Remember the Pepper competition on OSNews two months ago? This is a quick note to let you know that Pepper, the popular Windows/MacOS editor, is now available on FreeBSD and Linux (x86/PPC).
Pepper 4.0.5 Released for FreeBSD and Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I tried it. It loaded, and the colors where all off, and I couldn’t read anything. I recomend sticking to xfce for an editor.
It would be nice if eugenia would mark adveritsements, as ADVERTISEMENT on the article. Or, she could lable news as NEWS, either way would work.
You are lucky that I do not delete you comment. You are disrespectful and an a$$, at best.
Pepper is one of my favorite applications on all platforms that I run, and if I decide that I want to write a story about how brazil got the world cup, I will. If I want to run a story how to cook mexican fajitas, I will. That does not make it an advertisement, but mostly my personal preference.
If you want 100% strict to the point news, go to CNN or news.com. OSNews is still my hobby. I do not get paid, so I don’t have to keep you happy. I do my hobby to keep ME happy.
For those of us who use BeOS, Pepper has been indespensable. It was great to see it ported to the Mac and this is great *news* that it is expanded to more platforms. I don’t see anything here that even remotely resembles an advertisement.
Seriously, who’s gonna pay for a text editor on *nix that’s aimed at programmers?
I know I certainly wouldn’t pay for it, at least not today. Maybe I would have before I got accustomed to XEmacs in that Java intro course, or before Hekkelman did his “yes, there will be a BeOS version… oops, no there won’t… OH WAIT, there will… er, nevermind, there won’t” act.
I have Pepper 3.x for BeOS. It is an alpha and I did testing for Maarten last year.
That BeOS vesrion does not really work. And that is the reason that it was never released and it will never be released. Read Maarten’s comments elsehwere about the NIGHTMARES he had to try to port his code on the VERY sensitive multithreaded platform of BeOS.
Maarten is the person who wrote the BeOS debugger (bdb), so he knows his stuff. Thing is, and in full agreement with my husband’s views on multithreading/lockings etc ( http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=66 ), *big* applications cannot be easily ported to BeOS. They will have zillion problems. Trying to write something *big* from scratch for BeOS, it may or may not work, depending your knowledge on multithreading. But trying to PORT big application, 90% of the time, these apps won’t work without locking ever 2 minutes.
BeOS was just too different. And that had its good and bad sides.
Seriously. Do you realize how hard it is to find a good programmer’s editor on UNIX? vi is good, but I spend most of my time in a GUI, and GUI adaptations of vi (like gvim) are too weird (basically CLI in a GUI window) for me to use. I never liked emacs because it a) is too bloated, and b) lacks a normal-behaving GUI. gedit and gxedit lack power, nedit doesn’t respect truetype fonts, anjuta has weird auto-indent bugs (and uses an old version of scintilla), kdevelop has weird auto-indent bugs and forces automake/autoconf on you (I use my own build system), gIDE seems dead, glimmer has weird cursor bugs and is never kept up-to-date by packagers, and even my current favorite, Kate, lacks good syntax highlighting for Java. So yes, if Pepper is all its cracked up to be, here is own person who will pay for it.
Looks like a very good editor, for Os X that is, but under freebsd/x/gnome it’s pretty much useless. It takes forever to load, the gui is ultra slow, there seems to be no way to change the way it looks, it opens a new window for each file and all windows/dialogs appears centered (thats 50% on each monitor, since I use xinerama).
Don’t get me wrong, if I would have been using Os-x this would probably have been a favorite product of mine. But I’m not.
> It takes forever to load,
Yes, it is pretty slow on loading, but this is the first version, it is still not a final one for the unix platform.
> the gui is ultra slow,
I agree. The app is slow on my dual Celeron 533. But I will wait for some optimizations in the next release before I judge it further.
> there seems to be no way to change the way it looks,
Pepper uses its own GUI toolkit. It does not use GTK+ or something. And this is one of its strengths, regarding multiplatformness.
> it opens a new window for each file
My friend. Welcome to the future! This is one of its STRENGTHS, not weaknesses.
> and all windows/dialogs appears centered
What do you mean?
>> and all windows/dialogs appears centered
>What do you mean?
Ok, I understood what you mean. Yes, this seems like an oversight from the developer.
So I must be interested…..PE was a great little editor, and if Herr Hekkleman wants us to try it out, bang on it, register it, and contribute, he has my support.
I for one will be watching this project, and hopefully the next version will pick up in speed, if thats the case I’m ready to give it another try. Until then, what editors (with a similar set of functionality) would you guys recommend? I still haven’t found a single gui editor for *nix that I’ve been satisfied with.
xfte is a good editor, and then VI You can try eclipse from the eclipse project if you don’t mind java ide’s, and then KDE has kdevlope. Or you could wait for this notepad for macOS X to get done and use that.
#1 – xfte (http://fte.sourceforge.net/)
#2 – Eugenia – I would love to see a Greeks take on fajitas
#3 – Can I see your “fajita” (Eugenia)?
#4 – CliMonkey – play nice with the other kids or I’ll take away your leaf collection and you wound get any of Eugenias fajitas!
Considering that it looks like crap on my system (no offense intended), I’m not inclined to use it 🙂
Take a look at this screenshot of the pepper window:
http://memory.visualtech.com/pepper.jpeg
SHHHHH!!! Dont speak criticaly of anything that Eugenia likes! If you do she’ll cut your balls off (like CliMonkey)
I got the same picture.
Grow up… I’ve been interacting with Eugenia for quite a while now, since reading her review of the OpenGL beta for BeOS back on BeNews. She and I may not always see eye to eye, but she’s certainly one of the most reasonable people I’ve met on-line.
Adam
I think that the above posts about paying for Pepper was pretty interesting; it is pretty hard to compete with free. I do know that Pe, which Pepper is based on, was highly thought of in the BeOS community, particularly by Scot Hacker.
I am willing to pay for software but it would have to be available on NetBSD, which is my current OS of choice. Most (if not all) vendors do not make NetBSD binaries, so I would have to have access to the source code to compile it and I think most shareware authors don’t want to do this. (The only app I know of that does this is XV. There are probably others.)
Personally, if there is a single application I would like to have from BeOS, it would be SoundPlay. I bought a license and I never regreted it.
It was a JOKE. And if by “reasonable” you mean “cranky bitch”, then yes, she is VERY reasonable.
Jeffrey,
What about running it under emulation? IIRC, NetBSD supports both FreeBSD and Linux binaries.
> And if by “reasonable” you mean “cranky bitch”, then yes, she is VERY reasonable.
Ruprecht, you are from now on banned on IP level (well, as soon as the admin gets my email).
The rest, here is how Pepper looks on my X11:
http://www.eugenia.co.uk/images/pepper-x11.jpg
BTW, after you load Pepper *once*, all the subsequent clean loads of Pepper are fast! Only the first one is slow-ish.
It takes forever to load
First time launch is slow since Pepper generates keyword tables. Every other launch should be quick, typically less than a second. If not, please let me know the details. BTW, I often launch Pepper once a day and keep a worksheet open all the time. That way you can open new docs from the commandline and they open up instantly in the already running instance of Pepper.
the gui is ultra slow
Define slow, are you using Pepper over a slow link? Pepper is extremely fast on my computer, but maybe my hardware is a bit too high end.
there seems to be no way to change the way it looks
There is a default.theme file in the .pepperrc dir but no user interface to change it yet.
it opens a new window for each file
There is also a multi file view to have a single window mode.
and all windows/dialogs appears centered (thats 50% on each monitor, since I use xinerama).
Hmmm, interesting. I’ll see if I can fix this. But dialogs can be moved around and remember their new position so I don’t see the problem here. Only exception is the splash screen.
Don’t get me wrong, if I would have been using Os-x this would probably have been a favorite product of mine. But I’m not.
Pepper is not an MacOS X editor, it is purely platform agnostic by now. And I’m proud of that since I don’t give a damn anymore about what OS I have to use. I do have ideas about good user interface design and try to implement those in Pepper. If you don’t like it, fine. Use something else, there’s enough to choose from.
Considering that it looks like crap on my system (no offense intended), I’m not inclined to use it 🙂
🙂
Duh… forgot to tell that Pepper only works in 24bbp…
Any chance of fixing that bug?
Unfortunately, 24bpp isn’t an option on my laptop with limited video memory if I want to be able to use the DRI.
Adam
Hm… The home and end keys go to the beginning and end of the document. Ctrl+a and ctrl+e don’t work. Seems to behave too much like a Mac application.
It looks nice, and seems somewhat faster than Kate. But I think I’ll wait for joe to get syntax highlighting.
*pkg_delete pepper-4.0*
I know that NetBSD support GNU/Linux emulation but I haven’t tried it, since NetBSD’s pkgsrc pretty much gives me everything I want.
I’m not sure about FreeBSD emulation but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does it.
For text editing, I mainly use console editors. I like vi for working with system files but I use Nano for everything else, along with ispell.
Hm… The home and end keys go to the beginning and end of the document. Ctrl+a and ctrl+e don’t work. Seems to behave too much like a Mac application.
So you never made it to the keybindings panel of the prefs dialog?
Side node: there is a (very) good gui editor available for unix, I use it all day for programming (on HPUX).
http://www.nedit.org/
Dang…I was always trying to resist the urge to buy Pepper until there’s finally a student discount, but it’s getting harder and harder every time!
That toolkit on Unix looks neat…any chance seeing it in other applications besides Pepper?
I liked when Eugenia said that she’s waiting for a newer version to make her judge.. while in Gnome2 she said that she judges what she has. Funny.
> I liked when Eugenia said that she’s waiting for a newer version to make her judge.. while in Gnome2 she said that she judges what she has. Funny.
This version of Pepper is the very first release ever on X11. It does not have any past and history in the platform. It is really the very first version.
Gnome2 was developed on Linux from Day 1, it is around for years, and it had a zillion betas and alphas and RCs.
Pepper did not.
Funny boy.
I checked hekkelman’s page and Pepper for X11 doesn’t have any “Beta” on its version.. thats why i found it funny.
It takes forever to load
First time launch is slow since Pepper generates keyword tables. Every other launch should be quick, typically less than a second. If not, please let me know the details. BTW, I often launch Pepper once a day and keep a worksheet open all the time. That way you can open new docs from the commandline and they open up instantly in the already running instance of Pepper.
You’re actually correct, it’s a lot faster the 2nd time
the gui is ultra slow
Define slow, are you using Pepper over a slow link? Pepper is extremely fast on my computer, but maybe my hardware is a bit too high end.
Takes several secunds to go through the menus, moving or resizing a window renderes it unusable for ~15-30 secs while it’s redrawing billions of times however the most annoying thing is that the input takes about half a sec to show up in the edit-area, so you get the ‘telnet over a semi-slow link’ kind of feeling while typeing.
I’m running FreeBSD 4.6 on a Dual 1.13 Ghz P3 with 512 MB Ram, so I doubt it’s a hardware problem.
there seems to be no way to change the way it looks
There is a default.theme file in the .pepperrc dir but no user interface to change it yet.
Okay, will there be additional ones?
it opens a new window for each file
There is also a multi file view to have a single window mode.
Where is that option? Havn’t been able to find it.
and all windows/dialogs appears centered (thats 50% on each monitor, since I use xinerama).
Hmmm, interesting. I’ll see if I can fix this. But dialogs can be moved around and remember their new position so I don’t see the problem here. Only exception is the splash screen.
