Background
I previously used SciTE as my text editor and IDE. Over time I found it was a bit lacking for my needs in regards to being a text editor and an IDE. My search led me to Geany and I’ve been hooked since.
I use Geany as my lightweight text editor (usually with Sidebar and Message window hidden). Geany is light on resources and customizable (so I can maximize text-editing space and minimize chrome), yet the true beauty is with two keyboard shortcuts (Alt-M and Alt-s) it is transformed into the perfect IDE for me!
Details
Geany is a great text editor out of the box but a few plugins make it shine. I add the following plugins to Geany:
- Addons: various small addons.
- Commander: provides a command panel for quick access to actions, files, and more.
- File Browser: adds a file browser tab to the sidebar.
- GeanyPG: gpg encryption plugin for Geany
- this is a great plugin, one click encrypt/decrypt of a file using gpg!
- GeanyVC: interface to different Version Control systems.
- cvs, git, svn, svk, bazaar and mercurial integration from within Geany. This plugin is very light on what it does (at least for Git); however, it provides the basic file based VC functions.
- HTML Characters: inserts html character entitles like ‘&’
- Markdown: real-time markdown preview
- another great feature - renders the Markdown file you are currently editing in the Message window so if you need a real-time Markdown editor/viewer this will work!
- Project Organizer: project file tree, project-wide indexing and search, extra navigation options.
- this plugin is what turns Geany into a nice IDE in my opinion
- Split Window: splits the editor view into two windows
Geany has the “standard” tools built in such as logic to customize Execute and Build commands based on the document type, search/quick navigation, and a HTML Color Chooser (sounds odd but it is one of the most used items for me) but what makes Geany great from my point of view is that almost every action in Geany can be bound to a keyboard event. This means I can quickly toggle the sidebar, message window, line wrapping on/off, diff a file, jump to the end of a file, commit a file, jump to the quick search box, encrypt a file, navigate bookmarks, jump between open files, and build/compile/execute custom code all with any custom keyboard shortcut I want. Its like having a better looking, light-weight, Eclipse without the headache of making sure you have the JDK (not just the JRE) installed - oh and it launches (and is usable) in seconds as opposed to minutes for Eclipse.
I use Geany for all of my development now - java, python, ruby, SQL, bash, Perl, C - it all works great and I spend significantly less time making sure the IDE is working which leaves more time for - work!
Notes
- Geany works great with Nikola for quick/easy building of static sites
- create a custom ‘Execute Command’ of “Spell Check” as
aspell check --mode=sgml "%d/%f"and you can easily spell check your pages as you build/maintain your site.
- create a custom ‘Execute Command’ of “Spell Check” as
- My relevant config files for Geany which may be of some use/interest:
