Speare
Version 1.2.344

What's new

1. Highlighting files that has no extension name by recognise it's Shebang, i.e. the first line of the text file.
2. Fast editing arbitrary files in parallel text views. "Parallel Editing" allows user stick one file in the bottom view and switch different files in the top view.

It's free!

If you can't open the link above, please launch App Store and found Speare by searching. Please kindly donate the author by purchasing the pro version or other app developed by the author, your donation will drive the author to continually improve it, or please kindly recommend this app on your blog or rate this app so that helping other people can more easily find it.

Features

• Ultra lightweight.
• Well designed workspace management. Intuitive and concise.
• High performance when managing large amount of files and big files.
• Fast search and replace in current document, selected folder, opened files and entire project.
• Smoothly edit multiple files that written in different programming languages simultaneously.
• Supports 90+ programming languages syntax highlighting and parsing.
• Auto-completion, sensitively typing, live parsing symbol definitions with editing actions.
• Jump to definition, fast locate code lines between editing files by symbol index, bookmarks or searching.
• Unlimited go back and forward, automatically remember jump location and current editing locations.
• Keeping entire state after quit, the opened files, selection of each file and the cursor location.
• Parallel editing. Fast editing arbitrary files in parallel text views.
• Real-time diff. Show coloured code block of file changes with editing actions instantly.
• Completely leverage keyboard shortcuts for fast editing.
• Fonts and colours customisation, supports self-defined schemes.
• Efficiently manage working on files across quit, re-launch and project switching.
• Full featured Markdown and HTML editor and previewer, run Javascript code instantly, well-support Web development.
• Code block selection by double clicking the beginning symbol or the beginning line of the block.
• Run syntax checking instantly.
• Unlimited shell script extensions, code beautifier, unit test, building automation etc.
• Preview all kinds of files, image, SVG, PDF, office documents, audio and video etc.

Screenshot

Screenshot of SQLite source code "Parallel Editing" in Speare code editor.

Fast edit several files separately

Just drag the file one by one from Finder and drop into workspace, edit them and then right-click to "Remove All".

Fast edit several files in big folder

Just drag the folder into workspace never mind how big it is and then edit several files never mind what the programming language they were written, fast editing them with the "Auto-completion" feature provided by Speare code editor.

Code editor on iPad

If you want to edit source code files on iPad, or review code on iPad, please refer another app developed by me, iCodeEditor, an integrated code editor for iPad. Sorry, it's not free.

Code editor and IDE on macOS

Terminal based on text editors such as GNU Emacs and Vim, although they are very cool, but their limitations are also obvious, the elephant in the room. As a programmer, so many text editor I've used in the past years, such as the bulky cargos, Visual Studio Code, Atom, Android Studio, Eclipse, ActiveState Komodo, Xcode, NetBeans, Eclipse, and some light cargos, e.g Textadept, CotEditor and TextMate. I never like desktop applications that built with NodeJS, React and Electron, Eclipse and Java or .NET and C# based big stuffs. Speare code editor is a small, free and friendly code editor which implements the most important missing features in common code editors, e.g bookmark management, parallel editing, instant diff and fast locate code lines between multiple files, code block live parsing etc.

The technology choices to make a code editor and IDE on macOS

Speare code editor was developing based on the native pure Cocoa frameworks with leveraging several C library results a very small footprint, high performance, small memory and storage runtime consuming, and ultra small distribution. Only 1.1MB executable!

Why not big software?

Waste time to maintain, wast big storage and runtime memory, waste energy, waste time to upload and download. It's waste people's life! Every desktop developer should known one thing, the embedded system developers sometime even fighting for one byte of storage in some situation. They never think about memory and storage like embedded system developers, so more and more big monster there. In today's software industry, Unix philosophy has been throw away completely!

They make software as big as possible, as complex as possible, but I believe in the opposite philosophy.

Why another code editor and IDE on macOS?