Why not center all dialogs over the parent window? Seems to be a better solution
Don’t get me wrong, if I would have been using Os-x this would probably have been a favorite product of mine. But I’m not.
Pepper is not an MacOS X editor, it is purely platform agnostic by now. And I’m proud of that since I don’t give a damn anymore about what OS I have to use. I do have ideas about good user interface design and try to implement those in Pepper. If you don’t like it, fine. Use something else, there’s enough to choose from.
Hey, sorry, no offence, it’s just that it seems to be a lot smoother and more well polished for OsX. You deserve a lot of credit for making it cross-platform.
So you never made it to the keybindings panel of the prefs dialog?
Nope, sorry, I guess I assumed that everything else would behave in a Mac-like way as well… But I gave it another shot just now. Nice.
I did run into some other things…
* The GUI is pretty slow to redraw.
* The file dialogs seem to have trouble with filenames containing non-ASCII characters (like å, ä, ö). Perhaps it assumes UTF-8?
* Rapidly changing focus between a dialog and the main window results in some wierd loop which shifts focus between (and redraws) both windows.
Excuse me…but what do you use your text editor for when themes are that important to you?
…that’s FINE, you big meany. I’m taking my ball and I’m going home.
>>Pepper is one of my favorite applications on all platforms that I run
It does not run on BeOS so I ain’t buying. I am still angry with the author for making me buy the original BeOS editor (then called Pe) and then dropping it like a POS to develop for Mac and Winblows because Be wouldn’t give him a free copy of BeOS Pro! …So I’ll let the Winblows users buy it from you! You have a bigger market with them right? right? right?
>>…, and if I decide that I want to write a story about how brazil got the world cup, I will.
Do it, Do it! I look forward to it. Here are a few hints for the final with Germany:
For the first goal, Oliver Khan got caught by surprise, the shot from Rivaldo came at an angle from Khan’s right and Khan did not have his body properly behind the ball so the ball bounced out to his left and Ronaldo was as usual unforgiving!
For the second goal, the fake by Rivaldo was key and again Ronaldo was merciless! I still think that Asamoah should have been marking Ronaldo much earlier on instead of looking from midfield (He had just gotten on the field so he could not have been tired). Asamoah was much too late in trying to pick up super fast Ronaldo!
In any case, Brazil rules the Football World, they won both the World Cup and the “Toulon Under 21 International Cup in France” which is often a good indication of who will win the 2006 World Cup in Germany!!!! All without losing a single match!!!!!
>>If I want to run a story how to cook mexican fajitas, I will.
Do it! Do it! I look forward to it. …A few more cooking classes and I’ll know how to boil water so…
Long Live BeOS!
ciao
yc
>> it opens a new window for each file
> My friend. Welcome to the future! This is one of its
> STRENGTHS, not weaknesses.
I think this is a point which is at best debatable. Even in the future, people have different kinds of preferences about how to do things.
Me being originally a fanatic Amiga/CygnusED user, I don’t think I could live in serious programming environment where each of the open files had its own window.
These days, the Amiga is retired and I use GVim, which is OK I guess. But still IMO, CygnusED was/is the best text editor ever.
Oh, and could someone comment on whether this is true (from daily.daemonnews.org): “This first version of Pepper for FreeBSD, has a limitation that requires it to run on 24bpp color under X11.”
Incredible, we are speaking about a text editor. Gee.
— arto
Pepper supports both SDI and MDI. And yes, about the 24bit limitation, it is true. For now.
have to plug my favorite editor, jedit (www.jedit.org)
works really well and is continuously getting even better
Guess Eugenia can take this as news 😉
Try Eddie for BeOS. An excellent editor.
http://www.bebits.com/app/95
Eddie is a _great_ editor. One of the great dids by Pavel.
I loved Pe on BeOS.
