left
Left is graphical plain-text editor written in Uxntal. Left doesn't do much, but packs many useful features in a tiny 13kb rom.
It supports Uxntal syntax highlight, proportional text, inline images and the snarf buffer. This version is updated regularly.
To view the documentation for the former version of Left, see left electron. Both the Uxn and Electron versions are available on itch.io.
Download LeftDistributions
The first version of Left was released on itch.io for desktop in 2017.
We have since released many more versions of Left. A web version was initially created to help Rek with the writing of Wiktopher.
In 2021, Left was re-written as a lightweight graphical text editor for the uxn system.
Getting Started
Left is distributed as a rom for the Uxn system, you must have an emulator available for your machine, for more details, see the Uxn Guide. To begin, navigate to the folder in which you want your project files to be saved, and enter the following to launch the left.rom:
./path/to/uxnemu ~/roms/left.rom
Controls
- ctrl + n
- new
- ctrl + r
- rename
- ctrl + o
- open
- ctrl + s
- save
- ctrl + p
- send
- ctrl + b
- build
- ctrl + q
- exit
- ctrl + c
- copy
- ctrl + v
- paste
- ctrl + s + v
- paste binary
- ctrl + x
- cut
- backspace
- erase
- delete
- delete
- ctrl + /
- go to directory
- ctrl + enter
- go to selection
- ctrl + t
- strip
- ctrl + i
- trim
- ctrl + y
- clip
- ctrl + j
- join
- tab
- tab
- s + tab
- untab
- ctrl + tab
- select word
- ctrl + g
- select symbol
- s
- select line start
- ctrl + a
- select all
- escape
- select reset
- ctrl + f
- find selection
- ctrl + h
- View hint
- ctrl + space
- Symbol
- ctrl + l
- Categories
- ctrl + shift + u
- Unicode input
Tutorial
Renaming a file
To rename a file, press ctrl + r and save it with a .txt extension.
Snarf
It is not possible to copy text from another document to paste directly into Left, but it is possible using a .snarf file. To do this, open the command line (making sure you're in the same project file) and type:
cat > .snarf
Paste your text, press enter and exit with ctrl + c. Then, select the text, copy it and paste it in your Left file.
Finding a word
Find multiple occurences of a word by selecting one, and pressing ctrl + f. A menu will appear on the left side showing the various occurences of the selected word, scroll through the list using alt + (↑ or ↓ arrows). To leave the word finding mode press escape.
Directory
A listing of the files in the active directory can be seen by the sequence ctrl + /. To open a file, select a word and press ctrl + enter.
Saving a file
To save a file, press ctrl + s.
At the top left corner of the window is a diamond shape, it changes color to indicate whether or not you have unsaved changes. Teal means unsaved, Black means saved.
license
The license applies to all the documented projects, the projects themselves and their assets. The source code of this website and our apps are under the MIT License, but the assets and text content of this website and of our apps are under the BY-NC-SA4.0 License. We are happy to pass knowledge, and that others can learn from our projects, improve on them, or make them into something else that is useful.
DO NOT resell or mint our work, doing so is very lazy, and disrespectful to us.
You can find our more recent projects on Sourcehut.
pull request
See the Github and Sourcehut repositories. Pull Requests are welcome, but please read our design philosophy first.