Show HN: PNANA - A TUI Text Editor

Posted by Frameser 1 day ago

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I’d like to share PNANA , a lightweight TUI editor built with C++ and FTXUI that I’ve been building for personal use and now open-sourced. It’s a minimal, fast terminal-based editor focused on simple coding and editing workflows—no bloated features, just the core functionality for terminal-centric use cases.

https://github.com/Cyxuan0311/PNANA

Key pragmatic features

Lightweight C++ core with FTXUI for smooth TUI rendering, fast startup and low resource usage

Basic but solid editing capabilities (syntax highlighting, line numbering, basic navigation)

Simple build process with minimal dependencies, easy to compile and run on Linux/macOS terminals

Early LSP integration support for basic code completion (still polishing, but functional for common languages)

It’s very much an early-stage project—I built it to scratch my own itch for a minimal, self-built TUI editor and learn C++/FTXUI along the way. There are definitely rough edges (e.g., some LSP kinks, limited customization), and it’s not meant to replace mature editors like Vim/Nano—just a small open-source project for folks who like minimal terminal tools or want to learn TUI development with C++.

Any feedback, bug reports, or tiny suggestions are super welcome. I’m slowly iterating on it and would love to learn from the HN community’s insights. Thanks for taking a look!

Comments

Comment by treetalker 1 day ago

Comment by az09mugen 1 day ago

Thanks for this TUI editor which is not based on vim. There are too many already for my taste.

It's difficult finding some that are in the same vein of micro and here you are. I will definitively give a look and give you a feedback.

Comment by GracefullyShot 1 day ago

Have a look also at this https://github.com/sinelaw/fresh

Comment by az09mugen 1 day ago

Yes I tried it, thanks ! I like it and it's nicely thought, unfortunately I ran into a few weird issues when pasting code or editing code. I need to see if there is one already opened on this. Or open a new one with steps to reproduce the issues. Will do.

Comment by _sinelaw_ 12 hours ago

Let me know if you still have issues, I'll look into it

Comment by az09mugen 2 hours ago

Wow, you did a lot of releases since then ! I was running the 0.1.15, so it can explain some discrepancies. No problem on linux with the last release, will try the "freshly" released 0.1.97 on windows also (I think the issue was on this OS). And I promise I'll create an issue if I encounter some difficulty.

Thanks a lot for this editor, I'll dive into it.

Comment by Frameser 1 day ago

For those who're interested, feel free to check out the develop branch and compile it for the latest build. I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for PNANA.

Comment by fcpguru 1 day ago

why not just make improvement to vim?

Comment by Frameser 1 day ago

PNANA was originally developed simply to serve as a replacement for nano on Linux. It comes with a host of out-of-the-box editing features, and our development was primarily inspired by Marco and Nvim.