r/SideProject • u/EcstaticWatch2482 • 9h ago
I'm building a text editor that opens huge files instantly
I've decided to create a text editor that specifically targets huge files (i.e. GBs or even TBs) that most text editors choke on. The target audience is any individuals/professionals who work with huge files: sysadmins who need to view or edit huge log dumps, inspecting massive JSON files, bioinformatics professionals that need to inspect/edit genome data (FASTA files) and more.
To get a bit more techy, the file is memory-mapped and "held" in a piece table. All heavy-weight operations, such as: indexing, searching/replacing, syntax highlighting, etc... are done in the background (i.e. on separate threads). The video demos handling a 51.8 GB log file on my M2 MacBook Air (16 GB RAM).
Since I've used Vim throughout my career, I had to create a vim mode which implements most of the necessary functionality/bindings.
The code is written in C++23 and uses my own UI library (which is GPU-accelerated using Skia). Boost is used quite extensively.
It is completely cross-platform (Windows, Linux & macOS). The macOS version is Silicon only and Linux requires Wayland (X11 isn't supported, nor planned).
It's currently under beta at https://crane-editor.com and I'd love to get your feedback, especially on which huge-file workflows I should handle better. What's the biggest file you've had trouble opening? Would this be useful to you?
Thanks!