How To: Unlock The Power Of Gnome’s Text Editor
One of the first questions from those who switch operating systems is usually — how can I make it more familiar? Typically this boils down to how can I make program X on my new system behave more like Program Y on the old system that I was used too?
For instance, when I first started using Ubuntu I wanted to find a text editor something like BBEdit or TextMate on the Mac. After flirting with both Vi and Emacs, I eventually turned to gEdit, the humble little default text editor for the Gnome desktop.
But I quickly realized that gEdit is actually quite powerful. Thanks to a extensible plug-in framework, gEdit can be made to behave like and mimic the features of your favorite text editor on other platforms.
I’m a BBEdit fan myself, but I know many coders swear by TextMate on their Macs. If you’ve made the switch to Linux, but you’re jealous of your Mac-wielding friends’ text editing options, the good folks a Lifehacker found a great tutorial on how to add most of the standout features in TextMate to gEdit.
Features covered include word completion, file browsing, snippet storage and more. Perhaps the best part is that many of the plug-ins covered in this guide are actually installed by default, you just need to head into the preferences and turn them on. The author is even kind enough to pass along his syntax highlighting scheme if it strikes your fancy.
And remember, if there’s something gEdit can’t do that you really need, you can always write a plug-in yourself. The preferred language is Python, though, depending on the features you’re going for, you may need to use C. Check out the gEdit site for more details and complete list of available plug-ins.
[Screenshot from grigio.org]
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