Scimitar Source Code Inspector Copyright (c) 2000--2001, Agnar Renolen e-mail: agnar@organizer.net url: http://scimitar.sourceforge.net

Index

• About Scimitar
• Download Scimitar
• Known Bugs and Limitations
• Bugs and Help
• Contributing to Scimitar

Scimitar is an is an open source text file viewer written in Tcl/Tk 8.3. It provides some extra capabilities over traditional file viewers or text editors. These capabilities include:

• Syntax hilighting for common file types/programming languages, also in printed form.
• Adjustable tabulator width
• Line numbers
• Export to html, postscript and text (xml and LaTeX is on the wish list).
• Change reserved words to upper case or lower case for case insensitive programming languages
• Quick-access menu to sections / declarations in each file simply by right-clicking the mouse in the viewer.
• Quick-access menu to all open windows by Control-left clicking the mouse.

Scimitar is copylefted by me under the GPL license, so you are free to download source code and executable versions at no cost.

Samples

• Screen shot
• Sample html export
• Sample postscript output

Download Scimitar

Scimitar is currently avaliable in two versions:

scim-<version>-win32.zip

A precompiled executable version for windows, generated using freewrap.

scim-<version>-script.tgz

A compiled script for unix/linux. This script is compiled (not to native binary form) using tclmerge. This is the recommended version if yuo want to run it on the Macintosh.

I would also like to provide a standalone executable for Macintosh, but I'm a fraid I haven't worked out how to do it. Instead, you should download the script version of Scimitar, download Tcl/Tk from www.scriptics.com and generate it using the Drag and Drop Tclets application. You might think that I could do the same, and provide the executable, but the tcl-interpreter is not statically included in the wish interpreter, and it is not trivial to distribute both to make it work.

Latest release: Scimitar-2.0 (Nov 28, 2002)

Belows follows some issues that I suspect might lead to problems in certain circumstances:

Windows

Printing

Printing is implemented using tkprint by Ian Roxtebury. Printing with Tcl/Tk 8.2 has not been tested. Please give me feedback if things don't work as expected. Printing with Tcl/Tk 8.3 works nicely. I have had problems printing from executable on some windows platforms.

Note however, that you will currently not find a precompiled version of tkprint for Tcl/Tk 8.3 on tkprint's home page. In order to get a working version of tkprint for Tcl/Tk 8.3 I had to fix a few bugs in the source code. I'm unaware whether this bug also is present in the 8.2 version. Nonetheless, there are still bugs in the tkprint source which prevents it from working with canvases. That's probably the reason why tkprint for Tcl/Tk 8.3 has not been oficially released yet.

Unix/Linux

Since I don't have a linux/unix computer available, I haven't tested Scimitar on this platform. I'll be happy to receive reports on your experiences.

Printing

Printing is not tested, since I haven't a unix or linux computer available. Printing on linux/unix also requires a postscript printer. I would also like to provide a print dialog for linux, similar to the one that Netscape has (had?). I'll be happy to receive a fix if someone wants to implement it.

Macintosh

Quick Access Menues

Since the tk_popup method didn't work with my version of Tcl/Tk for Macintosh, I implemented these menues in the menubar for this platform.

Printing

Printing is not supported, and I might need som help to do it. Nevertheless it is always possible to save the file to html and print from your internet browser.

Being hosted by SourceForge several public areas allows you to view public forums and submit bugs:

• Bugs
• Support Requsts
• Feature Requests
• Public Forum

If you find that Scimitar is missing some features or have bugs, please don't hesitate to visit the Scimitar Admin pages at source forge. There you can subimit feature requests and bug reports, as well as browsing the source code from Scimitar's CVS repository.

Scimitar is open source software and is implemented using Tcl/Tk, which is a powerfull scripting language. I've strived to maintain a high level of documentation in the source code, so it shouldn't be a hard job to extend the capabilities of Scimitar; particularly now when you have Scimitar to help you.

However, the comments of Scimitar 1.0 was written for Coda 1, whereas new code for Scimitar-1.1 has been written for Coda 2. The two versions have incompatible text formats, so it is currently not possible to generate complete api documentation using coda.

You are welcome to make your own conribution, for example if you want to implement a viewing mode for a different file format, not currently supported by Scimitar. Implementing a new mode, is very easy. You can just look at the files in the modes directory, you will see it isn't much hazzle to copy an existing mode and modify it for your file type.