The ability to run homebrew scripts on the window content is my favorite feature; I had cobbled together a whole batch of material for Pe that way. I should dig it up again…
>> That BeOS vesrion does not really work. And that is the reason that it was never released and it will never be released. Read Maarten’s comments elsehwere about the NIGHTMARES he had to try to port his code on the VERY sensitive multithreaded platform of BeOS.
Excuses! Excuses! Where there is a will, there is a way! That’s why Mozilla is being ported to BeOS! That’s why Pe worked fine on BeOS!
I will support a product like Gobe Productive on whatever platform they choose to port it! Even if I have OpenOffice or MS Office. Why? Because they care about their old customers. I ain’t supporting Pepper nor Pe anymore! I have Eddie and BeIDE! See ya!
Never dump your old friends/customers in search of new ones! It usually comes back and bite you in butt!
ciao
yc
What gui toolkit does it use?
Pepper blows chunks on Linux…End of story.
>>>That BeOS vesrion does not really work. And that is the reason that it
>>>was never released and it will never be released. Read Maarten’s
>>>comments elsehwere about the NIGHTMARES he had to try to port his code
>>>on the VERY sensitive multithreaded platform of BeOS.
>
>Excuses! Excuses! Where there is a will, there is a way! That’s why
>Mozilla is being ported to BeOS! That’s why Pe worked fine on BeOS!
Pe != Pepper
And yes there is a way, I could spend three more months trying to fix the
bugs. How many Pepper would I have sold on BeOS? 10, 20 maybe? Certainly
not much more considering the number of Pe’s I sold in the years.
>I will support a product like Gobe Productive on whatever platform they
>choose to port it! Even if I have OpenOffice or MS Office. Why? Because
>they care about their old customers. I ain’t supporting Pepper nor Pe
>anymore! I have Eddie and BeIDE! See ya!
Yes, Eddie, the nail in Pe’s coffin.
>Never dump your old friends/customers in search of new ones! It usually
>comes back and bite you in butt!
You never noticed that there was an upgrade from Pe to Pepper? What’s the
difference between that and what Gobe does now?
> What gui toolkit does it use?
I made that up myself, Pepper only uses Xlib.
I used Win2k the last months, now just recently got into GNU/Linux again with Gentoo and Gnome2. At the same time, my Win2k broke (takes forever to load and is unusable slow).
The only problem I have, is that I’m lacking a decent GUI editor that is able to open and save files from and to a FTP server. For Windows I had an Editor that was able to do this and that was one of the very few proprietory apps I actually payed for. Now I see this and in a screenshot it shows FTP open functionality! We will see, if it really works that good, I might use it as long as Moleskine isn’t ported to Gnome2 and has FTP functionality.
I just downloaded it.
First suggestion: Put those files in a subfolder. I expect archices to create a folder when unpacking them, now all those files are scattered in my home dir.
First impression: Fonts are tiny. I’m using 1600×1200 and those fonts are a pain. The font preference configuration is really not good. To test a font, I have to press “save”, open a new plain text file and type some text. That’s a PITA. The font sizes also don’t match with my Gnome font sizes so it’s quite difficult.
Also Cut&Paste doesn’t work with other Gtk apps.
Besides of that, it could probably do the job…
Ok, I’m glad to see that Pe has been opened sourced for BeOS and that you offered an upgrade for the other platforms.
I guess the main difference between Gobe and Hekkelman besides size is *communication*. I think Hekkelman basically lost touch with the BeOS community while chasing after the Mac crowd. You see, Eddie would not have killed Pe just like CL-Amp did not kill SoundPlay. People liked Pe on BeOS, this first fan crowd (however small it may be) should never Be underestimated. Keep them happy and they will be your advocates on all platforms.
How about finishing Pepper on BeOS? Doesn’t have to be overnight.
BeOS 5 and Dano still rock! OBOS is being developed and I still have not given up on PalmSource!
ciao
yc