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Minimal word processors
I've just discovered two very interesting minimal word processors. They're designed by writers, for writers. They aim to get out of the way and let you just write, with no distractions.
PyRoom
First is PyRoom, which relies only on pygtk. It's really quite minimal and not distracting in the slightest, and easily themeable. I like it a lot. I created an ebuild, available here. Thank goodness for distutils!
WordGrinder
Second is WordGrinder, an even more minimal application that's entirely console-based. Unfortunately, it uses some weird freaky build system called PrimeMover, and it's scary. I asked one of my fellow developers who maintains the Lua package about it, but he's never heard of it. There aren't any eclasses for dealing with any Lua build system.
According to WordGrinder's Readme, the PrimeMover setup should be pretty simple. However, take a look at the pmfile itself. Man, that's ugly. It looks like three hours of judicious sed usage within the ebuild. I can't see any other way to alter it to something sanely installable to /usr.
If anyone has any tips, I'm all ears. I've got a skeleton ebuild for WordGrinder available in my repository, but it really needs fleshing out. So, who's willing to help?
Hardware: graphics shuffle redux
In other news, I had a really fun time getting my ATI X1950 Pro to work (again) with a silent aftermarket cooler (AC Accelero v1 rev2) and the latest bleeding-edge radeon, mesa, and libdrm packages. The hardware mods were fun, but the software . . . well, that's a long story for next time. 
Desktop
Oh yes, and this month's Xfce desktop. Token uncluttered version here. All those artists in that Thunar window are amazing. You should be listening to them right now.
icons: Meliae-dust (needed something reddish)
gtk+: Rezlooks L & D
xfwm4: Rezlooks-gtk (yes, it is confusingly named)
background: The Empire (from pixelgirlpresents)
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10 comments
Contact me in irc sometime, I'll proxy pyroom for ya.
Abiword is not a minimal word processor. It is definitely in the way sometimes; it's just very cluttered, even with the fewest toolbars. Also, it requires a significant number dependencies, including several from its use of deprecated Gnome components, starting with libgnomeprint(ui).
@Jeremy:
I am a dev, punk! I just haven't gotten motivated enough to finish a mentoring cycle to get access to the same parts of the tree that you do. :p
Ain't it, though? :)
I did file a couple of feature requests, as I'd like to see PyRoom support some minimal text formatting[1] and some method of really saving themes[2]. The text formatting will be interesting, but hopefully doable. WordGrinder already uses its own special minimal format to add stuff like bold, underline, and italics, and it can even export to HTML.
PyRoom is already great; with these features it'll be the best of the best.
[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/pyroom/+bug/321060
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/pyroom/+bug/321057
I have not much need for formatting. It's rare that i print out my writings and right now I don't now if my ink printer work at all or have completely dried up. That's why I found text editors good enough for my writing.
That I will see in PyRoom should be a spell checker and possibilities to move the text area. On laptops it's perfect to have the text area centered. But then I'm in front om my 21 inch screen and my asymmetric keyboard (Logitech Comfort Cordless Keyboard) it would be vital to be able to move the text area to center it in relation to the keyboard.
A tab bar or something that show all opened documents should be vital to.
Then PyRoom have all features I need!
There is an open bug[1] for spellchecking, so you may want to keep an eye on it.
Regarding tabs, well, I personally think that's something a little less useful. I find tabs to be rather distracting. I definitely prefer to see only what I'm working on, but to each their own.
Just so you know, PyRoom already has the ability to switch between open documents via shortcuts. When you switch, it'll display the document name at the bottom of the window. It works pretty well as long as you have less than a dozen or so open files. And if you have enough files open that you need a tab bar, you're probably already too distracted to really get any good out of PyRoom anyway. :)
[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/pyroom/+bug/191616
Without those it is pain to edit text at least for me :)
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