MatrixFSE - A Full Screen Editor For Distraction Free Writing.

Last Update January, 09 2008

(original size 1400x1050 (just right click and select “show picture”)

MatrixFSE, formerly known as Gyounen, is a full screen editor for distraction free writing. It provides you with the basic features any editor has (load, save, copy, paste, cut). More than that it doesn’t do.

Alternatives to tis program are darkroom and WriteRoom. Both of these applications are fullscreen editors. WriteRoom is for Mac only, Darkroom is for Windows only. As for Linux there is an alternative approach here You may want to have a look at those three products.

Darkroom requires .NET 2.0 which is where my problems started....
-I don’t have .NET at every pc i work with, nor can i or do i want to install it everywhere.

Writeroom is for Mac only which I don’t have
And the linux solution came after i started work on Gyounen and frankly i don’t like emacs.

Since i am still learning Python and such a thing is allways a good excercise i simply made it with Python.

The outcome i called Gyounen which is japanese and means as much as “contentrate on thought”. Gyounen is a fullscreen editor, simple, easy, with no extra special features that nobody needs (well at least I don’t). It loads and saves, allows to copy, paste,cut and change the font (size, color). I found the ability to go fullscreen very good. No other applications, task bars etc. to distract you. Spellchecking and a way to call some external programs will be included in the next versions (i hope). Personally i still need to start some structured text functionality.

Here are the last releases:

-0.6 (python sources) Size 10kb

-0.6 (compiled exe for windows-by request, not tested) Size 4MB !

Here is the current source via svn:

-SVN at Google

Requirements
 - Windows / Linux (not tested) / Mac (not tested)
 - Python (developed  under 2.5 but should work with older versions too)

Keyboard Shortcuts

  File Features
        o New  Document: Ctrl+N
        o Load Document: Ctrl+L
        o Save Document: Ctrl+S
        o Save As Document: None
        o Quit: Ctrl+Q

  Edit Features
        o Cut: Ctrl+X
        o Copy: Ctrl+C
        o Paste: Ctrl+V
        o Undo: Ctrl+U
        o Redo: Ctrl+R
        o Select All: Ctrl+A
    o Jump to start of next paragraph (over empty ones): Ctrl+down arrow
    o Jump to start of previous paragraph (over empty ones): Ctrl+up arror
    o Jump to start of next word: Ctrl+right arrow
    o Jump to start of previous word: Ctrl+left arror
    o Select characters to the right/left: Shift+right/left arrow
    o Select complete paragraphs: Shift+ up/down arrow

   Control Features
        o Toggle Fullscreen: Ctrl+T
    o Preferences: Ctrl+P

 Bugs 
        o Taskbar doesnt disaapear under Windows2000 no clue why


Changelist

0.6 (04.01.2008)
-changed encoding to utf8
-added some try except blocks to keep the data save and get more info about errors

0.5 (01.11.2007)
-fixed flag for modofication of files (now only true when actually modified)
-added more commands (see help panel (ctrl-p))
-fixed some bugs for setting the title of the window

0.3b (changes from 0.3)  (18.01.2007)
-added undo (ctrl-u)
-added redo (ctrl-r)
-fixed a bug related to setting background in the side panels

0.3 (changes from 0.2) (17.01.2007)
-switched to Tkinter
-removed Scrollbar
-added configuration panel (colors, font, textareawidth, left and right panel)
-configuration is saved completely now

0.2 (changes from 0.1)
--included two side panels and put the textcontrol in between them
-- switched to utf-8
--included configuration mechanism (load cfg ok, save missing !)
--cleaned up some code (refactoring, extracting methods)
--solved Bug: "Fontcolor and style are allways the same at startup (white, monospaced) because (see future plans)"
--changed initial font color to green and size to 12



Future release plans
o 
  - aspell / ispell integration
  - run any external program with edited text as input
  - better support for encoding (detecting encoding of file?)
  - configurable documents directory
  - i18n

License issues BSD - like. Please just look at the supplied readme

Support and donate I offer most programs for free, and I write them in my free time, not that i had much of that. I will greatly appreciate any support you might be willing to give. There are a number of ways. You might start with a comment in the blog or consider a donation.