Every programmer who spends hours in front of a computer screen writing codes, absolutely needs an editor to program. Whether we want to program a web page, an application or a program, we must use a tool that allows us to edit the code, modify it and work with it. For this, today we are going to talk about Genay , a text editor for multi-system programmers.
What is Genay
Geany is a text editor for programmers. It’s powerful, stable, and lightweight provides us with tons of useful features without jamming your workflow. It is compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac OS operating systems and has built-in support for more than 50 programming languages , such as C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl or Pascal, among others.
With this simple open source tool we can perform functions such as syntax highlighting, code completion and autocompletion of XML and HTML tags , as well as a list of symbols. Being a free software Genay benefits from having behind it a powerful community of professionals and amateurs who contribute with improvements and fixes for the platform.
This application lacks a creator of graphical interfaces, but it has a most complete interface. You can also provide us with code highlights, keyboard shortcuts, the ability to undo and redo, as well as having a tab system that makes it easy to use.
Geany will allow us to compile and execute the programs created or edited, either from the menu or the Terminal. It has plugins, autosave, file finder and exporter, and includes support for others for Diff configuration files and SQL files.
Create your project with Geany
Once we have Geany installed on our computer, we must create a new project, clicking on “New” and a tab will appear that indicates Untitled.
Now we must indicate to the program that we are going to create a project in Pascal language. To do this, at the top, we go to the “Document” tab. There we click on “Set file type” and then “Programming languages” and finally Pascal font file.
Once this is done we can write the desired source code and then press the “Save” button. Once the project has been saved, we must compile and execute it, for this we will first select the “Compile” button. If the file has been created correctly, an informed message should appear that has been compiled successfully. Once compiled, we must click on “Run”.
Download Geany
Geany is an open source program, compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems, and can be downloaded for free from its website . We will also be able to additionally download some plugins that will allow us to incorporate more functions into Geany, so that developers can easily add new functions or improve existing ones.
- Classbuilder : Create source files for new type classes.
- Export : exports the current file to different formats.
- Filebrowser – Add a file explorer tab to the sidebar.
- HTML Characters : Inserts HTML character entities like ‘&’.
- Save Actions : Provides different actions related to saving files (automatic saving, instant saving, backup).
- Split Window : Divides the editor view into two windows.
Alternatives to Geany
Geany is a free and very efficient text editor for programmers, but it is not the only one, so we can find some alternatives such as:
- Sublime Text: is a light and simple text editor with a simple interface and great customization capacity. It is available for all platforms and is priced at $ 80. You can also try its full version for free, without limited functionality, from its website .
- Atom : is a text editor created by GitHub and is developed with C ++ and Node.js, using technologies such as CSS or HTML. It is compatible with Windows, Mac OS and Linux, and can be downloaded for free from this link .
- Adobe Brackets : It is an open source editor created specifically for web designers, because it stands out for having a great visual aspect together with a complete package of integrated utilities. It also has support for plugins so that we can customize it. It is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS and can be downloaded for free from here .
- VIM : is a stable editor that has been designed to be used from a command line interface (CLI) as well as a single application in a graphical user interface (GUI). It is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS and can be downloaded for free from its website .
- WriteMonkey: is a complete text editor designed to avoid all kinds of distractions, hiding all the windows so that we can focus on the editor. It has a checker, and text styles such as format and font type. It can be downloaded for free from this link .