Editor Uninnovation

6/16/2005 in Gnome by site admin | 9 comments

Leafpad Icon

Kudos to the GEdit hackers for all their cool innovations recently showcased on Planet.

However, I think the GNOME default text editor is no place for this kind of innovation and experimental UI. The default text editor should be drop-dead simple. No tabs, no syntax highlighting, no plugin system, no sidebar. Nothing to confuse new users or that takes time to understand.

So I would like to advocate that Leafpad become the default text editor for the next desktop release. I’ve been using Leafpad for months now and it is simple, straightforward, and doesn’t get in my way at all. A real pleasure.

And I think such a switch would be good for GEdit, since it would no longer be constrained by having to be a simple text editor for the masses. It could focus more on its particular userbase and let the developers explore new features.

9 comments

  1. Andreas Nilsson’s avatar

    Andreas Nilsson on 6/16/2005 at 8:18 pm

    The thing that’s nice about Leafpad is that it’s loads up quick and feels very lightweight and very KISS (like the rest of the desktop). I like it a lot.
    However, what I would like to know is what does people use the text editor for?
    Simple note taking, html-editing, programming?
    If it’s note taking, it could probably be replaced by something like Tomboy, but the last two I’m not so sure about.
    Is a html-editor something that should be included in Gnome by default, or is it better of as a third-party app?

  2. Travis’s avatar

    Travis on 6/17/2005 at 12:48 am

    Wouldn’t a GNOMEified Leafpad need a toolbar? Wouldn’t it end up looking almost exactly like gedit in the end, but crippled?

  3. Nathan Palmer’s avatar

    Nathan Palmer on 6/17/2005 at 2:15 am

    I have tried out Leafpad a few times before. I love the startup time and how basic it is. But I really hate having more than one text editor installed as default. As long as GEdit’s interface by default is simple and doesn’t *look* like a programmer’s text editor then it should stay as the default.

  8. Trackback from Re13 on 8/31/2006 at 12:01 pm

  9. Trackback from Metal Arch on 9/26/2006 at 5:12 pm

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