Ataula ── Text Tables Editor 🚀

Ataula is a VS Code extension I built with AI to make editing text tables easier.

You can create tables automatically, resize them, auto-fit them, edit the content inside the cells, select text inside a cell, select adjacent cells, and more features I’ll keep adding over time.

(From this point on, everything is AI-generated.)

Ataula is a powerful plain text geometric and ASCII table editing and formatting engine, designed specifically to provide first-class support for Markdown files, plain text documents, and the EduMark educational format.

Forget about breaking your tables when content grows. Ataula takes care of readjusting geometric borders, managing real multi-line cells, and giving you comfortable shortcuts so you feel like you are in a spreadsheet, but in plain text.

✨ Key Features

• 📏 Smart Dynamic Auto-adjustment: Table columns automatically expand or contract in real-time as you type or delete characters, preventing accidental line wrapping.
• 📝 Real Multi-line Cells: Native support for table cells that span across multiple physical lines of plain text, perfectly recalculating top, bottom, and intermediate borders.
• 🛠️ Smart Selection & Active Multicursor:
  • Select the entire content of a cell across multiple lines using the selection key or mouse.
  • Automatically generate parallel cursors (multicursor) for each line of the cell when selecting.
  • New! Automatically deactivate multicursor, returning to a single cursor as soon as you deselect or empty the selection for a distraction-free editing experience.
• ⚙️ Robust Geometric Parser & Formatter: Automatically simplifies redundant borders and optimizes the table layout to keep your Markdown or EduMark code clean and readable.
• 🎨 Integrated EduMark Syntax: Native support and syntax highlighting for .edu files through the registered edumark language.

⌨️ Editor Keyboard Shortcuts

📁 Monorepo Structure

The project is organized in a modular monorepo using npm workspaces:

graph TD
    subgraph Packages
        shared["@edumark/shared<br>(Common types and AST)"]
        engine["@edumark/table-engine<br>(Parser and Geometric Formatter)"]
        extension["vscode-extension-table<br>(VS Code Extension)"]
    end

    engine --> shared
    extension --> shared
    extension --> engine

• packages/shared: Defines common geometric cell (TableCell) and syntax tree node (TableNode) types.
• packages/table-engine: The core logic that parses ASCII tables, manages the auto-adjust algorithm, and simplifies redundant borders.
• packages/vscode-extension-table: Visual Studio Code extension containing keyboard commands, document formatter, and real-time cursor listeners.

⚙️ Supported Extensions

The extension activates automatically on the following formats:

• 📄 .edu (EduMark)
• 📝 .md (Markdown)
• ✏️ .txt (Plain Text)

🛠️ Development & Contribution

1. Install dependencies

Install all monorepo dependencies from the root directory:

npm install

2. Compile the project

Compile all TypeScript packages:

npm run build

3. Run the tests

The table engine logic features an extensive suite of unit and integration tests using Vitest:

npm run test

4. Test the Extension in VS Code

1. Open the project in VS Code.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + D to go to the Run and Debug tab.
3. Select Launch Extension (Ataula) from the top dropdown menu.
4. Press F5 to open a test window with the extension fully active.

Developed with ❤️ for agile plain text table editing.