Design

What it is built on and what it leaves out. Implementation notes are in internals.md in the repository.

• One static binary of about 5.5 MB: the Go standard library plus golang.org/x/sys, x/term, x/text and github.com/rivo/uniseg. The terminal layer, Markdown parser, renderer, highlighter and editor are its own.
• Plain files. Notes stay Markdown files. No database, no index on disk, nothing written to .obsidian/. Each run scans the vault in memory, and search reads the files on every query. Files over 2 MB are indexed by title only.
• The note first. The requested note is drawn before the vault is indexed. ASTROLABE_DEBUG=1 prints the first-frame time.
• A typeset page. Hierarchy comes from weight, colour, spacing and rules, at a measure of 78 columns. The same page works in 16 colours, in ASCII and in a pipe.
• Reader and editor. The rendered page is for reading, the source for editing, and switching keeps your place. The built-in editor knows Markdown lists, tables and [[ links; E, or editor = external, opens $EDITOR instead.
• Its own background. At 256 colours and above the theme paints its ground; ground = off keeps the terminal’s. At 16 colours no background is painted.
• Bidi. Right-to-left text is shaped and reordered by Astrolabe CLI (on), left to terminals that do bidi themselves (off), or pre-reversed for kitty (runs). Editing is always in logical order.
• Search folds Arabic. Every search ignores harakat and tatweel and unifies letter variants, Persian letters, presentation forms and Arabic-Indic digits. re: patterns stay literal.

Out of scope

Graph view, image display, sync, plugins or scripting, Org-style clocking and recurring tasks, a table or spreadsheet editor, publishing, LaTeX rendering, editor splits, and Vim macros and marks.