Micro help text

Micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals.

Usage

Once you have built the editor, simply start it by running micro path/to/file.txt or simply micro to open an empty buffer.

Micro also supports creating buffers from stdin:

$ ifconfig | micro

You can move the cursor around with the arrow keys and mouse.

Keybindings

Here are the default keybindings in json form which is also how you can rebind them to your liking.

{
	"Up":             "CursorUp",
	"Down":           "CursorDown",
	"Right":          "CursorRight",
	"Left":           "CursorLeft",
	"ShiftUp":        "SelectUp",
	"ShiftDown":      "SelectDown",
	"ShiftLeft":      "SelectLeft",
	"ShiftRight":     "SelectRight",
	"AltLeft":        "WordLeft",
	"AltRight":       "WordRight",
	"AltShiftRight":  "SelectWordRight",
	"AltShiftLeft":   "SelectWordLeft",
	"CtrlLeft":       "StartOfLine",
	"CtrlRight":      "EndOfLine",
	"CtrlShiftLeft":  "SelectToStartOfLine",
	"CtrlShiftRight": "SelectToEndOfLine",
	"CtrlUp":         "CursorStart",
	"CtrlDown":       "CursorEnd",
	"CtrlShiftUp":    "SelectToStart",
	"CtrlShiftDown":  "SelectToEnd",
	"Enter":          "InsertEnter",
	"Space":          "InsertSpace",
	"Backspace":      "Backspace",
	"Backspace2":     "Backspace",
	"Alt-Backspace":  "DeleteWordLeft",
	"Alt-Backspace2": "DeleteWordLeft",
	"Tab":            "InsertTab",
	"CtrlO":          "OpenFile",
	"CtrlS":          "Save",
	"CtrlF":          "Find",
	"CtrlN":          "FindNext",
	"CtrlP":          "FindPrevious",
	"CtrlZ":          "Undo",
	"CtrlY":          "Redo",
	"CtrlC":          "Copy",
	"CtrlX":          "Cut",
	"CtrlK":          "CutLine",
	"CtrlD":          "DuplicateLine",
	"CtrlV":          "Paste",
	"CtrlA":          "SelectAll",
	"CtrlT":          "AddTab"
	"CtrlRightSq":    "PreviousTab",
	"CtrlBackslash":  "NextTab",
	"Home":           "Start",
	"End":            "End",
	"PageUp":         "CursorPageUp",
	"PageDown":       "CursorPageDown",
	"CtrlG":          "ToggleHelp",
	"CtrlR":          "ToggleRuler",
	"CtrlL":          "JumpLine",
	"Delete":         "Delete",
	"Esc":            "ClearStatus",
	"CtrlB":          "ShellMode",
	"CtrlQ":          "Quit",
	"CtrlE":          "CommandMode",
	"CtrlW":          "NextSplit",
	
	// Emacs-style keybindings
	"Alt-f": "WordRight",
	"Alt-b": "WordLeft",
	"Alt-a": "StartOfLine",
	"Alt-e": "EndOfLine",
	"Alt-p": "CursorUp",
	"Alt-n": "CursorDown"
}

You can use the alt keys + arrows to move word by word. Ctrl left and right move the cursor to the start and end of the line, and ctrl up and down move the cursor the start and end of the buffer.

You can hold shift with all of these movement actions to select while moving.

The bindings may be rebound using the ~/.config/micro/bindings.json file. Each key is bound to an action.

For example, to bind Ctrl-y to undo and Ctrl-z to redo, you could put the following in the bindings.json file.

{
	"CtrlY": "Undo",
	"CtrlZ": "Redo"
}

Possible commands

You can execute an editor command by pressing Ctrl-e followed by the command. Here are the possible commands that you can use.

quit: Quits micro.
save: Saves the current buffer.
replace "search" "value" flags: This will replace search with value. The flags are optional. At this point, there is only one flag: c, which enables check mode which asks if you'd like to perform the replacement each time

Note that search must be a valid regex. If one of the arguments does not have any spaces in it, you may omit the quotes.
set option value: sets the option to value. Please see the next section for a list of options you can set.
run sh-command: runs the given shell command in the background. The command's output will be displayed in one line when it finishes running.
bind key action: creates a keybinding from key to action. See the sections on keybindings above for more info about what keys and actions are available.
vsplit filename: opens a vertical split with filename. If no filename is provided, a vertical split is opened with an empty buffer
hsplit filename: same as vsplit but opens a horizontal split instead of a vertical split

Options

Micro stores all of the user configuration in its configuration directory.

Micro uses the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/micro as the configuration directory. As per the XDG spec, if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, ~/.config/micro is used as the config directory.

Here are the options that you can set:

colorscheme: loads the colorscheme stored in $(configDir)/colorschemes/option.micro

default value: default Note that the default colorschemes (default, solarized, and solarized-tc) are not located in configDir, because they are embedded in the micro binary

The colorscheme can be selected from all the files in the ~/.config/micro/colorschemes/ directory. Micro comes by default with three colorschemes:
- default: this is the default colorscheme.
- solarized: this is the solarized colorscheme (used in the screenshot). You should have the solarized color palette in your terminal to use it.
- solarized-tc: this is the solarized colorscheme for true color, just make sure your terminal supports true color before using it and that the MICRO_TRUECOLOR environment variable is set to 1 before starting micro.
- monokai-tc: this is the monokai colorscheme. It requires true color to look perfect, but the 256 color approximation looks good as well.
- atom-dark-tc: this colorscheme is based off of Atom's "dark" colorscheme. It requires true color to look good.
tabsize: sets the tab size to option

default value: 4
indentchar: sets the indentation character

default value:
ignorecase: perform case-insensitive searches

default value: off
syntax: turns syntax on or off

default value: on
tabstospaces: use spaces instead of tabs

default value: off
autoindent: when creating a new line use the same indentation as the previous line

default value: on
cursorline: highlight the line that the cursor is on in a different color (the color is defined by the colorscheme you are using)

default value: off
ruler: display line numbers

default value: on
statusline: display the status line at the bottom of the screen

default value: on
savecursor: remember where the cursor was last time the file was opened and put it there when you open the file again

default value: off
saveundo: when this option is on, undo is saved even after you close a file so if you close and reopen a file, you can keep undoing

default value: off
scrollmargin: amount of lines you would like to see above and below the cursor

default value: 3
scrollspeed: amount of lines to scroll for one scroll event

default value: 2

Default plugin options:

linter: lint languages on save (supported languages are C, D, Go, Java, Javascript, Lua). Provided by the linter plugin.

default value: on
autoclose: Automatically close {} () [] "" ''. Provided by the autoclose plugin

default value: on
goimports: Run goimports on save. Provided by the go plugin.

default value: off
gofmt: Run gofmt on save. Provided by the go plugin.

default value: on

Any option you set in the editor will be saved to the file ~/.config/micro/settings.json so, in effect, your configuration file will be created for you. If you'd like to take your configuration with you to another machine, simply copy the settings.json to the other machine.

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Micro help text

Usage

Keybindings

Possible commands

Options

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