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Jasspa MicroEmacs 2009 / Jasspa MicroEmacs 2024

Release license

Ubuntu MacOS Windows Cygwin

Hint: New users should consider using MicroEmacs 2024 - which has better support for Unicode in terminals and as well adds SSL (https) support. New development will take place in the ME 24 project.

Extensible Terminal and GUI text editor with Emacs feeling coming as a small, single file executable for Windows, Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD.

Main features - Pros:

  • small!! and fast!!
  • same user interface in terminal and in GUI mode
  • Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD versions
  • single file installs possible (2.5MB-4MB file size)
  • Emacs (default) or CUA key bindings available
  • menu entries for all main functions (Esc = in Terminal mode for menu)
  • extensible programming language
  • themes, customizations, templates, snippets menu or GUI accessible
  • for its size the text editor with most features without being bloated

Cons:

  • No Unicode (but full ISO support)
  • No softwrap (but automatic wrap is available)

This is a fork of Jasspa MicroEmacs forked from https://github.com/vitalyster/microemacs. It is an extended version of the MicroEmacs 2009 release which was the last official release available at the website http://www.jasspa.com.

  

Left the Ayu Light theme which is defined in the file schemeal.emf and right the popular "Dracula" theme which is defined in the file schemedr.emf. See the folding feature for Markdown, in the image below (Dracula theme) the section build is folded by the indicated three dots:

  

Left Greek Lipum text in a ME terminal session as well displaying the menu. Please note, that to use extended char sets you need for MicroEmacs 09 the luit application. On the right the Solarized Light theme showing R documentation for the function pam in the cluster package.

Executables can be of three types:

  • mec(b) - console only (around 600kb without macro files)
  • mew(b) - X11/Windows only (around 630kb without macro files)
  • mecw(b) Terminal and X11 enabled - for Mac with XQuartz and for Linux with X11 (650kb w/o macro files)

The bfs executables (mecb, mewb and mecwb) have as well all macro files, the internal help file and the American dictionary embedded (file size around 2.5-4.0Mb depending on the platform). For simplicity reasons all downloads on the release page are bfs-builds.

New Features

In comparison to the version at the Jasspa website it contains the following changes / extensions:

  • improved terminal mode for suspend-emacs with using alternative terminal buffer (thanks to Steven Phillips)
  • basic git support with commands to add, commit and get status of files etc
  • easier addition of own user templates with interactive template selection using the command "insert-template"
  • more schemes (themes) Ayu Light and Dark, Dracula, Solarized Light and Dark, and Tango Light and Dark
  • editor themes can be directly loaded from xrdb theme files like these from the iTerm2-Color-Schemes repo
    using the xrdb-scheme macro
  • better support for TTF-fonts on X11 and their ISO-8859-1 .. 15 and Windows-Cp1252 encodings
  • easier font-selection on X11 using xfontsel from the user-setup or using the change-font-xfontsel macro
  • easier fonr resize on X11 (Mac and Linux) and Windows using Ctrl-Plus and Ctrl-Minus keys
  • documenting ME macro functions as well with basic Markdown syntax - see define-help help page
  • much improved Markdown mode (folding, template file, syntax hilghlighting, outline in item list, embedding Tcl, Python, R and Dot code in fences with syntax highlight)
  • improved CUA bindings and jeany-bindings where CUA bindings (C-s, C-x, C-v etc are prefixed with C-j so that still all Emacs bindings are available
  • AppImage for easy install on Linux systems
  • Linux (Ubuntu 20, 22, 24), Windows, Darwin 20, 21, 22 builds using Github actions
  • Windows builds using cross compilation on Ubuntu with Github actions
  • updates on documentation
  • fix for str_errlist[errno] by replacing it with strerror(errno) on Linux x64 Fedora with gcc 10.3
  • fix for hang on error bug if using the -n command line switch
  • fix for frame resize on X11 if the font changes (thanks to Steven Phillips)

New important macro commands (see the internal help pages - version v09.12.24):

  • change-font-size can be done as well with key bindings C-Plus and C-Minus
  • X11 only (Linux, MacOS)
    • change-font-xfontsel - direct font selection using xfontsel
    • change-font-bold
  • git-add, git-commit, git-status, git-diff etc
  • execute-region - for macro development
  • insert-template - easier definition of user templates
  • xrdb-scheme - load directly xrdb color schemes
  • r-doc - loading R documentation as hypertext help within ME
  • pydoc - loading Python documentation within ME

Installation

For Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD systems the following lines might work:

## remove old installaed mecb application if it is there
[[ -f ~/.local/bin/mecb ]] && rm -rf ~/.local/bin/mecb
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mittelmark/microemacs/refs/heads/master/install-unix.sh)"
source ~/.bashrc ## for the current session
mecb -V

This line requires the tools curl and unzip to be installed on your Linux/FreeBSD system.

