Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

Dusty · 2007-08-20 15:52:50

Hey all,

I released a beta of Pallavi 0.5 yesterday and STiAT has kindly updated the PKGBUILD in AUR. I'd appreciate any feedback and testing. This is a fairly important milestone in Pallavi, as it now contains a docking window manager for plugins (allowing it to work similar to a standard IDE, if the plugins were available), and a lot of the plugins and the core has been streamlined and improved. As such, I think I'm ready to make a public announcement on python-announce, but before I do that, I want to try to make this release as bug free as possible. To do that I need to find bugs. :-D

There's a few updated screenshots here, designed to show the versatility of Pallavi: http://sourceforge.net/project/screensh … _id=167671

With this release, I feel I can finally say that Pallavi is a text-editor worth using. It doesn't yet have all the functionality to rival some of the well-known python IDEs, but the core to allow this is in place and it will not be hard to make it do so. It already far outstrips the simple note-taking editors like gedit, but the pluggable design means you can use it as a replacement for those editors without having a bunch of additional bloat. I'm proud of it.

So test it out and let me know what you think!

Dusty

cactus · 2007-08-20 16:05:20

Note: You mentioned gedit. gedit apparently has a ton of plugins in its own right. http://live.gnome.org/Gedit/Plugins
Not really relevant, but I thought I would mention it if you didn't know....

ontopic: Wow. Those screenshots of pallavi look really sweet. Nice work!

mucknert · 2007-08-20 18:04:34

Interesting Screenshots. Might be worth a look. But I have one question considering performance.
Imagine that I want to edit a really huge LaTeX-File with Syntax-Hilighting. (I know you could split it up but that is not the point. ) How would Pallavi perform compared to a compiled Editor like Emacs, Vim or whatever? As long as I did not missunderstand the concept of Pallavi, it is interpreted on runtime through Python. Guess I might as well try it out via the AUR and see myself but hey: I'd rather first ask the Guy that wrote it.

Dusty · 2007-08-20 19:06:46

That's an interesting question; I haven't tried any exceptionally large files in it yet.

I'm not going to get into a compiled vs interpreted debate here, but for those who believes compiled is better:
Pallavi is built on top of wxWidgets and the Scintilla widget; for the most part Python just acts as a glue between the C++ widgets. Stuff like scrolling, event response, even the actual syntax parsing is handled by the underlying C++ API. I suspect if you could profile the code, you'd find that very little time is spent in python interpreted functions.

However, I think the current Pallavi lexing plugin uses a "stupid" algorithm, in that it reparses the entire syntax buffer on every keystroke. This is bad design, and is the way it is mostly because it was the simplest implementation at the time, I was in a hurry to get onto other features, and it has worked just fine for the files I've been editing so I never bothered to improve it. Most likely, it won't get improved until I or somebody else actually discovers its an issue.

In summary, I don't know how it will compare to Emacs or Vim on such a file, but if there are deficiencies it wouldn't be an inherent problem with using Python and could be improved.

I'm also reasonably confident that Pallavi would outperform JEdit, which is, in my opinion, a terrific editor but has a tendency to be slow to start up. Indeed, much of Pallavi's design philosophy is taken from a pythonification of JEdit's design.

If you do try Pallavi on this really huge LaTeX file and find its slow, I'd be interested to know the kind of response you get if you disable the Lexing plugin (comment it out in ~/.pallavi/pallavi_config.py) and try again.

Cactus: thanks for the link; I wasn't aware GEdit had a plugin mechanism. I was wrong about it not being extensible. I picked on GEdit as a Linux equivalent of MS Notepad (which was my mistake). Does Notepad have any plugins?

EDIT: Another issue for you testing this release is that I forgot to add Peter's LaTeX Lexer to the setup.py, so you won't have any syntax highlighting on it. This is fixed in svn, along with a couple other bugs.

Dusty

cactus · 2007-08-20 20:02:38

Dusty wrote:

Cactus: thanks for the link; I wasn't aware GEdit had a plugin mechanism. I was wrong about it not being extensible. I picked on GEdit as a Linux equivalent of MS Notepad (which was my mistake). Does Notepad have any plugins?

lol. I don't think so.
xfce's mousepad is very similar to notepad too, in that one is also just a simple text editor type thing (no extensions, etc).

mucknert · 2007-08-21 06:44:39

Thanks for the clarification. Considering the nature of the implementation you have explained I figure that the performance should be on par with most other editors. But it is to bad that I can't use the PKGBUILD in the AUR since, as you said, it wouldn't make sense for me testing it. Is there a chance that you could hack together an pallavi-svn or someting like that?

STiAT · 2007-08-21 13:54:37

Wow, i did know gedit had plugins, but i didn't know that there are so nice plugins for gedit.

I still prefer kate, but with those plugins, xfce or gnome may be worth a try again.

Btw: I've updated the AUR for the new version of pallavi yesterday. Worked out pretty well on my system, and really looks nice in the new version .

Dusty · 2007-08-21 17:26:16

mucknert wrote:

But it is to bad that I can't use the PKGBUILD in the AUR since, as you said, it wouldn't make sense for me testing it. Is there a chance that you could hack together an pallavi-svn or someting like that?

For now, just grab StiAT's PKGBUILD from AUR (I don't have Arch ATM, so its hard to build packages), and run it once to create the ~/.pallavi directory. Make a directory inside this directory called lexing_languages (if it hasn't been done already). Then grab this file and place it in the new lexing_languages directory:

http://pallavi.svn.sourceforge.net/view … s/latex.py

That should work.

