PyRoom - Distraction free writing

Bruno Bord

Feb, 8th 2009 - FOSDEM'09, Brussels

PyRoom

Spoiler Alert!

• Yes, it's "yet another text editor",
• If you don't like it, don't use it,
• If you don't use it, we promise we won't hate you (or just a bit)

Genesis

Genesis

Writeroom?

Full-screen monochrome text editor

Writeroom?

What's the point?

• It edits text
• It edits any kind of text (novel, short story, blog post, email...)
• Focus on writing, no distraction

Writeroom?

Writeroom?

Writeroom?

Writeroom?

Writeroom?

Problems

Search The Friendly Web

Search The Friendly Web

• a post on Ubuntu Forums
• NoWhereMan and Nicolas P. Rougier work
• pyroom.py single python script (~500 LOC, 18KB)

It worked!

Writeroom vs. PyRoom

Writeroom vs. PyRoom

Writeroom vs. PyRoom

Writeroom vs. PyRoom

Writeroom vs. PyRoom

TROLL ALERT!

If you are thinking right now:

My favorite text editor can just do the same...

TROLL ALERT

TROLL ALERT END

by the way...

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Just works™
• Lightweight (18 KB)
• Easily hackable (Python + PyGTK)
• Already Free (GPL v3)

Pros and Cons

Cons

• Bad theme management
• Not localizable
• A bit "rough" at the edges

Fork

On Launchpad

http://launchpad.net/pyroom/

• Code Management (bzr),
• Easier Translations (Rosetta)
• Bug / task manager (Malone)
• Mailing lists

Pyroom.org and Co.

• pyroom.org
• IRC Channel: #pyroom on Freenode
• A very very nice bunch of developers!

Teams

• Pyroom-Admin: basic administration - invite only
• Pyroom-Dev: developers, hackers, bug handling - invite only
• Pyroom-Bugsquad: anyone interested by Pyroom bugs - unrestricted
• Pyroom-Team: Anyone! - moderated

Contributors

Kudos to

• Florian Heinle (currently the most active developer)
• Caio Alonso
• Marco Crosio
• Peter Frost
• Nathan Haines
• Adam Rooke

(please note that I'm not on this list...)

Features

• it still edits text (and text only)
• multiple documents
• autosave
• fullscreen works on dual head
• several available themes, customisable

Complete Translations

Arabic, Basque, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, English (United Kingdom), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Welsh...

(we got welsh!)

Planned features

• Spellcheck,
• Drop gtksourceview (other platforms),
• Other themes,
• <your wish here>

In a more distant future

• Theme bazaar
• Plugin system
• <your genius idea here>

Please don't ask for...

• syntax highlight - pick a code editor / IDE for that
• specific markup highlight (markdown, reST, textile...)
• an integrated IRC client...

(Wait for the plugin system instead)

Install it

• python setup.py install
• yum install pyroom on Fedora 8
• packaged in Debian (sid)
• packaged for Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) via the PPAs
• packaged for Jaunty Jackalope

Get in touch

• http://launchpad.net/pyroom/
• http://pyroom.org
• IRC: #pyroom on freenode

The end