You can then start either the terminal version with the command me arguments or the X11/Windows version with me -w arguments.

For Windows with the msys2 or the Cygwin system that should work:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mittelmark/microemacs/refs/heads/master/install-msys2.sh)"
source ~/.bashrc
me -V
me -w ## window version
me # command line version

For Cygwin Windows (3.5) you replace install-msys2.sh with install-cygwin.sh.

For a Windows installation you can do the following after opening a Powershell Terminal:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://github.com/mittelmark/microemacs/blob/master/install-windows.sh | Invoke-Expression
mewb

The executable mewb is then in the PATH and you can run it from any terminal window or after pressing the Win-r combination and then typing mewb in the run command line..

Compilation

Debian Systems

Below you find links to prebuild binaries. If you prefer to compile the code yourself here are the required commands for a Debian or Debian derived system like MX Linux, Linux Mint or Ubuntu system:

Let's first build a console version:

### install packages
sudo apt install git build-essential libz-dev libncurses-dev
### fetch repo
git clone https://github.com/mittelmark/microemacs.git
cd microemacs
### builds the bfs executable for making stand-alone mecb and mewb etc
make -f linux32gcc.gmk bfs/bin
### builds standalone mecb  executable (Terminal)
make -f linux32gcc.gmk mecb

You should now have files like mec-VERSION-PLATFORM.bin (VERSION and PLATFORM are just placeholders) which are standalone executable which have included all macro files, the help file and the American dictionary and which can be run in the terminal by simply executing it.

Try the version flag:

./mecb-VERSION-PLATFORM -V

Now lets build afterwards a GUI only (mewb) and a combined GUI/terminal version (mecwb) which can be run both as a terminal and as a X11 application.

### install packages for X11 build
sudo apt install libxt-dev
### builds standalone mew executable (GUI)
make -f linux32gcc.gmk mewb
### builds combined standalone mecw executable (Terminal and GUI)
make -f linux32gcc.gmk mecwb
sudo apt install x11-utils    # xfontsel, xlsfonts - better font selection

Red Hat Systems

Here the steps required to compile the editor on Red Hat compatible systems like CentOS or AlmaLinux, For Fedora builds replace yum with dnf:

### install make, unzip, gcc
sudo dnf install make zip unzip gcc zlib-devel ncurses-devel git
### fetch repo
git clone https://github.com/mittelmark/microemacs.git
cd microemacs
### builds the bfs executable for making stand-alone mecb and mewb etc
make -f linux32gcc.gmk bfs/bin
### builds standalone mecb  executable (Terminal)
make -f linux32gcc.gmk mecb
### install X11 developer files
sudo dnf install libXt-devel
### builds standalone mew executable (GUI)
make -f linux32gcc.gmk mewb
### builds combined standalone mecw executable (Terminal and GUI)
make -f linux32gcc.gmk mecwb
### for more fonts and better font selection
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-apps ## xfontsel
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-fonts* ## Lucidatypewriter, Adobe courier

If you do not want to build these executables yourself you can just download pre-build executables (see below).

Cross-compilation on Linux for Windows:

You need the Mingw32 GCC compiler and the Zip library. Here an install on Fedora:

sudo dnf install mingw32-gcc mingw32-zlib

On Debian systems like Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential mingw-w64 gcc-mingw-w64-i686 
sudo apt install libz-mingw-w64 libz-mingw-w64-dev
sudo apt install desktop-file-utils

Thereafter you might execute make -f win32mingw.gmk mecb mewb to get all binaries for Windows on your Linux machine.

FreeBSD

If you install gcc on FeeeBSD it comes with the ncurses libraries already included so for the

sudo pkg install gcc
sudo pkg install xorg libX11

Therafter you should be able to compile the application using the Makefile in the microemacs root project folder.

### compile the barebone executables
make -f freebsd.mak bfs/bin mec mew mecw
### compile the standalone executables
make -f freebsd.mak mecb mewb mecwb

The Makefile has the extension mak as it can use the default make utility from FreeBSD and does not need the gnu-make version gmake.

