UmbraNote

A lightweight, cross-platform text editor written in modern C++. UmbraNote feels familiar like Windows Notepad, with optional encrypted notes, PDF export, and a clean native UI on Windows and Linux.

Highlights

• Familiar editing — New, Open, Save, Find/Replace, Go To, Word Wrap, Font picker, and status bar line/column display
• Open any text-like file — Notepad-style open dialog (All Files by default) with auto-detect for UTF-8, UTF-16, and system ANSI
• UTF-8 by default — Plain text files are saved as UTF-8 without BOM
• Encrypted notes — High-security .zro files using Argon2id + XChaCha20-Poly1305, optional keyfile, and legacy v1/v2 support
• PDF export — Export the current document to PDF from the File menu
• Cross-platform core — Shared core/ library with native Win32 and GTK4 frontends
• libsodium — Memory-hard Argon2id and modern AEAD for v3 encryption (bundled at build time if missing)

Screenshots

Add screenshots after your first GitHub release:

docs/screenshots/windows-editor.png docs/screenshots/linux-editor.png

Quick start

Windows

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/UmbraNote.git
cd UmbraNote
build.bat
UmbraNote.exe

Linux

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/UmbraNote.git
cd UmbraNote
chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh
./UmbraNote

Requirements

Platform	Toolchain	Libraries
Windows 10+	Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools or VS 2022 with C++ workload	CMake 3.16+, Git (first build fetches libsodium if needed)
Linux	GCC or Clang with C++17	CMake 3.16+, OpenSSL (libssl-dev), GTK4 (libgtk-4-dev), libsodium (libsodium-dev)

Build

Windows (recommended)

build.bat

Equivalent script:

scripts\build-windows.bat

Output: UmbraNote.exe in the repository root and releases/windows/UmbraNote.exe.

Sign a Windows release (PGP)

After building, sign release artifacts in the same detached ASCII-armored format used by YellowSphere:

scripts\sign-release.bat

Create the UmbraNote release key once (private key stored in gitignored .gnupg-release/):

scripts\init-release-key.bat

Then sign:

scripts\sign-release.bat

This writes releases/windows/UmbraNote.exe.asc, docs/SHA256SUMS, docs/SHA256SUMS.asc, and docs/UmbraNote_Release_Signing_2026_pubkey.asc.

Verify:

gpg --import docs/UmbraNote_Release_Signing_2026_pubkey.asc
gpg --verify docs/SHA256SUMS.asc docs/SHA256SUMS
gpg --verify releases/windows/UmbraNote.exe.asc releases/windows/UmbraNote.exe

See docs/RELEASE_SIGNING.md for key storage layout and fingerprint.

Linux (recommended)

./build.sh

Equivalent script:

./scripts/build-linux.sh

Output: UmbraNote in the repository root.

Manual CMake

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release

Windows binary path:

build/platform/win32/UmbraNote.exe

Linux binary path:

build/platform/linux/UmbraNote

Keyboard shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
New	Ctrl+N
Open	Ctrl+O
Save	Ctrl+S
Print	Ctrl+P
Undo	Ctrl+Z
Cut	Ctrl+X
Copy	Ctrl+C
Paste	Ctrl+V
Find	Ctrl+F
Find Next	F3
Replace	Ctrl+H
Go To	Ctrl+G
Select All	Ctrl+A

Repository layout

UmbraNote/
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── ci.yml              # GitHub Actions build matrix
├── core/
│   ├── include/zeronote/       # Public core headers
│   ├── crypto.cpp              # AES-256-GCM + PBKDF2
│   ├── pdf_export.cpp          # PDF writer
│   ├── text_codec.cpp          # UTF-8 / UTF-16 file I/O
│   └── CMakeLists.txt
├── platform/
│   ├── win32/                  # Windows Win32 application
│   │   ├── main.cpp
│   │   ├── notepad.cpp
│   │   ├── resource.rc
│   │   └── app.manifest
│   └── linux/                  # Linux GTK4 application
│       └── main.cpp
├── docs/
│   └── FILE_FORMATS.md         # .txt, .zro, and PDF details
├── scripts/
│   ├── build-windows.bat
│   └── build-linux.sh
├── build.bat                   # Windows wrapper
├── build.sh                    # Linux wrapper
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Architecture

UmbraNote is split into a portable core and thin platform shells:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           platform/win32 or linux       │
│   menus, dialogs, editor widget, shell  │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────┘
                   │
┌──────────────────▼──────────────────────┐
│                  core                   │
│  text_codec  crypto  pdf_export         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Windows uses BCrypt for cryptography.
• Linux uses OpenSSL for the same file format and API surface.
• UI code converts to UTF-8 at the boundary so file logic stays portable.

See docs/FILE_FORMATS.md for on-disk layouts and docs/SECURITY.md for the v3 threat model.

File types

Extension	Purpose
.txt	Plain UTF-8 text
.zro	Password-encrypted UmbraNote document
.pdf	Exported PDF output

Roadmap

• Linux encrypted open/save dialogs
• macOS port
• Dark mode
• Recent files list
• Autosave and session restore

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.