UpdateChecker

UpdateChecker implements a check for new releases of Geany and notifies the user when one is available. It’s based on libsoup and can be configured to check during startup or on request.

WebHelper

WebHelper is a plugin that provides some web development facilities, such as a web page preview and some debugging tools (web inspector). The plugin implements the following features:

• A basic web view, allowing the display of any web page (using WebKit);
• Possible automatic reloading of the web view upon document saving;
• A web inspector/debugging tool for the web view’s content (including a JavaScript console, a viewer and editor of processed HTML and CSS, a network usage analysis tool and many more, thanks to WebKit).

GeanyExtraSel

• Respect "Smart" home key (Geany does now).
• Fixed Scintilla Shift+movement key conversion of rectangle selection.
• Virtual spaces support.
• Per-file column mode.
• Added "Set Anchor", "Select to Anchor" and "Rectangle Select to Anchor".

GeanyGenDoc

• Bump dependency on CTPL to 0.3.
• Add a popup menu for common actions in the documentation type selector.
• Fix indentation of inserted documentation blocs.
• Documentation type now defaults to Doxygen (rather than nothing).
• Add policy PASS to completely ignore a symbol.
• Add basic rules for PHP.
• Fix build against GTK+ 2.16.
• Don’t copy the system configuration file to the user’s one when hitting "Edit Current Language Configuration", only write it when saving changes.

GeanyLaTeX

• Move LaTeX-menu to a separate menu inside Geany main menu.
• Add a feature to auto-capitalize letters on typing the beginning of a sentence.
• Add a way to put an icon for LaTeX-wizard into Geany’s main toolbar.
• Added a dialog for inserting BibTeX references based on available *.bib- files.

TreeBrowser

• Added bookmarks support.
• Added keybindings support.
• Added mime type icons in the tree.
• Many bugfixes and code improvements.

Support for COBOL

At the end of January 2011 a patch was committed to Geany trunk which enabled COBOL support inside Geany. Now it’s possible to use features like syntax highlighting for this language.

Tableconvert

After a little chaos with naming, the new plugin Tableconvert was added to the development version of the Geany-Plugins. It offers a way to convert tab separated lists (e.g. imported from Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc) into a table. Currently the plugin supports HTML and LaTeX tables.

Debugger

The Debugger plugin has added a second binding for gdb to the Geany-Plugins project.

GeanyPG

With GeanyPG Hans Alves submitted a new plugin to geany-plugins project which adds support for signing, encrypting and decryption of text files opened in Geany.

Geany at Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2011 (March 19th, 20th)

On the coming weekend (around March 19th, 20th) there will be a local Linux and FOSS convention in Chemnitz, Germany. Some of the Geany guys will be around and have a little booth at the event. So if you are nearby, come join us for a chat. You will find us next to the Xfce guys. Details for this convention can be find on their homepage at http://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2011/

File Browser

The File Browser plugins adds to the sidebar a tab with which you can browser files and folders. By default it shows the contents of the folder containing the first file opened in Geany. You can navigate to other drives and folders using any of the options available at the very top of the tab:

• Up: Navigates to one folder higher in the file system.
• Home: Navigates to your Home folder.
• Set path from document: Sets the active folder to the one containing the current active document.
• Folder input box: Here you can enter any path you want to see in the File Browser. As you type the path it will offer autocompletion of the folder’s name.

Also at the top of the tab is the Filter input box in which you can enter a file specification of those files you want to appear in the File Browser. The file specifications must be quite simple - e.g. g*.py or *.xml. Regular expressions are not supported. To clear the filter either click on the icon at the right of the Filter input box or empty the Filter box and press [Enter].

Comments formatting

When writing source code or in a markup language, it’s often necessary to mark one or more lines as a comment. Geany offers several functions from the Edit -> Format sub-menu which make this very easy:

• Comment Line(s)
• Uncomment Line(s)
• Toggle Line Commentation

To use these options on a single line, put the cursor on that line and select the menu option. To use them on a block of code, select the whole block then select the menu option. The Toggle Line Commentation menu option will, as its name suggests, add comment markers to a normal line/section of code and, if the line/section is already a comment, remove the comment markers. What’s great about these options is that they insert or remove the comment markers applicable to the type of file being edited. This means that you can focus on the content of what you’re editing instead of having to worry about getting the comment markers right. This is precisely Geany’s aim: to make coding easier and faster without getting in your way.