NAME

       Kephra - crossplatform GUI-Texteditor along Perl alike Paradigms

SYNOPSIS

               > kephra [<files>]   # start with files already open

DESCRIPTION

       This module install's a complete editor application with all its configs and documentation
       for your programming, web and text authoring.

   Philosophy
       Main Goals
          A visually harmonic and beautiful, sparing and elegantly programed Editor, that helpes
          you with all your daily tasks. It should be also able to operate in the way you prefer
          and be not afraid to try new things.

       In Depth
          I know, I know, there are plenty text editors out there, even some really mighty IDE,
          but still no perfect solution for many programmers. So lets learn from Perl what it
          takes to build a tool thats powerful and fun to play with for hours and months.

          • make a low entry barrier (usable like notepad)

          • copy what people like and are used to and whats not inherently broken

          • give choices (TimTowtdi)

            • (e.g. deliver vi and emacs input style)

            • usable with menu, contextmenu, bars, mouse combo, key combos, commands ...

            • configure via dialog and yaml/conf files ...

          • highly configurable / adaptable to personal preferences

          • beauty / good integration on GUI, code and config level

          • solve things with minimal effort (no bloat / minimal dependencies)

          • still everything extendable by easy to write plugins

              I believe strongly that there is much more possible with GUI editors
              and text editors in general than we are used today. So I try to weave
              fresh ideas wherever I can and design Kephra in a way, that every
              programmer can alter and extend it easily. That can speed up progress
              or at least makes Kephra more comfortable for you.

              That is the plan, but we are currently not nearly that far.

       Name
          Especially from the last item derives the name, which is old egyptian and means
          something like heart. Because true beauty and a harmonic synchronisation of all parts
          of the consciousness begins when your heart awakens. Some call that true love. In egypt
          tradition this was symbolized with a rising sun (ra) and the principle of this was
          pictured as a scarab beatle with wings. Thats also a nice metaphor for an editor
          through which we give birth to programs, before they rise on their own.

       Details
          I believe that Kephra's agenda is very similar to Perl's. Its common wisdom that
          freedom means not only happiness but also life works most effective in freedom. So
          there should not only be more than one way to write a program, but also more than one
          way use an editor. You could:

          •  select menu items

          •  make kombinations of keystrokes

          •  point and click your way with the mouse

          •  type short edit commands

       So the question should not be vi or emacs, but how to combine the different strengths
       (command input field and optional emacs-like keymap possibilities).  Perl was also a
       combination of popular tools and concepts into a single powerful language.

       Though I don't want to just adopt what has proven to be mighty. There are a lot of tools
       (especially in the graphical realm) that are still waiting to be discovered or aren't
       widely known. In Perl we write and rewrite them faster and much more dense than in C or
       Java. Some function that help me every day a lot, I written were in very few lines.

       But many good tools are already on CPAN and Kephra should just be the glue and graphical
       layer to give you the possibilities of these module to your fingertips in that form you
       prefer. This helpes also to improve these modules, when they have more users that can give
       the authors feedback. It motivates the community, when we can use our own tools and the
       perl ecosystem does not depend on outer software like eclipse, even if it's sometimes
       useful.

       Perl's second slogan is "Keep easy things easy and make hard things possible".  To me it
       reads "Don't scare away the beginners and grow as you go". And like Perl I want to handle
       the complex things with as least effort as possible.  From the beginning Kephra was a
       useful program and will continue so.

   Features
       Beside all the basic stuff that you would expect I listed here some features by category
       in main menu:

       File
         file sessions, history, simple templates, open all of a dir, insert, autosave by timer,
         save copy as, rename, close all other, detection if file where changed elsewhere

       Editing
         unlimited undo with fast modes, replace (clipboard and selection), line edit functions,
         move line/selection, indenting, block formating, delete trailing space, comment, convert
         (case, space or indention) rectangular selection with mouse and keyboard, auto- and
         braceindention

       Navigation
         bracenav, blocknav, doc spanning bookmarks, goto last edit, last doc, rich search,
         incremental search, searchbar and search dialog

       Tools
         run script (integrated output panel), notepad panel, color picker

       Doc Property
         syntax mode, codepage, tab use, tab width, EOL, write protection

       View
         all app parts and margins can be switched on and off, syntaxhighlighting bracelight,
         ight margin, indention guide, caret line, line wrap, EOL marker, visible whitespace,
         changeable font

       Configs
         config files to be opened through a menu: settings, all menus, commandID's, event
         binding, icon binding, key binding, localisation (translate just one file to transelate
         the app), syntaxmodes

         and some help texts to be opened as normal files

ROADMAP

   Overview
       Enduser Release 0.1

           a very simple editor

       Enduser Release 0.2

           multiple documents, file session

       Enduser Release 0.3

           searchbar and more comfort

       Enduser Release 0.4

           This release was about getting the editor liquid or highly configurable.
           Its also about improvements in the user interface and of course the little
           things we missed. It also contains interpreter output panel and a notepad.

       Enduser Release 0.5

           This release is about getting Kephra into the 'real' world out there
           and adding feature that are most needed and removing most hindering barriers.
           Folding, encodings, printing, .... and lot of minor tools and more help.

       Enduser Release 0.6

           This release will be about extending Kephra internal extensions like a
           file brwoser, command line and tree lib as Plugin API.

       Enduser Release 0.7

            Introducing Syntaxmodes, for language sensitive data and functionions.

       Enduser Release 0.8

           more heavier stuff like debugger

   This Cycle
       Testing 0.4.1 - code folding
       Testing 0.4.2 - folding and GUI refined, movable tabs, 2 more tools, doc data
       Testing 0.4.3 - utf, marker, folding finished, 3 more tools, help links
       Testing 0.4.4 - new mouse control, 2 more tools, updated docs
       Testing 0.4.5 - more encodings, local notepad
       Testing 0.4.6 - config dialog
       Stable 0.5 - about dialog

SUPPORT

       Bugs should be reported via the CPAN bug tracker at

       <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Kephra>

       For other issues, contact the author.

       More info and resources you find on our sourceforge web page under:

       <http://kephra.sourceforge.net>

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

       •   Herbert Breunung <lichtkind@cpan.org> (main author)

       •   Jens Neuwerk (author of icons, GUI advisor)

       •   Andreas Kaschner (linux and mac ports)

       •   Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org> (cpanification)

       •   Renee Baecker <module@renee-baecker.de> (color picker)

       •   Fabrizio Regalli <fabreg@fabreg.it<gt> (typos)

       •   many more since we study other editors a lot and also the padre sources

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This Copyright applies only to the "Kephra" Perl software distribution, not the icons
       bundled within.

       Copyright 2004 - 2010 Herbert Breunung.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the GNU GPL.

       The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.