Download Prebuild MicroEmacs Executables (v09.12.24-beta3)

Release v09.12.24b3 (beta-3) (2024-11-09):

New in comparison to v09.12.24-beta2

  • new favorite entries possible for help pages for instance for MicroEmacs help or R-doc etc
  • spell install now from within MicroEmacs using the spell-install macro
  • improvements in editing R-code
  • various fixes jeany.emf key bindings and documentation
OS Platform mecb (terminal) mewb (GUI) mecwb (terminal+GUI)
Linux 32bit AntiX (Debian 12) x x x
Ubuntu 18 x x x
Linux 64bit AppImage - - x
AlmaLinux 8 x x x
AlmaLinux 9 x x x
Fedora 30 x x x
Fedora 40 x x x
Manjaro Linux x x x
Ubuntu 18 x x x
Ubuntu 20 x x x
Ubuntu 22 x x x
Ubuntu 24 x x x
MacOS MacOS 12 x x x
MacOS 13 x x x
MacOS 14 x x x
FreeBSD FreeBSD 14 x x x
Windows Windows 10/11 x x -
Windows Cygwin 3.5 x x x

Download more programmers fonts: TTF-Files - see here on how to install them:

Installation of these executables is easy. Make them executable on Unix platforms and move them to a folder belonging to your PATH variable. Windows users should just copy them as well to such a folder.

Just download an executable for your platform which matches as closely as possible your operatig system. For instance for Fedora 39, you download the binaries for Fedora 38. On Unix systems you make the file executable (chmod 755 filename) and rename it for instance to me, then copy it to a folder belonging to your PATH. Therafter you can run the me executable. The first thing you have to do is to select the right keyboard configuration after starting your first session. Choose the menu entry "Tools -> User Setup" and then "Keyboard" the Start-Up tab.

The executables linked above come with an embedded American dictionary. To use other dictionaries download the dictionary files for your language from the relase page: https://github.com/mittelmark/microemacs/releases: and place tese files in your personal user folder ~/.jasspa on Linux for instance. Then use "Tools -> User Setup -> Language settings" to switch the dictionary.

Ubuntu builds should be usable on Debian and derived distros, such as Linux Mint or MX Linux compatible. AlmaLinux builds should be CentOS and RHEL compatible. Fedora builds can be probably only used on Fedora without problems.

Build for other platforms might be provided if requested using the issues link on this repository.

Download Prebuild MicroEmacs Executables (v09.12.24-beta2)

Release v09.12.24b2 (beta-2) (2024-09-28):

New in comparison to v09.12.24-beta1

  • new macro commands rdoc and pydoc for browsing inside ME R and Python documentation
  • writing macro help using Markdown syntax
  • more editor schemes Ayu Dark, Artur, Solarized Light and Dark, Tango Light and Dark
  • new macro xommand xrdb-scheme for loading more editor schemes directly via xrdb files
  • Unicode support for terminal version using luit and abduco see below
OS Platform mecb (terminal) mewb (GUI) mecwb (terminal+GUI)
Linux 32bit AntiX (Debian 12) x x x
Ubuntu 18 x x x
Linux 64bit AppImage - - x
AlmaLinux 8 x x x
AlmaLinux 9 x x x
Fedora 30 x x x
Fedora 40 x x x
Manjaro Linux x x x
Ubuntu 18 x x x
Ubuntu 20 x x x
Ubuntu 22 x x x
Ubuntu 24 x x x
MacOS MacOS 12 x x x
MacOS 13 x x x
MacOS 14 x x x
FreeBSD FreeBSD 14 x x x
Windows Windows 10/11 x x -
Windows Cygwin 3.5 x x x

Download Prebuild MicroEmacs Executables (v09.12.24-beta1)

Release v09.12.24b1 (beta-1) (2024-08-23):

New in comparison to v09.12.23

  • adding git commands, git-add, git-commit, git-grep and others
  • adding xfontsel font selection for MacOS and Linux change-font-xfontsel
  • embedding libz on Windows for easier installation
  • improved and bug fixed internal documentation
  • new function &llen - for list length
  • new directive !iif for single line if's (ported from ME 24 from Steven Phillips)
  • support for TTF-files
  • support for ISO 8859-1..15 and Windows-CP1252 encodings with Euro symbol etc
OS Platform mecb (terminal) mewb (GUI) mecwb (terminal+GUI)
Linux 32bit Ubuntu 16 x x x
AntiX (Debian 12) x x x
Linux 64bit AppImage - - x
AlmaLinux 8 x x x
AlmaLinux 9 x x x
Fedora 30 x x x
Fedora 39 x x x
Manjaro Linux x x x
Ubuntu 18 x x x
Ubuntu 20 x x x
Ubuntu 22 x x x
Ubuntu 24 x x x
MacOS MacOS 12 x x x
MacOS 13 x x x
MacOS 14 x x x
FreeBSD FreeBSD 14 x x x
Windows Windows 10/11 x x -
Windows Cygwin 3.5 x x x

