Re: [gnome-love] my participation

[<digitect mindspring com>]

From: "Josh Steiner" <joschi eds org>
> so once again, any further suggestions for available projects are very
> welcome, i've got the time, the dev environment built and rearing to
go,
> the coding knowledge, but no project :)

I recently found Yet Another Text Editor(tm), Beaver
(http://freshmeat.net/projects/beaver/ , main site appears to be down
ATM: http://www.beaver-project.org). It is similar to gedit yet has text
highlighting and some rough edges. The developers are trying to put
together one final "clean up" release together before they shelve it the
end of this year due to lack of time. But they're actively looking for
someone to take over the project.

I know gedit is being ported to GNOME 2 but don't know much more.
However it would be great to have a lightweight text editor with syntax
highlighting and macros but without all the extra IDE related stuff such
as the new Anjuta Dev Studio effort. Something more single-minded than a
complete IDE. (Think Galeon, not Mozilla. :)

Somebody else on this list would know better than me about the
complexities of porting an old app to the new GTK platform. Would Beaver
be more effort than its worth, given the multiplicity of text editor
efforts out there?

(As a random, verbose side thought, I've always wondered why somebody
doesn't just create a full GNOME front end to Vim... you know, GTK GUI
menus and toolbars that just passed commands to the Vim engine, but with
the command line removed (or optional). The biggest hurdle to Vim is
knowing commands; if I could reach everything via GUI I might have the
patience to learn the shortcuts later.)

Anyway, I volunteered to help the Beaver guys with some documentation
and macro stuff for the last release. But I'd be interested in helping a
serious group of hackers with graphics, docs and web design/maintenance
for a lightweight power text editor.

In fact, as Chema can tell you, that's exactly how I got started
contributing to Linux/GNOME about a year and a half ago. ;)


Steve Hall  [ digitect mindspring com ]