Micro: My New Editor?

Why Learn Micro?

I have no good reason as to why someone should learn micro over some other text editor. With that being said, here are some reasons as to why I want to learn how to use this editor.

  1. It is written in Go.

    • I am trying to learn Go, so a text editor written in Go appeals to me.

  2. Writing Go code in it is easy!

    • Micro has builtin features that make writting Go easier such as running go fmt after a file has been saved and showing the lines where compilation errors have occured.

  3. I can run it in my Terminal.

    • A much have! I have a old netbook that I do a lot of programming on and that thing is not powerful enough to run a GUI application.

  4. It is still in development.

    • I like the idea of this because it gives me the option of contributing to the project.

The Basics

Command mode:

Ctrl + e: Gets you into command mode. This mode is needed for almost everything!

The Tutorial

While in command mode, enter help tutorial. This document will give you an overview of how micro works and how to customize it.

Getting to the Help Docs

While in command mode, enter help. This is my go to document for finding more details about a micro feature.

Customizing the Editor Colors

While in command mode, enter help colors. This will bring you to a document that will instruct you on how to change the programming syntax colors, editor theme colors, etc.

Keybidings

I have been using nano for the past 2 years, so vim and emacs keybindings are something I know nothing about.

To see Micro’s default keybindings, type ctlr + e to enter command mode and then type “help keybiddings”. This will result in a new horizontal window appearing with the default keybindings.

Here are a list of some of the key bindings that I find useful.

  • Ctrl + q = Quit
  • Ctrl + o = Open
  • Ctrl + s = Save
  • Ctrl + f = Find
  • Ctrl + n = Find next
  • Ctrl + p = Find previous
  • Ctrl + z = Undo
  • Ctrl + y = Redo
  • Ctrl + c = Copy
  • Ctrl + x = Cut
  • Ctrl + k = Cut line
  • Ctrl + v = Paste
  • Ctrl + a = Select all
  • Ctrl + l = Jump line
  • PageUp = Cusor moves up a full page
  • PageDown = Cursor moves down a full page
  • Ctrl + w = Next split
  • Ctrl + t = Add a Tab
  • Ctrl + / = Next Tab
  • Ctrl + b = Shell mode
  • Alt + left/right = move the cursor a word in that direction
  • Ctrl + u = Toggle Macro (recoding keystrokes?)
  • Ctrl + j = Play Macro (play recorded steps)

You may create a ~/.config/micro/bindings.json file where you can customize your keybindings. Examples of this can be found in the keybindings help doc (in command mode run: help keybindings)

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