Download more programmers fonts: TTF-Files - see here on how to install them:

Download Prebuild MicroEmacs Executables (v09.12.23)

Release Date: 2024-03-29 (v09.12.23):

OS Platform (X)-Windows Binary Terminal Binary
Linux AppImage AppImage Run AppImage with -n option
Ubuntu 16 (32bit) mewb.zip mecb.zip
Antix 23 (32bit) mewb.zip mecb.zip
Ubuntu 18 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Ubuntu 20 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Ubuntu 22 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Ubuntu 24 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Fedora 30 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Fedora 38 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Fedora 40 mewb.zip mecb.zip
AlmaLinux 8.9 mewb.zip mecb.zip
AlmaLinux 9.4 mewb.zip mecb.zip
macOS macOS 11 mewb.zip mecb.zip
macOS 12 mewb.zip mecb.zip
macOS 14 mewb.zip mecb.zip
Windows Win32/Win64 mewb.zip mecb.zip

Download Prebuild MicroEmacs Executables (v09.12.21)

Release-Date: 2023-10-31 (v09.12.21):

BFS executables

The BFS executables can be used to extract the binary and the macro files from the MicroEmacs executables and to build you own executables with other dictionary files, other user templates, or additional macro files. So you can customize your MicroEmacs version.

Here an example on how to do so:

### get the German dictionary files
wget http://www.jasspa.com/spelling/ls_dede.zip
### extract the arcive from the file me-linux.bin
bfs -x jasspa me-linux.bin
### add new spellings
cd jasspa/spelling
unzip ../../ls_dede.zip
### create the new file
bfs -a me-linux.bin ./jasspa -o me-linux2.bin
### test the terminal
MEPATH="" TERM=rxvt ./me-linux2.bin -n
### in case of problems with the backslash key try
MEPATH="" TERM=xterm ./me-linux2.bin -n

Luit and Abduco for using ME on Unicode terminals

Luit and Abduco

To use the full ISO-8859-XX or Windows-CP125X character sets on Unicode terminals you can run ME 2009 using the Luit and Abduco terminal utilities.

Luit as a wrapper application translates Unicode and ISO characters between the Terminal emulator and MicroEmacs and Abduco allows you to suspend both applications together. Instead of Abduco other supend tools like Dtach could be used. Here a simple wrapper script which allows allows all Western ISO-8859-15 characters (like the Euro symbol) to be used inside MicroEmacs:

#!/bin/sh
### file: mecu 
### Description: wrapper to run MicroEmacs with extended character settings
###              on UTF-8 enabled terminals
###  
### Tools required:
###   abduco: session management and detacher
###           https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco/   
###   luit:   filter between non-utf-8 applications and utf-8 terminals
###           https://invisible-island.net/luit/
### Installation:
###           fedora: sudo dnf install abduco luit  
###           debian: sudo apt install abduco luit

### session name creation for the current tty 
tty=$(tty | grep -Eo '[0-9]+')
## already running? list abduco sessions
res=$(abduco -l | grep mecb$tty)

### running session, if no create an new one
### otherwise attach to the old one
### (press in ME Ctrl-l to update screen if neccesary)

if [[ "$res" == "" ]] ; then 
    ### need a new one 
   TERM=xterm abduco -A -e ^z mecb$tty luit -encoding ISO-8859-15 mecb "$@"
else
    ### attach to the old one
    abduco -a -e ^z mec$tty 
fi

Change the filename mecb to the name you give you MicroEmacs terminal instance. Name the bash script above mec, Make it executable and move to a folder belonging to your PATH variable. With this little shell script using two small tools, you can run MicroEmacs nicely as well on all UTF-8 terminals with a more extended character set. Obviously you can as well change the encoding. Here is a list of all ISO encodings with a short description of their usable letters - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859.

