Mousepad

[Erik Harrison]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 3:20 AM, Nick Schermer <nickschermer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:53:57PM +0100, Daniele wrote:
>  > Hello everybody,
>  >
>  > I don't know if it is the right place to ask, but I was looking for
>  > some information about the status of Mousepad text editor.
>  > I've read something about a 0.4 version equipped with syntax
>  > highlighting but the news was dated 2005, so maybe the development has
>  > stopped...is that so?
>
>  My branch is, apart from good encoding support, more or less ready for
>  trunk, which will lead to a 0.3/0.4 release. No syntax highlighting in
>  it and since almost every line of code is new, it needs to stabilize
>  first before adding new features.
>
>  Syntax highlighting in the feature is not entirely clear yet. I have
>  some ideas in that area, but i'll only add it when it's the right
>  implementation for mousepad and imho gtksourceview isn't. Furthermore
>  it shouldn't affect the start up time of mousepad (too much), which is
>  a trademark for this editor, so i want to keep it that way as much as
>  possible.
>
>  So the new mousepad is more or less ready, it's just that I'm lacking
>  good ideas for encoding integration...

Nick, I of course defer to your judgment, but after thinking about it
long and hard syntax highlighting always seemed to be the slippery
slope for mousepad. The point at which it goes from being a fast way
to edit config files and open READMEs to an IDE that can't compete
with dedicated pieces of software or very flexible texteditors. Down
that path lies Gedit.

For that matter, GtkSourceView is a crappy highlighter compared to
Scintilla, but putting Scintilla in your branch of Mousepad makes MP
essentially a slightly different SciTE. My philosophy for forking
Leafpad in the first place was "What do you use when you just want to
open the bedamned file?" Leafpad didn't meet the minimum feature needs
(no print) and everything else was either slow to open, had funky
interfaces, or didn't gel with my desktop.

Even when I have a more featureful text editor open, I use Mousepad to
open small files, or files with real language in them. In those cases
I want a readable, uncluttered window into the files contents that
opens so fast it almost feels like cheating. Even a superslick
highlighting implementation is going to get in the way of the first
goal, and most likely the second.

There. That was way more than two cents, but I have a cold and am
feeling ranty. :) Regardless of what you do, Nick, thanks for your
work.

>
>  Nick
>
>
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-- 
Erik
"Look at me still talking when there is Science to do"