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<title>gtkedit - a Notepad clone</title>
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<td class="header">Gtkedit - A notepad clone based on GTK+</td>
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
<h3>Why another editor? Don't we have enough already?</h3>
<p>Well, yes indeed. There are quite a lot of different - and not
so different - editors one can download from the Internet.
Anyway...</p>
<ol>
<li>I wanted a simple project to try GUI programming in Unix.</li>
<li>I have an old machine (Pentium 166 MHz, 32 MB RAM) with
Slackware Linux 9.0. This machine runs Xfce 3.8, based on GTK+
1.2.</li>
<li>There's no decent GUI editor for this machine. All are too
slow, too bloated or too ugly.</li>
</ol>
<p>OK, In fact I did found an editor that works fine. It's called
gnotepad+, but it too takes too long to load (about 2 seconds) in
this old machine. There's plenty of room for improvements here, I
thought.</p>
<p>And so gtkedit begun. I only wanted the most basic editing
features: cut, copy, paste, basic undo/redo... nothing fancy. The
obvious model to copy was, of course, Notepad.</p>
<h2>What is it ?</h2>
<p>Gtkedit is a simple editor, written using the GTK+ 1.2 toolkit.
It aims to be (in that order) light, useful and simple (source
code-wise).</p>
<ul>
<li>Binary weights about 30 KB.</li>
<li>Takes less than half a second to start in the development
machine.</li>
<li>Has nearly all the features of Windows 2000' Notepad (only
printing and help are missing).</li>
<li>The C source code is a single file, about 1400 lines long. No
need to use a configure script or even a makefile (although one is
provided).</li>
</ul>
<p>Being a simple project, it also can serve as a real world GTK+
tutorial.</p>
<p>To sum it up all: gtkedit is the little unsexy app everybody needs to have
;-).</p>
<h2>Using the editor</h2>
<p>gtkedit is very simple to use. It understands the basic common
shortcut keys, like <Ctrl>C for copy. You will find them
listed next to each menu item.</p>
<p>Very basic undo/redo capabilities are provided, because the
editor can only undo the very last text insertion or removal.</p>
<p>You can find and replace text, and there is a menu option that
will allow you to quickly go to any particular line, which is handy
if one is writting a program and wants locate an error line.</p>
<p>One useful feature is the ability to open files by dragging them
from your file manager into the editor window, replacing the
current open one.</p>
<p>Finally, you can change the font used for text display, or
toggle the wrapping of long lines by means of the "Format" menu. Gtkedit will
remember those settings, along with the window size (they are saved to a file
named <tt>./gtkeditrc</tt> in you home directory.)</p>
<h2>Compiling and running</h2>
<p>Gtkedit uses the GNU gettext library for translation. All major Linux distributions are based
on the GNU C library, that includes gettext. Other systems may not compile if the gettext library
is not installed.</p>
<p>To compile the source, issue the following command from a
terminal window:</p>
<pre>
make
</pre>
Alternatively you can compile the program with the following command:
<pre>
gcc $(gtk-config --cflags --libs) -O -o gtkedit gtkedit.c
</pre>
<p>I assumed you use GNU bash. If you use any other shell, use this
instead:</p>
<pre>
gcc `gtk-config --cflags --libs` -O -o gtkedit gtkedit.c
</pre>
<p>Beware of the back-quotes (`), as they are not the same as
single quotes (') if you happen to be a Unix shell.</p>
<p>Once the compilation finishes you can start the program with the
command:</p>
<pre>
./gtkedit
</pre>
<p>This opens the editor with a blank unnamed file. You can add the
name of a file to have it loaded, if you wish. Alternatively you
can use the file manager to drag file over the editor window.</p>
<p>If you like the editor and plan to use it frequently, it would be wise to
put it somewhere in your path, for example in <tt>/usr/bin</tt> or
<tt>/usr/local/bin</tt>, and create a shortcut in your desktop.</p>
<p>If your primary language is not English you may want to install one or more of the translations
modules, found in the <tt>po</tt> subdirectory. Each module name is the ISO code of the language
it adds. For instance, <tt>ca.mo</tt> is the Catalan language module.<p>
<p>For example, to install the Catalan language translation you should issue the following commands:</p>
<pre>
su
password: *****
cp po/ca.mo /usr/share/locale/ca/LC_MESSAGES/gtkedit.mo
exit
</pre>
<p>There are a couple of important things to note:<p>
<ul>
<li>You need administrator rights to install the translation modules.</li>
<li><tt>/usr/share/locale/</tt> is the standard base path for translations. If it differs in
your system change if for the right one.</li>
<li>The module name has to change to <tt>gtkedit.mo</tt>. Otherwise it will not be recognized.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Collaborate!</h2>
<p>If you want to collaborate (that's the best part of this thing called Open
Source) you can by translating gtkedit to your native language. To do this you
should do the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>Download the latest source code from
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtkedit1">Sourceforge</a>. Inside the
tarball you will find the <tt>gtkedit.pot</tt>. This POT (Portable Object
Template) is a text file with all the strings in the application.</li>
<li>Translate the strings in the <tt>gtkedit.pot</tt> file and save it as
<tt><i><language-code></i>.po</tt>, where <i>language-code</i> is the ISO
2 letter code for your language. Since the .POT file is just plain text you can
edit it with gtkedit itself, although I strongly recommend using an specialized
editor like <a href="http://www.poedit.org">poedit</a>. Be sure to fill in the
Copyright and license comments. For simplicity, I will only accept translations
under the same license as gtkedit.</li>
<li>Send the translated file to me, or better yet, publish it in the
<a href="http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=456762">Developers</a>
forum.</li>
</ol>
<p>Of course, other contributions will be welcomed too.</p>
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