Pros and Cons of Jasspa MicroEmacs

  • Pro:
    • simple single file install
    • small and fast 1-4 MB!! memory footprint
    • support for Linux, MacOS and Windows
    • almost same usage in terminal and GUI mode
    • menu access to use command File, Edit etc commands A-f, A-e in GUI mode or "esc =" in terminal mode
    • internal interactive help system
    • distraction free coding, no popups, no annoying updates - just you and the editor
    • Emacs like shortcuts
    • CUA windows key-bindings as fallback for total newbees
    • standard menu entries on top for beginners who do not yet know all the key bindings of Emacs
    • easy to extend, the file USER.emf is your friend
    • different color themes can be used and changed easily
    • sophisticated macro programming language
    • easy to configure file templates and snippets
  • Cons:
    • No unicode! It is a MICRO-Emacs!
    • No softwrap! Use Esc q for paragraph wrapping! Or use the wrap buffer mode

Links

Build

I currently build on Fedora ad Ubuntu using the file src/linux32gcc.gmk. Other Makefiles you should take from https://github.com/ipstone/microemacs/tree/master/src

To build switch into the src directory and then run the Makefile for your plaform. On my Linux machine I did:

cd src && make -f linux32gcc.gmk

Which then produces in the folder .linux32gcc-release-mecw the required executable.

I as well cross compile on my Linux systems for Windows. You can do the same assuming that you have installed on your Linux system the mingw32 gcc compiler and the required tools. The you can do this:

cd src && make -f win32mingw.mak CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc RC=i686-w64-mingw32-windres
cd src && make -f win32mingw.mak CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc RC=i686-w64-mingw32-windres BTYP=c

Which then produces in the folder .win32mingw-release-mew and -mec the required executables.

If you place the file zlib1.dll and eventuall the file dssp-0.dll in the same folder as the executable that file should be run using wine directly on a Linux system. To check the executable on Linux using wine you do something like this:

MEPATH=Z:/home/username/workspace/microemacs/jasspa/macros wine ~/path/to/mew32.exe

You can as well create an alias to shorten the command line.

Terminal issues

Menu access

The menu access is usually available using the F1 key, but sometimes this does not work as it is already bound by the terminal to some other function. As an alternative you can use the key binding "Esc =" to access the main menu on top.

Backspace key

The backspace key for some terminals is not mapped to delete the last caracter, you might use instead C-h to delete the last character.

Color issues

As the capabilities of Terminals differ widely MicroEmacs starts usually in black/white mode in the terminal. You can set this to color mode by selecting the "Tools -> User Setup -> Platform" Termcap option. If this does not work you might in addition declare the terminal type before starting me like so: TERM=xterm me -n or TERM=rxvt me -n given the me is you executable that could be as well defined as an alias in your .bashrc file for instance like this:

### .bashrc
alias mec="TERM=xterm me -n"
### or alias mec="TERM=rxvt me -n"

You should check which of the two aliases works best with your terminal emulator (lxterminal, gnome-terminal, etc) and screen mulitplexer (tmux, gnu-screen, etc).

Windows Terminal

I usually recommend the Msys2 environment for developers if they have to use the Windows operating system. As the provided Windows build is a native Windows build, the console version of Me09 must be started via the cmd Terminal on Windows. You should use in this case an alias like this in your .bashrc

### add this to your .bashrc
### we assume that you copied the windows executables
### to the bin folder in your msys HOME
function me {
    if [ $1 == "-n" ]; then
        ## running terminal version
        shift 1
        cmd //C `cygpath -wa ~/bin/mec-windows.exe` "${@}"
        
    else
        `cygpath -wa ~/bin/mew-windows.exe` "${@}" &
    fi
}

For cygwin like environments like MobaXterm the following did work:

### add this to your .bashrc
function me {
    if [ $1 == "-n" ]; then
        shift 1
        MPATH=`cygpath -wa ~/bin/mec-windows.exe`
        MPATH=`echo $MPATH | sed 's.\\\./.g'`
        # MobaXterm fix
        if [ ! command -v conin &> /dev/null ]
        then
            # no conin try this
            cmd //C $MPATH "${@}"
        else
            conin cmd /C $MPATH "${@}"
        fi
    else
        ~/bin/mew-windows.exe "${@}" &
    fi
}

In case you are interested there might be a chance to create "native" Cygwin and Msys builds. Please create an issue a the Github page.

Original README

Here the link to the original Jasspa MicroEmacs README.

Links

License

MicroEmacs is released with the GPL, see the file license.txt and COPYING.

EOF