NED is a retro-style text editor built with Dear ImGui, offering modern features like Tree Sitter syntax highlighting, LSP integration, and a terminal emulator. It targets developers seeking a customizable and visually distinct coding environment, providing a lightweight yet powerful editing experience with unique shader effects.

How It Works

NED leverages Dear ImGui for its UI framework and OpenGL for rendering, enabling retro-style visual effects through GL shaders (e.g., static noise, burn-in, screen curvature, bloom). It integrates Tree Sitter for robust syntax highlighting across numerous languages and supports Language Server Protocol (LSP) for advanced code navigation and analysis. A custom-built terminal emulator based on st.c provides shell access within the editor.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Installation: Clone the repository with submodules (git clone --recursive https://github.com/nealmick/ned).
• Prerequisites: CMake (>= 3.10), C++20 compatible compiler, OpenGL, GLFW3, Glew, Curl.
• Build:
  • macOS/Linux: ./build.sh
  • Windows: ./build-win.bat (attempts to install Visual Studio Build Tools).
• Setup Time: ~10-20 minutes for initial Windows setup.
• Links:
  • Embeddable version demo: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/56c17e13-729b-4667-a6d4-95119f059252
  • AI agent demo: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/13c01a86-3b16-49c8-89e8-3fb5d7fb8910
  • Multi-cursor demo: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b6537f42-fe11-4e5c-bd97-41f2db7bc262
  • Windows build info: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b3055f15-5180-4f44-b534-a9a75219ecf8

Highlighted Details

• Retro visual effects via OpenGL shaders (Static Noise, Burn In, Screen Curvature, Bloom, Vignetting) and themes (Amber, Solarized).
• Tree Sitter syntax highlighting for 15+ languages, with support for custom lexers.
• LSP integration for code navigation (goto definition, find references) with support for clangd, gopls, pyright, and TypeScript.
• Integrated terminal emulator based on st.c with multiplexer support.
• AI code completion via OpenRouter, supporting various LLM models, and an AI agent (MCP) with file/command execution capabilities.
• Multi-cursor editing and multi-selection for efficient text manipulation.
• Embeddable architecture (ned_embed) for integration into other Dear ImGui applications.

Maintenance & Community

No specific information provided in the README regarding contributors, sponsorships, community channels (Discord/Slack), or roadmap.

Licensing & Compatibility

The license is not explicitly stated in the provided README text.

Limitations & Caveats

Windows support is still under testing. The AI agent functionality is marked as "Work In Progress". Bypassing macOS quarantine/translocation or signing the app is required for execution on macOS (xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Ned.app).