Recurse Center

Localhost: Raph Levien

Xi: an editor for the next 20 years

Abstract: Xi is a project to build a modern text editor with uncompromising performance. Its thoroughly async, loosely coupled design promises performance and rich extensibility, but creates interesting engineering challenges, requiring advanced algorithms and data structures. In addition to pushing the state of computer science for text handling, the project also seeks to build an open-source community for teaching and learning, and working together to create a joyful editing experience.

About Raph: Raph is a software engineer at Google, currently on the Fuchsia team working on text and Rust infrastructure, and holds a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where his thesis topic was tools for interactive font design. He has been active in the open source community for over 25 years, with contributions in text, 2D graphics, fonts, and other areas. Raph is also a Recurse Center alum, from the Fall 1, 2017 batch.