Gyounen - The fullscreen editor
Last Update January, 09 2008
Gyounen is a fullscreen editor for distraction-free editing of texts. 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:
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.
on 7 September 2007 at 10:15 Markus said …
Your link:
http://wiredearth-en.blogspot.com/200...
couldnt displayed because of
hred
instead of
href
Greetings :)
Markus
on 8 September 2007 at 14:09 Jens said …
Thanks, fixed it.
on 28 December 2007 at 15:00 Shii said …
Do you have a compiled version anywhere?
on 3 January 2008 at 03:29 Kerim said …
I uploaded a version and added a link to the article. Its a zipped directory containing an exe. Didn't test it much though ;)
on 7 January 2008 at 11:27 Ben said …
Nicely done on this one. As soon as I heard about the whole WriteRoom/DarkRoom business, I was amazed at how complex the implementations were. I mean, .NET for a text editor? Seriously?
I dev in Python, so all my machines have it, although that binary you posted might be nice for the rest of the world that doesn't code.
Just one complaint: the documentation in the ctrl+P preferences dialog states "Width of text (relevent only if all panels deactivated):" In fact, it is quite the opposite. If one or both panels have their configuration boxes un-checked, then that field does nothing. Only if they are both checked (activated), does they field have any effect.
Finally, I don't know if this is something you can control, but Gyounen doesn't show up on the Windows taskbar (haven't tested on Linux). Is this on purpose, or a side-effect of using TK? The only reason I ask is because not having it appear makes it hard to alt+tab out of or back in to. I know that the point of these full-screen editors is to focus all attention on the writing, but sometimes you do need to do other things.
Anyways, very nice job with this.
on 9 January 2008 at 08:12 Kerim said …
Hi Ben, thanks for the comment.
I had a look at the panel issue and reworked that code totally. It was an idea left over from the time when i used wxPython. Matrix/Gyounen actually doesn't need these two options in the Dialog.
I also included your autosave feature (thanks for the contribution). It is (so far) accessible via svn (i included a link above)
As for the taskbar thats an interesting issue. When you resize the program(can be done using Alt+T), THEN the entry for it appears in the taskbar.
When you are in fullscreen mode however it disappears.
Rest per Email ;-)
on 2 April 2008 at 03:51 Luke said …
I tried this out on Linux, and it encounters a problem. It fails to bind to the keyboard, so if you type anything it doesn't get entered. It sends the info to whatever other app is running behind it at the time.
on 4 April 2008 at 01:41 Kerim said …
"""I tried this out on Linux, and it encounters a problem. It fails to bind to the keyboard, so if you type anything it doesn't get entered. It sends the info to whatever other app is running behind it at the time."""
Hi Luke,
i currently have no Linux running at the moment, but it shouldnt be a problem to get one to run in a VM.
Just need to download the latest ubuntu.
What Linux do you run ?
Any environmental settings that are of importance ?
I will try to set up something and test it then.
Greetings
Kerim