NAME¶
Kephra - crossplatform GUI Texteditor along Perl alike Paradigms
SYNOPSIS¶
> kephra [<files>] # start with files already open
DESCRIPTION¶
This module install's a complete editor application with all its configs and
documentation for your programming, web and text authoring.
Philosophy¶
- Main Goals
- A visually harmonic and beautiful, sparing and elegantly
programed Editor, that helpes you with all your daily tasks. It should be
also able to operate in the way you prefer and be not afraid to try new
things.
- In Depth
- I know, I know, there are plenty text editors out there,
even some really mighty IDE, but still no perfect solution for many
programmers. So lets =over 2 learn from Perl what it takes to build a tool
thats powerful and fun to play with for hours and months.
- * make a low entry barrier (usable like notepad)
- * copy what people like and are used to and whats not
inherently broken
- * give choices (TimTowtdi)
- •
- (e.g. deliver vi and emacs input style)
- •
- usable with menu, contextmenu, bars, mouse combo, key
combos, commands ...
- •
- configure via dialog and yaml/conf files ...
- * highly configurable / adaptable to personal
preferences
- * beauty / good integration on GUI, code and config
level
- * solve things with minimal effort (no bloat / minimal
dependencies)
- * still everything extendable by easy to write plugins
I believe strongly that there is much more possible with GUI editors
and text editors in general than we are used today. So I try to weave
fresh ideas wherever I can and design Kephra in a way, that every
programmer can alter and extend it easily. That can speed up progress
or at least makes Kephra more comfortable for you.
That is the plan, but we are currently not nearly that far.
- Name
- Especially from the last item derives the name, which is
old egyptian and means something like heart. Because true beauty and a
harmonic synchronisation of all parts of the consciousness begins when
your heart awakens. Some call that true love. In egypt tradition this was
symbolized with a rising sun (ra) and the principle of this was pictured
as a scarab beatle with wings. Thats also a nice metaphor for an editor
through which we give birth to programs, before they rise on their
own.
- Details
- I believe that Kephra's agenda is very similar to Perl's.
Its common wisdom that freedom means not only happiness but also life
works most effective in freedom. So there should not only be more than one
way to write a program, but also more than one way use an editor. You
could:
- •
- select menu items
- •
- make kombinations of keystrokes
- •
- point and click your way with the mouse
- •
- type short edit commands
So the question should not be vi or emacs, but how to combine the different
strengths (command input field and optional emacs-like keymap possibilities).
Perl was also a combination of popular tools and concepts into a single
powerful language.
Though I don't want to just adopt what has proven to be mighty. There are a lot
of tools (especially in the graphical realm) that are still waiting to be
discovered or aren't widely known. In Perl we write and rewrite them faster
and much more dense than in C or Java. Some function that help me every day a
lot, I written were in very few lines.
But many good tools are already on CPAN and Kephra should just be the glue and
graphical layer to give you the possibilities of these module to your
fingertips in that form you prefer. This helpes also to improve these modules,
when they have more users that can give the authors feedback. It motivates the
community, when we can use our own tools and the perl ecosystem does not
depend on outer software like eclipse, even if it's sometimes useful.
Perl's second slogan is "Keep easy things easy and make hard things
possible". To me it reads "Don't scare away the beginners and grow
as you go". And like Perl I want to handle the complex things with as
least effort as possible. From the beginning Kephra was a useful program and
will continue so.
Features¶
Beside all the basic stuff that you would expect I listed here some features by
category in main menu:
- File
- file sessions, history, simple templates, open all of a
dir, insert, autosave by timer, save copy as, rename, close all other,
detection if file where changed elsewhere
- Editing
- unlimited undo with fast modes, replace (clipboard and
selection), line edit functions, move line/selection, indenting, block
formating, delete trailing space, comment, convert (case, space or
indention) rectangular selection with mouse and keyboard, auto- and
braceindention
- Navigation
- bracenav, blocknav, doc spanning bookmarks, goto last edit,
last doc, rich search, incremental search, searchbar and search
dialog
- Tools
- run script (integrated output panel), notepad panel, color
picker
- Doc Property
- syntax mode, codepage, tab use, tab width, EOL, write
protection
- View
- all app parts and margins can be switched on and off,
syntaxhighlighting bracelight, ight margin, indention guide, caret line,
line wrap, EOL marker, visible whitespace, changeable font
- Configs
- config files to be opened through a menu: settings, all
menus, commandID's, event binding, icon binding, key binding, localisation
(translate just one file to transelate the app), syntaxmodes
and some help texts to be opened as normal files
ROADMAP¶
Overview¶
Enduser Release 0.1
a very simple editor
Enduser Release 0.2
multiple documents, file session
Enduser Release 0.3
searchbar and more comfort
Enduser Release 0.4
This release was about getting the editor liquid or highly configurable.
Its also about improvements in the user interface and of course the little
things we missed. It also contains interpreter output panel and a notepad.
Enduser Release 0.5
This release is about getting Kephra into the 'real' world out there
and adding feature that are most needed and removing most hindering barriers.
Folding, encodings, printing, .... and lot of minor tools and more help.
Enduser Release 0.6
This release will be about extending Kephra internal extensions like a
file brwoser, command line and tree lib as Plugin API.
Enduser Release 0.7
Introducing Syntaxmodes, for language sensitive data and functionions.
Enduser Release 0.8
more heavier stuff like debugger
This Cycle¶
- Testing 0.4.1 - code folding
- Testing 0.4.2 - folding and GUI refined, movable tabs, 2
more tools, doc data
- Testing 0.4.3 - utf, marker, folding finished, 3 more
tools, help links
- Testing 0.4.4 - new mouse control, 2 more tools, updated
docs
- Testing 0.4.5 - more encodings, local notepad
- Testing 0.4.6 - config dialog
- Stable 0.5 - about dialog
SUPPORT¶
Bugs should be reported via the CPAN bug tracker at
<
http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Kephra>
For other issues, contact the author.
More info and resources you find on our sourceforge web page under:
<
http://kephra.sourceforge.net>
AUTHORS¶
- •
- Herbert Breunung <lichtkind@cpan.org> (main
author)
- •
- Jens Neuwerk (author of icons, GUI advisor)
- •
- Andreas Kaschner (linux and mac ports)
- •
- Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org> (cpanification)
- •
- Renee BieXXcker <module@renee-baecker.de> (color
picker)
- •
- many more since we study other editors a lot and also the
padre sources
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
This Copyright applies only to the "Kephra" Perl software
distribution, not the icons bundled within.
Copyright 2004 - 2010 Herbert Breunung.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU GPL.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this
module.