Slate

A calm, liminal tool for text — built for large files, quiet focus, and the spaces in between.

This editor is intentionally simple. It’s designed to sit somewhere between a scratchpad and a file editor: fast to open, comfortable to keep running, and capable of handling very large text files without ceremony. There are no projects, tabs, or IDE features — just a persistent space for reading, writing, and making small, deliberate changes without friction or distraction

Features

• File operations: New, Open, Save, Save As, Exit
• Edit functions: Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Select All
• Right-click context menu with edit operations
• Find function: Search within the document, with forward/backward direction, match case, and Find Next.
• Word Wrap toggle: Switch wrapping on or off for long lines.
• Show Whitespace toggle: Reveal/hide spacing and non-printable characters.
• Theme toggle: Flip between Slate’s palette and system colors.
• Command mode: Vim-style
  • Save (:w)
  • quit (:q)
  • write-and-quit (:wq)
  • open file (:e )
  • search (:s with direction/case options).
• Help and About dialogs
• Status bar showing:
  • Current line and column position
  • Insert/Overwrite mode indicator
  • Caps Lock indicator
  • Whitespace display mode

Development process

This project was developed experimentally with the assistance of AI coding tools. It reflects an iterative, exploratory process rather than strict manual authorship. The code is shared as-is, without claims of originality beyond its present form.

Building

To build the application, run the build script:

build.bat