Geany software5/23/2023 ![]() Select an item from the left column and click the < button to remove it.Īfter you remove everything you don’t need, Geany has a slightly more streamlined look. In the window that displays, click Customize Toolbar. You can also remove toolbar buttons you don’t use by right clicking on the toolbar and selecting Toolbar Preferences. To do that, click the View menu and deselect these options: If you don’t need a lot of you see (and chances are you don’t), you can get rid of it. At first sight, you might even think This really isn’t for me. If you aren’t a developer, there’s a lot of clutter there. Geany looks like this when you first fire it up after installation: Your mileage may vary.Īfter you’ve installed plugins, you can enable, disable, or configure them by selecting Tools > Plugin Manager. Aside from spelling checker and LaTeX plugins, I have no use for the other plugins. They do a few basic things, like exporting files, enabling you to split windows, and to insert HTML entities. ![]() When you install it, Geany comes with six plugins. As you’ve probably guessed, plugins enable you to add to the editor’s functions. To do that, you need to install a plugin. ![]() PluginsĪ few paragraphs ago, I mentioned that you can add a spelling checker to Geany. You can, for example, add a dark theme or one to give Geany a theme that looks more like the ones used in Gedit or Notepad++. On top of that, you can also change the editor’s colour scheme. If you’re interested, you can learn more about Geany’s preferences in the editor’s documentation. Beyond setting the font and a couple of other options, I ignore most of the preferences. You can change the editor’s font, whether or not and what to display on the toolbar, change shortcut keys, and a whole lot more. Like most software these days, you can tweak Geany so that it’s to your liking. Geany doesn’t come with a spelling checker out of the box, but you can add one. The editor also has a few other useful features, including word count, line wrapping, and a very good search and replace function. I haven’t tried that, if only because I have other templates that I use. Most of the templates are for writing software, although there are templates for HTML, HTML5, and LaTeX documents, too. You can create a file based on one or more templates by selecting File > New (with Template). If the file you open uses a markup language, and that language is supported in the editor, Geany applies syntax highlighting to it. You create or open a text file and start typing. Using GeanyĪs you’ve probably guessed, using Geany is like using any other text editor. Once you have it installed, fire up Geany. There’s even a version of the editor for PortableApps (a platform for running Windows applications off a USB flash drive). You can get installers for Windows or macOS. If you want to go all hardcore techie, then you can try grabbing the source code and compiling it yourself. If you’re a Linux user, try installing it using your distribution’s package manager. However simple or involved that work may be. While it’s flexible enough for a number of development tasks, Geany is also light enough for anyone, regardless of their level of technical skill, to use for with their work in plain text. In my mind, Geany occupies an interesting middle ground. When I mentioned that I was writing this post, a few people asked me why I was looking at a developer’s editor when I advocate using simple text editors. Since it’s been quite some time since I’ve used it, I recently decided to give Geany another look. Despite being aimed at developers, Geany was for years the editor I used when working with LaTeX documents. While I haven’t written a lot about Geany, I’m not unfamiliar with it. And when the fives of people who read what I write don’t see their favourite editor in an article, they suggest I include it.īesides the usual suspects, one editor that keeps popping up is Geany. In my work in this space and elsewhere over the years, I’ve looked at … well, a lot of text editors. ( Note: This article was first published, in a different form, at Open Source Musings and appears here via a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.) Working in Plain Text with Geany The Plain Text Project
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