GtkEditor is a source code editor widget for GTK+. It is currently used, in one version or another, in several GTK+/GNOME applications, including gIDE, VDKBuilder, GXEdit, and Bluefish.

The longterm goal of GtkEditor is to provide a framework for source code editing in GTK+ applications, whether just for editing macros or for full fledged IDEs. We try to achieve this through a highly configurable editor widget sub-classing the gtktext widget. After initialisation, the editor widget can be treated as the usual text widget, and all source-code editing features are taken care of by the widget itself. The behaviour of the editor is decided by dynamic libraries loaded during initialisation of the widget or statically linked with the application using the widget. These libraries can be hand-coded or created using tools supplied with GtkEditor.

In the current version of GtkEditor, the widget only support syntax highlighting, but future versions will include automatic/semi-automatic indenting, parenthesis matching, and what other nifty features we can come up with.

After lying dormant for close to a year, we're back developing the GtkEditor widget. We start out by redesigning most of the editor, which will set us back a few steps, but which we hope will pay off in the long run. You can read more about this project, GtkEditor - The Next Generation below. The benefits of the redesign is more flexible configuration of the editor widget (through dynamic libraries), getting rid of gtksctext or patching gtktext, and a significant speedup in the syntax highlighting. The unfortunate side-effects are the loss of guile-support, hints, and register highlighting, not to mention the broken API.

By popular demand we've put a few screenshots up at this page.

The primary download site is http://download.sourceforge.net/gtkeditor. Currently there are no mirrows (known to us).

We haven't moved the older releases to this site, and we won't, since we are abandoning the old design. If you are interested in older versions, they will be available on the old address www.daimi.au.dk/~mailund/gtk.html for a while. At least until we get The Next Generation going.

The latest version of the GtkEditor is available on anonymous CVS from cvs.gtkeditor.sourceforge.net. Use the commands:

 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.gtkeditor.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/gtkeditor login
 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.gtkeditor.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/gtkeditor co gtkeditor
 

If you discover a bug in GtkEditor, which is not unlikely considering the current state of the widget, you can report it here.

We have two mailing lists associated with the GtkEditor. For users of the editor we have gtkeditor-users@lists.sourceforge.net. For discussion about the development of the widget we have gtkeditor-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

Based on our experiences with the previous versions of GtkEditor we are currently working on a total redesign and reimplementation of the editor widget. The Next Generation is the nick name for this redesigning project.

By redesigning the editor widget we hope to accomplish several things, amongst which are :

• Getting rid of gtksctext or patching gtktext,
• speedups in the highlighting routines,
• a more general highlight pattern specification together with a separation of pattern specification and highlighter installation,
• a better API for indenting,
• ...and generally a very flexible way of extending/configuring the widget.

Already most of the highlighting has been redone, but we are not quite back to status quo. Once we get there, we will release this as version 0.1.0 of GtkEditor. From then on we will move rapidly towards 0.2.0, which will include highlighting (as the 0.0.x series), automatic/semi-automatic indenting (there where hooks for this in the 0.0.x series, but the API made them close to useless), and one or two tools for creating highlight specifications and indenters (new). The 0.1.x will be our development series and thus the API will be in a lot of flux, so application developers are advised to stick with the 0.0.x series until we reach 0.2.0. The 0.2.x will be bugfixes only, while we will continue development on the 0.3.x series.

During development on the 0.1.x series we would greatly appreciate any feedback from users of GtkEditor. We are doing our best to provide a useful widget, but we are limited to our own experience with the widget. We would like to hear what other users feel should go into the next version, what has to go, and what has to be redesigned.

The current TNG design is not quite fleshed out yet, but you can read a draft version here, either in html or in postscript.