BTW, STiAT, if you used Pallavi you could use Gnome OR KDE OR XFCE4 (or even Windows) at your discretion. ;-)

Dusty

twiistedkaos · 2007-08-21 18:28:23

Wow Dusty you made some improvements to this since your first release of it, which was the one I tried. I'll download sometime when I get off work and find some bugs, and if you don't mind, I am a python programmer myself, I can write some patches in your code to make things more smoother if there are some rough spots. But as I said, I have to go to work, I'll test it when I get back around 11pm US EST time.

Dusty · 2007-08-21 19:54:42

twiistedkaos wrote:

Wow Dusty you made some improvements to this since your first release of it,

Lol, for sure. That first release was a bit of a draft. I ended up rewriting it from scratch after that, to use wxPython.

I get off work and find some bugs, and if you don't mind, I am a python programmer myself,

Mind!? Of couse I don't mind. That'd be great! :-) Better work from the svn though; I've already fixed half a dozen bugs since the release. Thanks for the interest!

Dusty

twiistedkaos · 2007-08-22 04:54:57

Dusty wrote:

twiistedkaos wrote:
Wow Dusty you made some improvements to this since your first release of it,
Lol, for sure. That first release was a bit of a draft. I ended up rewriting it from scratch after that, to use wxPython.
I get off work and find some bugs, and if you don't mind, I am a python programmer myself,
Mind!? Of couse I don't mind. That'd be great! :-) Better work from the svn though; I've already fixed half a dozen bugs since the release. Thanks for the interest!
Dusty

Cool beans, just got off, I'll check it out soon after I finish a few lines of my own program

edit: quick error on your sourceforge.net website, you have:

svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pallavi/core/trunk pallavi

and it should be:

 svn co https://pallavi.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pallavi pallavi

Same with plugins

Last edited by twiistedkaos (2007-08-22 05:39:01)

Dusty · 2007-08-22 20:06:50

Thanks! I updated the svn urls. Also, if you're keen on development, you may want to subscribe to the mailing list for discussion. Its very low traffic.

Dusty

twiistedkaos · 2007-08-22 23:14:59

Dusty wrote:

Thanks! I updated the svn urls. Also, if you're keen on development, you may want to subscribe to the mailing list for discussion. Its very low traffic.
Dusty

I'll see, I normally work 3pm-11pm so my time is limited as of right now, and then I start college soon . But I'll subscribe sometime to keep informed on things.

Dusty · 2007-08-23 01:18:24

twiistedkaos wrote:

I'll see, I normally work 3pm-11pm

Flipping awesome hours, those! :-)

Currently I just use the mailing list to announce new releases so you'd see them here, but there is the occasional query or plugin posted by another user (typically barebones:)).

Dusty

twiistedkaos · 2007-08-24 00:17:01

Dusty wrote:

twiistedkaos wrote:
I'll see, I normally work 3pm-11pm
Flipping awesome hours, those! :-)
Currently I just use the mailing list to announce new releases so you'd see them here, but there is the occasional query or plugin posted by another user (typically barebones:)).
Dusty

Haha Indeed, my hours suck . Messes with my time, I am up all night thanks to work . I havn't had much of a chance to check out the pallavi source yet, just browsed it some. I'm currently working on a podcast website for linux . So when I am done with that, I'll for sure have more time.

upsidaisium · 2007-08-24 01:27:23

this is a pretty nifty editor, dusty. i don't quite have the time now, but i'll test it out a bit more extensively later.

Dusty · 2007-08-24 05:39:29

Thanks for the kind words, upsidaisium. (Great avatar, BTW).

Just a quick note to say I pushed out a second beta on Pallavi this evening. It fixes about half a dozen miscellaneous bugs, nothing too important, but it works better now, especially when opening files.

Dusty

twiistedkaos · 2007-08-24 06:20:01

mucknert wrote:

Interesting Screenshots. Might be worth a look. But I have one question considering performance.
Imagine that I want to edit a really huge LaTeX-File with Syntax-Hilighting. (I know you could split it up but that is not the point. ) How would Pallavi perform compared to a compiled Editor like Emacs, Vim or whatever? As long as I did not missunderstand the concept of Pallavi, it is interpreted on runtime through Python. Guess I might as well try it out via the AUR and see myself but hey: I'd rather first ask the Guy that wrote it.

Hmm not sure about how big is "really huge", but as a test I opened one of my old python project games that's over 40,000 lines of code and it loads in a snap, and editting doesn't seem much difference in speed compared to gvim for me.

@Dusty, I got an urge tonight to heavily investigate your code and perhaps find some things I could "speed" up or improve. I'll make a new post tomarrow sometime with my findings.

Dusty · 2007-08-26 05:23:04

That reminds me, mucknert, the new beta release contains the Latex plugin. STiAT updated the package today.

twiisted: sounds great.

Dusty

Dusty · 2007-08-26 06:11:57

For anyone interested in hacking Pallavi, especially plugin development, I've created pydoc documentation here:

http://pallavi.sourceforge.net/pydoc/

Hope it helps. Let me know if you find any typos, missing docstrings, etc.

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2007-08-20 15:52:50

Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#2 2007-08-20 16:05:20

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#3 2007-08-20 18:04:34

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#4 2007-08-20 19:06:46

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#5 2007-08-20 20:02:38

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#6 2007-08-21 06:44:39

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#7 2007-08-21 13:54:37

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#8 2007-08-21 17:26:16

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#9 2007-08-21 18:28:23

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#10 2007-08-21 19:54:42

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#11 2007-08-22 04:54:57

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#12 2007-08-22 20:06:50

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#13 2007-08-22 23:14:59

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#14 2007-08-23 01:18:24

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#15 2007-08-24 00:17:01

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#16 2007-08-24 01:27:23

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#17 2007-08-24 05:39:29

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#18 2007-08-24 06:20:01

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#19 2007-08-26 05:23:04

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

#20 2007-08-26 06:11:57

Re: Pallavi 0.5 beta 1 -- Exciting new release

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