (characters).
• Implement:
  • Typing characters
  • Backspace
  • Enter (newline)
• Redraw the buffer after every change.
• Keep track of a cursor position (x, y).

Skills learned: data structures for text storage, cursor tracking, live redraw.

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Level 2 — Navigation

🎯 Goal: Move around text with arrow keys.

• Detect arrow key escape sequences in term.read_key().
• Update cursor coordinates without going out of bounds.
• Implement scrolling if the file is bigger than the terminal window.

Skills learned: handling special key codes, viewport management.

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Level 3 — File I/O

🎯 Goal: Load and save text files.

• Use os.read_file() to open a file into your buffer.
• Use os.write_file() to save changes.
• Add “Ctrl+S” to save, “Ctrl+O” to open.

Skills learned: basic file handling, encoding considerations (UTF-8).

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Level 4 — Quality-of-Life Features

🎯 Goal: Make it slightly pleasant to use.

• Undo/redo (store edit history).
• Search (Ctrl+F).
• Line numbers.
• Status bar (filename, cursor pos, modified state).

Skills learned: algorithmic thinking for search/replace, small UI elements in terminal.

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Level 5 — Going GUI

🎯 Goal: Move away from purely terminal-based editing.

Options:

• [ui] module in VLang (still experimental, but you can make basic windows and text boxes).
• Bind to an existing GUI toolkit like SDL2 or raylib.
• Implement your own rendering in a window using OpenGL (much harder).

Skills learned: event-driven GUIs, rendering text, mouse support.

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Level 6 — Advanced Editor Stuff

🎯 Goal: Features that real editors have.

• Syntax highlighting (parse file by language).
• Multiple buffers/tabs.
• Auto-indentation.
• Plugins or scripting support (mini-REPL in VLang).

Skills learned: text parsing, extensible architecture, performance optimization.

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💡 Tips for success

• Start with terminal-based first — it teaches you buffer management and key handling without GUI headaches.
• Look at Kilo (C-based terminal editor) for inspiration; you can port concepts to VLang.
• Keep your rendering function separate from your editing logic — it’ll help when moving to GUI later.
• Avoid premature optimization; focus on features before speed.