Although there are so many code editor and IDE available on macOS, but Speare code editor has its own unique characteristics:

1. Lightweight. Most of the code editors on macOS are very heavy, bulky! But Speare code editor is really really ultra light. Only 6.2MB!
2. High Performance. Code editor developed with Javascript or Java have inherent defects that can't keep high performance when handle thousands of files for big project, such as VSCode, Atom, and NetBeans, Eclipse. Speare code editor can handle very big project, for very big C & C++ projects, Java projects, Node projects, and very big game projects! Easily!
3. Cost. Most of the good code editors or IDE on macOS are not free and even very expensive, but Speare code editor is free! Of course, you can kindly purchase the pro version to donate some money to the author, but that is not mandatory.
4. Freedom. Feels light, simple and free. High performance code editor, flexibility to extend it to support special developing requirements and easily add a new programming language, most of these IDE on macOS can't give you such ability and freedom, can't give you smoothly coding experience when mixing multiple programming languages for big software projects. But Speare code editor give you very flexible control to extend it to add syntax highlighting for a special document and debugging environment for a new programming language without paying.

About Apple App Store

Eat food by your own hand but not the feeds they provides to your front.
1. Speare don't like some app (such as XXEdit) thickly marked as "Top Free Apps" and "Editor's Choice" but has hidden purchases in it, Speare has not any hidden purchases to trap people's money.
2. Speare don't like some app (such as XXRunner) thickly marked as "Top Paid Apps" but it's not up to that rank.

Code browser, call routines tracing and code analysis

Speare code editor helps end user to understand an existing code base by powerful code browser and call routines tracing functions. Speare code editor parses source code files and maintains the database of symbol definitions instantly while user editing, and presents useful contextual information to user automatically. It also use persistent bookmarks to remember key locations within functions or classes and their references. End user can quickly navigate function calls and callers and find references to variable, function or class instantly.

Productive helps to fast find editing points

1. Use "Recent List" to fast find recent opened and edited files.
2. Use "Functions" to fast find the location of function definitions.
3. Use "Bookmarks" to fast find the bookmarks placed for editing locations.
4. Search symbol references and fast find the location of the reference points.
5. Use parallel editing to fast edit files.
6. Drag file or folder in the workspace to re-arrange their positions.
7. Search items in the workspace.
8. Use "Jump To Definition" to find the reference points, and click "Go Back" to return to jump point.
9. Use "Changes" to fast find file changes.

Fast Editing

Speare developed as an ultra light code editor that completely leverage "Keyboard shortcuts" for fast editing. Keyboard shortcuts instead of "moving mouse and click" can notably improve code editing experience. Real programmer use keyboard shortcuts as a habit constantly. Real programmer use and write command line applications as a habit constantly. Keyboard shortcuts can help people fast move focus between workspace and text editor, and fast switch between running apps such as Debug Server, Fossil, Web browser and Speare.

Debug Mode

Speare seamlessly support debugging C, C++, Ruby, mruby, Lua, Python, PHP, Perl and Tcl scripts, more info please refer here: → Speare debugger architecture.

Speare Keyboard Shortcuts

Please refer the table: speare_shortcuts.pdf

Syntax Checking and Run Code Instantly

a. Press shortcut key "Command + R".
b. Click menu: "Command" → "Syntax Checking & Run".

Crafting software as small as possible. → Why C is the returned king of programming languages.

Add a New Colour Scheme

Please save the above content as a plain text file, e.g schemeX.txt, and directly edit the colour values to fit a new style, and then put it under the following directory:
~/Library/Application Scripts/com.sevenuc.spearepro/colorschemes/
Please create the directory if it does not exists.

Code Formatter/Code Beautifier

Supported languages:
a. C, C++, Objective‑C, C#, Java (built-in support).
b. Ruby, Lua, Python, Perl, PHP, Tcl, Swift, JavaScript, Shell scripts, Dart, Go and Rust.
(located in the formatters directory, and requires some configuration to let them correctly working)

Location of formatters:
~/Library/Application Scripts/com.sevenuc.SpeareHelper/formatters/
Please create the directory if it does not exists.

Ensure the formatters can be correctly working, you should take a look at above directory, the built-in formatters:
js.sh: check Node.js installed and can be accessed from command line.
go.sh: check Go installed and can be accessed from command line.
php.sh: check PHP installed and can be accessed from command line.
rust.sh: check Rust and rustfmt installed and can be accessed from command line.
tcl.sh: check Tcl installed and can be accessed from command line.
dart.sh: check Dart and dartfmt installed and can be accessed from command line.

Note:
a. Python code formatter alternative: https://github.com/psf/black
b. JavaScript and TypeScript code formatter alternative: https://github.com/prettier/prettier, it also can format CSS, SCSS, Markdown, HTML, JSON, YAML, JSX, Flow, Less, Angular, Vue, and GraphQL.
c. The selected code block is complete or has logical begin and end border then the formatter can generate better output.