I found it interesting to just glance at the code, having never touched Go (but familiar with SDL). Some day I will find the time hack around in one of these new languages, whether it be Go or Rust or Red or Perl6 .. :)

I have some trouble understanding the rationale for using SDL_ttf in an editor implementation, though. Did you just cut shaping, bidirectional text and font fallback as acceptable losses, or is it on the roadmap? If so, what is your strategy?