A minimal text editor for Gnome.
Download the latest ca.footeware.swt.textify-#.#.#-SNAPSHOT.zip file from the Releases page and extract it to a convenient folder. There should be an install-files folder and an INSTALL file.
In nautilus, right-click the INSTALL file and select Run as a Program , or at command prompt, enter ./INSTALL. In both cases, you will be presented with a description of the steps being taken to install textify. When done, textify should be ready to run via command prompt or via the textify launcher. If it does not work, log off and log in again and it should (path issue?). If it still doesn't work, please file a ticket on this site's Issues tab. Once installed the zip file and its extracted files can safely be deleted.
At the command prompt, textify can be used to open a file with name as argument (textify filename).
In nautilus, textify can open several text-based file types via the Open With... menu item as it appears in the list of alternate applications. Further, it can be associated with that file type by enabling the Always use for this file type slider.
- Plain text editing
- Font selection as a preference
- Line number column as a preference
- Line wrapping as a preference
- Highlight current line and color as a preference
- Search via Ctrl+F
- Key bindings viewable from hamburger menu
- Cut, Copy and Paste popup menu items and their shortcuts
- Follows Gnome theme and highlight color
The installation will:
- remove the previous install (if it exists)
- create install folders
$HOME/.local/bin/and$HOME/.local/share/textify/ - add
$HOME/.local/binto$PATH - copy the jar to
$HOME/.local/share/textify/ - copy the icon to
HOME/.local/share/textify/ - make the launcher executable and copy it to
$HOME/.local/bin/ - copy
.desktopfile to$HOME/.local/share/applications/
That's it, done. Everything installed into your home folder so there is no need for sudo.
A rolling log file is located in $HOME/.local/share/textify/logs/. They are gzipped and deleted as they age off.
textify is written entirely in Java, producing a .jar file with a MANIFEST.MF specifying the main class. Thus, the jar can be run at the command prompt as java -jar ca.footeware.swt.textify-#.#.#-SNAPSHOT.jar. This is what the included launcher bash script does. There's also a .desktop file so the launcher shows up in the Gnome applications list and uses the provided icon. The launcher is copied into the $HOME/.local/bin/ folder which is then added to $PATH so it can be used at the command prompt.
To get around the limitation of not being able to use environment variables like $HOME in .desktop files' Icon property, sed was used to resolve the user home location and enter it into the .desktop file upon copying.
The project is built using maven which builds the jar as a fat jar, including all its dependencies:
- SWT
- JFace
- Open (opens web pages)
- Log4J
It also copies the jar and other resources into the resulting zip file. The project can be built using mvn clean install though eclipse may make it easier.
The releases to date have targeted Gnome. The Java code is platform-independent but the SWT widget library, org.eclipse.swt.gtk.linux.x86_64, is specific to the linux OS on x86_64 platform. SWT also publishes a windows libary that theoretically could produce a build for that OS too. Perhaps a future version 😏.
textify is freely available under the GPL3 license and is presented as is with no liability. Its code is open-source and open to pull requests and issues from anyone.