Looking for a really powerful editor in GNOME is one of my constant research.

However it seems now it’s close to an end and it need just a small tilt to achieve perfection.
Right now I’m using Gedit with LaTeX plugin . It works amazingly and it does it jobs. The spellchecker is available and everything works properly.
I’m using Evince to actually check the complied PDF instead of the third panel, but that is a preference thing.

However the best tool out there to enjoy creative writing is definitely Scrivener. The main features of Scrivener is the ability to completely shiedl the user from the managing of the files and names, giving the possibility to focus on:

  • the status of it’s work (todo, draft, revision…)
  • the ability to shuffle and reorder the pieces of work as it best fit.
  • the main idea to use scrivener, or autonomous chunk of text which can be combined in an easy way

Writing books or big documents from scientific papers to PhD thesis it’s a main effort, which need constantly the main vision, but also the attention to details. Some parts will be ready before others, some pieces have a different evolution than others. The chunked text is the best way to go and I think it will really make the users’ life easier while battling with writing massive document.

The main problems with Scrivener are three according to me:

  • is available only for Mac and Windows, although there is a not supported version for Linux
  • the way the references are managed is not ok for scientific papers (BibTex does a perfect job)
  • not able to control easily the results of the compiled files.

This is the impression I’ve got when I used it for a really small period of testing. Although the User Interface is amazing.

Therefore we should create our own Scrivener, where the three points over stated should be addressed.

Gedit is a very good candidate to evolve, due to use of plugins, to a similar User Experience. Using the LaTeX plugin is already possible to holds and manage complicated text and notation and have a top-notch quality results.

What we are missing is the managing of the files a la Scrivener, where each file is a just a chunk of text which can be a subsection, a section up to even a chapter. Each file should be indexed and the metadata of each file should be tracked, like the revision status and the part status. A project manager, which will holds all this file and it will open them and make them always available to the user. The best would be to have a project manager which holds all the files, and a third panel where the status of the file and the type of the file is tracked properly.

Any chunk of test should be written in LaTeX and could be combined according of the order in the Outline, using the  input command.

Unfortunaly I’m not too familiar with Gedit from the programming point of view, however if there is anyone who thinks is a good idea and want to give a try I’m happy to be a beta tester and give an hand.

If interested, leave a comment, or send me an email. There is a starting (hopefully) discussion also on the Gedit ML