Current version 0.0.4
Author: Hamad Al Marri
- Description
- Screenshots
- Why a new text editor?
- Dependencies
- Installation
- Gamma Philosophy
- Features and current available plugins
- TODO
- For Developers
- Wiki
Gamma (Γ) is a lightweight text editor. It is meant to be an alternative to Gedit or Notepad++. Although the current implementation is tested on linux under Gnome desktop environment, Gamma can run on Linux, Windows, and Mac if dependencies are installed (see Dependencies section below). Gamma uses GTK3 (cross-platform GUI toolkit) and PyGObject which is a Python package that provides bindings for GObject based libraries such as GTK, GStreamer, WebKitGTK, GLib, GIO and many more.
- Lightweight, not CPU/RAM hungry
- No learning curve (easy/familiar shortcuts, easy use of plugin/extensions)
- Fully customizable from A to Z (even the UI layout)
- New UX approach for text editors
- Easy plugin system
- Made using Python for python contributors
- GTK+3
- GtkSourceview 4 (works for 3.0 but currently need to manually change the version in python files)
- Python 3
- gobject-introspection
If you are using Linux with a Gnome desktop, you probably have those dependencies installed already. I am not sure if the libraries are installed for other desktops such as KDE, XFCE, or MATE. But if you have libgtk-3-0 and python3 installed, then Gamma is probably going to work.
You might need to install the following (in case of missing dependencies):
gobject-introspection
python3-gobject
typelib-1_0-Gtk-3_0
typelib-1_0-GtkSource-4
// for help pages
typelib-1_0-WebKit2-4_0
yelp
// for terminal plugin
typelib-1_0-Vte-2.91
gedit-plugin-terminal
// for ctags plugin
ctags
You might find this usefull: https://pygobject.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started.html
Usually these dependencies are already installed on Opensuse, but in case some are missing:
sudo zypper in libgtk-3-0 python3-gobject python3-gobject-Gdk python3-gobject-cairo typelib-1_0-Gtk-3_0 libgtksourceview-4-0 typelib-1_0-GtkSource-4 typelib-1_0-WebKit2-4_0 yelp libvte-2_91-0 vte-devel typelib-1_0-Vte-2.91 ctags
If no python3, try install the latest python3. In my case, python38 (i.e. 3.8)
sudo zypper in python38
sudo apt install python3 libgtk-3-0 gobject-introspection libgtksourceview-4-0 libgtksourceview-4-dev python3-gi (>= 3.0) python3-gi-cairo (>= 3.0) gir1.2-glib-2.0 gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gtksource-4 gir1.2-pango-1.0 gir1.2-vte-2.91 ctags gir1.2-webkit2-4.0 yelp
git clone https://gitlab.com/hamadmarri/gamma-text-editor
cd gamma-text-editor
chmod +x setup.sh
./setup.sh
Gamma will be visible in your applications list after installation (launcher) - click to open. If you need to run Gamma via terminal:
# run Gamma
$ gamma-editor
# edit file/s with Gamma
$ gamma-editor /path/to/file1 ./file2
# edit file/s with Root privilege (use EDITOR=gamma-editor sudoedit). Example:
$ EDITOR=gamma-editor sudoedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf
The philosophy of Gamma is to decouple all functionalities and features into separate plugins.
It is designed in a way that every feature is a plugin, even for some basic and core functionalities
such as open, save, and close files, they are made in a separate plugins which located under
./plugins/files_manager folder. However, these plugins (openfile and savefile) are highly coupled with
files_manager plugin since they are working together. But nothing prevents you from replacing any of these
coupled plugins with a different plugin with respect of taking care of integrating them together with
the new/replacement plugin. That being said, it is a special case where they are core basic plugins for
Gamma to work as a text editor, therefore they are highly coupled with each other. For different types
of plugins such as a plugin for showing the terminal at bottom panel, or a plugin opens a tree view of
a directory, there is no dependencies on other plugins. For developers, see
For Developers section.
Here are brief descriptions about currently implemented plugins and features
Sets the theme style to Gamma window
the style.css file is set in config.py style-path
Sets the style for the source view (text editting area)
style_scheme is set in config.py
style scheme for srource view style, usually sourceview style xml files are in
~/.local/share/gtksourceview-4/styles (see config.py)
Is responsible for handling basic window operations maximize, minimize, and quit.
Opens file(s) by showing open dialog and send filenames array
to files_manager.open_files method
Shows open folder dialog and opens all files
under the selected folder (recursively) and send filenames array
to files_manager.open_files method
Saves the current file opened or all edited files
it gets current_file from files_manager plugin
and saves it. Message notify is sent to tell the user
that the file is saved successfully
Is responsible to manage all opened documents.
Auto completion assistant which shows popup with words for completion
words are collected from current opened files.
Is responsible for highlighting the selected text by user. It
highlights all occurrences of selected text.
Is responsible of displaying notification
messages (file saved, opened file, ...)
the default message is placed on top right corner
default message time is 7.5 seconds, which is the time
of a message being displayed. After this time, the message will be cleared
Quick search on current opened file. It is located at
the top of the editor. It auto scroll to first found
match and moving to the next/previous one by UP/DOWN keywords or Enter/Shift+Enter.
It is case sensitive. For case insensitive, see find_and_replace plugin.
Deals with UI events such as changing background color for hovered element.
Comments line/block of code. Auto detect the language and
the comments symbols. The shortcut (Ctrl+/) comments/uncomment code
Find and replace text with some options such as case sensitive/insensitive,
whole word, and replace one or replace all.
Opens terminal on new window with cd to current directory.
It needs to have an option to be placed in bottom panel in future.
Shows the Welcome Page
Shows help window
Shows the About window
Copy, cut, or duplicate a line without selecting all line. Just
place the cursor in the line and press Ctrl+c for copy, Ctrl+x to
cut, or Ctrl+d to duplicate. Also after copying and cutting, pressing
Ctrl+v will paste into next line.
Auto types closing brackets and quotes while typing.
Commander is a plugin that collects all other plugins' commands
and make it easy and fast for the user to use those commands.
By pressing <Alt>, commander window is shown with search entry and
list of commands with their key bindings. Typing in search auto filters the
commands and the very first command is selected. When hit Enter the command runs.
Commands can be open file, close file, close all files, switch to file, zoom in,
maximize window, find and replace ....
basically any plugin exported its commands, commander will show theirs commands.
Commander uses splay tree to store commands. It is a binary search tree
with splay feature. Search in commands is fast. Also, recent used
commands are placed at top because of the splay operation.
- Check if file got updated externally, so reload file option
- Themes plugin (change theme, change sourceview style)
- Open recent files
- Open more than one window
- Files tree view
- Search in directory
- Mark file with blue color when click one more click if selected
- Arrange files in side (drag / drop)
- Output plugin
- Bottom panel
- Code snippets
- Lazy plugin manager
- Close, min, max buttons' hover show x + -
- Drag/drop file to editor must open file not path
- Updater plugin
- Abstract way to communicate with other plugins
- Find and replace on selected area
For all issues/todos Issues.
Telegram Channel: https://t.me/gamma_text_editor
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