How to Build tfe (Text File Editor)

How to Compile and Execute the Text Editor ‘tfe’.

First, the source files are in the Gtk4-tutorial repository. How to download them is written at the end of the previous section.

The following is the instruction for compilation and execution.

  • You need meson and ninja.
  • If you have installed gtk4 from source, you need to set environment variables to match your installation.
  • Change your current directory to src/tfe5 directory.
  • Type meson setup _build for configuration.
  • Type ninja -C _build for compilation. Then the application tfe is built under the _build directory.
  • Type _build/tfe to execute it.

Then the window appears. There are four buttons, New, Open, Save and Close.

  • Click on Open button, then a file chooser dialog appears. Choose a file from the list and click on Open button. Then the file is read and a new Notebook Page appears.
  • Edit the file and click on Save button, then the text is saved to the original file.
  • Click Close, then the Notebook Page disappears.
  • Click Close again, then the Untitled Notebook Page disappears and at the same time the application quits.

This is a very simple editor. It is a good practice for you to add more features.

Total Number of Lines, Words and Characters

The command below is the output of wc executed in the src directory.

$ LANG=C wc tfe5/meson.build tfe5/tfeapplication.c tfe5/tfe.gresource.xml tfe5/tfenotebook.c tfe5/tfenotebook.h tfetextview/tfetextview.c tfetextview/tfetextview.h tfe5/tfe.ui
   10    17   294 tfe5/meson.build
  110   335  3602 tfe5/tfeapplication.c
    6     9   153 tfe5/tfe.gresource.xml
  144   391  3669 tfe5/tfenotebook.c
   15    21   241 tfe5/tfenotebook.h
  235   825  8516 tfetextview/tfetextview.c
   32    54   624 tfetextview/tfetextview.h
   61   100  2073 tfe5/tfe.ui
  613  1752 19172 total
$