mste

Python · curses · Terminal · MIT

mste (Mark's simple text editor) is a small terminal text editor with nano-style keybindings. It's written in Python using only the standard library curses module, so there is nothing to install beyond Python itself.

Why I made it

I wanted an editor that felt like nano but matched the rest of my setup. Most of my terminal tools take their colours from my wallpaper, and mste is built to do the same.

Features

• Nano-style keys, like Ctrl-S to save and Ctrl-X to quit
• Save and Save As, with a warning if you quit with unsaved changes
• Cut and paste a line, plus incremental search
• Title bar, status line and help bar
• Zero dependencies, runs on Linux and macOS terminals that support curses

Theming

mste doesn't hard-code colours. Its config stores indices into the terminal's 16-colour ANSI palette, so whenever the palette changes (with pywal, for example) the editor retints itself. On first launch it creates a config file at ~/.config/mste/config.conf that you can edit.

Try it

git clone https://github.com/markart25/mste
cd mste
pip install --user .

mste notes.txt

On Arch it's also in the AUR: yay -S mste.

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