In this post we’ll take a look at some Qt-based text editors. Just like with the file managers I’ll split my post in two parts because there’s quite a number (I found 15!) of such editors out there.
While compiling my list of Qt-based editors, I came across something I hadn’t heard of before. A kind of application which is called non-distracting writer. At first I wasn’t sure whether to include these here, but they don’t fit into the category “Office application” either.
From my point of view they are close enough to text editors to include them here (they are written with the idea that the text is the only thing really important – and that’s pretty much what qualifies them as a text editor, though not a classical one).
The candidates
Here are the text editors that were tested (in alphabetical order):
- Catlooking Writer / Homepage
- CuteNotes (No Homepage)
- FocusWriter / Homepage
- JuffEd / Homepage
- KoalaWriter / Homepage
- kWrite / Homepage
- Marave / Homepage
- Minerva / Homepage
- Tea / Homepage
Not tested
Many of the editors didn’t work right away. I got some of them to work in the end, but these are the ones that wouldn’t work at all and thus were not tested:
- GoodWord (Doesn’t include any kind of readme and I have no clue how to compile it.)
- Freddy (Qt3 based.)
- QMWedit (Qt3 based.)
- qPEditor (Won’t compile.)
- QWriter (Won’t compile.)
- TextRoom (Won’t compile.)
If anybody can get one or more of these to work on Arch, please let me know (send me PKGBUILDs?). And also tell me if you think that I forgot anything interesting!
Testing system
For this test I’ve set up the VMs as in my first Qt application test + Virtualbox guest additions this time. Here are the new values:
| Arch Linux + | Razor-qt (0.5.1) |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3810544 kb |
| Buffers: | 9972 kb |
| Cached: | 80280 kb |
| Rootfs: | 936560 / 915 |
| RAM used at startup: | 242284 / ~237 MB |
Catlooking Writer
The Catlooking Writer is a non-distracting writer based on Qt. It’s a full-screen application that’s intended to let you focus on the text only.
Razor-qt with Catlooking Writer
Installation
pacman -U catlooking-git-20130217-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (1222156 Bytes / 1,2 MB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening Catlooking Writer via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | Catlooking Writer 1.0 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3795300 kb |
| Buffers: | 9992 kb |
| Cached: | 87616 kb |
| Rootfs: | 938696 / 917M |
| RAM used at startup: | 15244 / ~15 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 2136 / ~2 MB |
CuteNotes
CuteNotes is a simple text editor based on Qt.
Razor-qt with CuteNotes
Installation
pacman -U cutenotes-1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (142740 Bytes / 142,7 kB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening CuteNotes via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | CuteNotes 0.9 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3802112 kb |
| Buffers: | 9988 kb |
| Cached: | 82472 kb |
| Rootfs: | 937596 / 916M |
| RAM used at startup: | 8432 / ~8 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 1036 / ~1 MB |
FocusWriter
FocusWriter is a full-screen, non-disctracting text editor based on Qt. It offers basic support for formats like RTF and ODT, too.
Razor-qt with FocusWriter
Installation
pacman -U focuswriter-1.4.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (721800 Bytes / 721,8 kB)
(other packages downloaded as dependencies: 1720320 Bytes / 1,7 MB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening FocusWriter via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | FocusWriter 1.4.1 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3784348 kb |
| Buffers: | 10472 kb |
| Cached: | 89492 kb |
| Rootfs: | 946180 / 925M |
| RAM used at startup: | 26196 / ~26 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 9620 / ~9 MB |
JuffEd
JuffEd is a tabbed editor with syntax highlighting based on Qt.
Razor-qt with JuffEd
Installation
pacman -s juffed (972800 Bytes / 972,8 kB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening JuffEd via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | JuffEd 0.8.1 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3801856 kb |
| Buffers: | 10272 kb |
| Cached: | 88012 kb |
| Rootfs: | 943344 / 922M |
| RAM used at startup: | 8688 / ~8 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 6784 / ~7 MB |
KoalaWriter
The KoalaWriter is a non-distracting writer based on Qt. It offers beautiful backgrounds and can even play relaxing music so that you can completely stick to what’s actually important: Your text! It’s a bit heavy-weight, though.
Razor-qt with KoalaWriter
Installation
pacman -koalawriter-1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (16714076 Bytes / 16,7 MB)
(other packages downloaded as dependencies: 60160000 Bytes / 60,2 MB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening KoalaWriter via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | KoalaWriter 1.0 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3774164 kb |
| Buffers: | 11544 kb |
| Cached: | 100784 kb |
| Rootfs: | 1308516 / 1.3G |
| RAM used at startup: | 36380 / ~36 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 371956 / ~363 MB |
kWrite
kWrite is the default text editor of KDE. It’s quite a bit on the heavy side.
Razor-qt with kWrite
Installation
pacman -S kdebase-kwrite (126095360 Bytes / 126,1 MB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening kWrite via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | kWrite 4.10 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3745412 kb |
| Buffers: | 17548 kb |
| Cached: | 108860 kb |
| Rootfs: | 1532732 / 1.5G |
| RAM used at startup: | 65132 / ~64 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 596172 / ~582 MB |
Marave
Marave is a non-distracting writer based on Qt. It’s meant to let the user focus on the text rather than the application.
Razor-qt with Marave
Installation
pacman -U marave-0.7-6-any.pkg.tar.xz (1011384 Bytes / 1,0 MB)
(other packages downloaded as dependencies: 23367680 Bytes / 23,4 MB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening Marave via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | Marave 0.7 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3730568 kb |
| Buffers: | 11232 kb |
| Cached: | 121844 kb |
| Rootfs: | 1093932 / 1.1G |
| RAM used at startup: | 79976 / ~78 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 157372 / ~154 MB |
Minerva
Minerva is a tiny tabbed text editor based on Qt.
Razor-qt with Minerva
Installation
pacman -U minerva-git-20130220-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (319276 Bytes / 319,3 kB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening Minerva via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | Minerva GIT20130220 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3806888 kb |
| Buffers: | 9988 kb |
| Cached: | 81580 kb |
| Rootfs: | 942040 / 920M |
| RAM used at startup: | 3656 / ~4 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 5480 / ~5 MB |
Tea Editor
The Tea Editor is an advanced editor based on Qt. It offers a lot of features and is still both small in size and frugal in terms of ram usage.
Razor-qt with Tea Editor
Installation
pacman -S tea (1239040 Bytes / 1,2 MB)
Statistics
Memory usage after starting up Razor-qt and opening Tea via the menu (with a second login on tty2) and used disk space after removing pacman cache. Here are the values I got with cat /proc/meminfo and df respectively df -h:
| Arch Linux Razor-qt+ | Tea editor 34.0.1 |
| MemTotal: | 4052828 kb |
| MemFree: | 3804856 kb |
| Buffers: | 10172 kb |
| Cached: | 84644 kb |
| Rootfs: | 942756 / 921M |
| RAM used at startup: | 5688 / ~6 MB |
| Disk space (less razor system): | 6196 / ~6 MB |
What’s next?
My next post will provide tables which will make it easier to compare the important values of the programs tested here.
Don’t worry if it takes me a while to publish it – I’m moving houses so time is an even more scarce resource than usually and I might be left without a working internet connection for a while.
