Welcome to the Prismblue repository! It's a simple text editor with a neat UI and some cool features which doesn't consume much! It's written in pure JavaScript and uses the Electron framework. Prismblue is open-source and is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The Prismblue text editor offers the following features:
- Open, save, and save as files in any format
- A visual solution to editing your text
- Customizable editor look and feel
- Review the status of your file in one place
- Possibility to restore an automatically created backup of your file
This installation method is for Windows users who want to install Prismblue as a typical desktop application (portable installation).
- Download the latest release from the Releases page. For each release there are files for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Download the file for Windows that matches your system architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).
- Extract the downloaded zip file.
- Run the
Prismblue.exefile. - You're done! Now Prismblue should be running and you should see the main window.
If you don't want to download a release, you can clone the repository and run Prismblue from the source code (or build it yourself).
- Install Git for your operating system (should generall be available for most operating systems on most architectures).
- Clone the repository by running the following command in your terminal:
git clone https://github.com/LyubomirT/prismblue.git- Change the directory to the cloned repository:
cd prismblue- Install the dependencies:
npm install- Run Prismblue:
npm run start- Prismblue is running and if everything went well, you should see the main window.
Prismblue itself is pretty simple to use and is very intuitive. However, some of the features might not be so obvious, so here's a quick guide on how to use them.
On the image above you can see the Prismblue interface. It consists of the following parts:
- The titlebar
- The menu (or submenu) buttons
- The editor
- The status bar
The titlebar is the topmost part of the interface. On the very left you can see the logo of Prismblue. Then comes the menu buttons, such as "File", "Edit", etc. In the middle there is the title of the current file. At the right there are the minimize, maximize, and close buttons.
This widget contains the buttons for the menus. For example, when you click on the "File" button, the submenu buttons will show the buttons for the "File" menu ("New", "Open", etc.). Clicking on the currently active menu button will hide the submenu buttons and leave the widget empty.
The editor is the main part of the interface. There you can edit or view your text. It's scrollable and is pretty much infinite in size (as long as your RAM can handle it).
The status bar is the bottommost part of the interface. It contains information about the current file, such as the filename, the changes status, the row and column, and the total size of the file.
Prismblue offers quite a few options for customizing the editor. For example, you can change the theme, the font, the font size, and the status bar visibility. To see all your options, click on the "View" button in the menu.
Important
All your preferences will be automatically saved and will be loaded the next time you open Prismblue.
You can toggle fullscreen mode by clicking on the "View" button in the menu and then clicking on the "Toggle Fullscreen" button in the submenu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut for toggling fullscreen mode (F11).
To open a file, click on the "File" button in the menu and then click on the "Open" button in the submenu. Then select the file you want to open. Prismblue supports all file formats... but anything that's encoded will most likely look like gibberish.
To save a file, click on the "File" button in the menu and then click on the "Save" button in the submenu. If you haven't opened a file yet, then Prismblue will ask you to select a file to save to. "Save As" is the same as "Save", but it will always ask you to select a file to save to, creating a new file (or overwriting an existing one) in the process.
Tip
You can also use the keyboard shortcuts for saving files. To save a file, press Ctrl+S. To save a file as, press Ctrl+Shift+S.
Prismblue has an action history, which allows you to undo and redo your actions. To see the action history, click on the "History" button in the menu. Then you can click on the "Undo" and "Redo" buttons to undo and redo your actions respectively.
Let's say you accidentally closed Prismblue and you didn't save your file. Prismblue automatically creates a backup of your file any time you change something. To restore your file, click on the "History" button in the menu and then click on the "Restore" button in the submenu. Then click on the "Yes" button in the modal that appears. Your file should be restored.
Caution
If you interact with Prismblue in any way after you close it, then the backup will be lost and you won't be able to restore your file.
This text editor allows you to find text in your file and jump to it or replace it. If you want to find something, simply click on the "Edit" button in the menu and then click on the "Find" button in the submenu. In the modal that appears, enter the text you want to find and then click on the "Find Next" button to jump to the next occurrence of the text or click on the "Find Previous" button to jump to the previous occurrence of the text. You can also replace the current occurrence of the text by entering the text you want to replace it with and then clicking on the "Replace" button. To not bother yourself spamming the "Replace" button, you can replace all the occurrences of the text by clicking on the "Replace All" button.
Most likely you won't ever need to use these buttons, but in the "Edit" menu you can find the "Copy", "Paste", and "Cut" buttons. They work just like the keyboard shortcuts for copying, pasting, and cutting text.
(In case you don't know, the keyboard shortcuts for copying, pasting, and cutting text are Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, and Ctrl+X respectively.)
Same as the previous section, this button is probably useless. In the "Edit" menu you can find the "Select All" button. It works just like the keyboard shortcut for selecting all text (Ctrl+A).
The status bar below (which is hide-able, by the way) contains some information describing the current state of the file you're working on. It contains the filename, the changes status, the row and column, and the total size of the file.
If you have your code written in a supported language (Python, Node.js, Java, or Ruby), you can run it directly from Prismblue. To do that, click on the "Run" button in the menu and then click on the "Run Code" button in the submenu. Note that your file must be saved before you can run it.
Although, you can always use the Ignore Extensions feature to run any file you want by writing your own run command. See the "Ignore Extensions" section for more information.
Additionally, you can preview your Markdown and HTML files in Prismblue. To do that, click on the "Run" button in the menu and then click on the "Preview Markdown/HTML" button in the submenu. After that a new mini-Prismblue window will open and you will be able to see your Markdown or HTML file rendered in it.
Tip
The Markdown Renderer uses Markdown-it and the Github Markdown CSS when previewing Markdown files so they'll look at least somewhat readable.
Note
The HTML Previewer runs on the Electron backend, so it uses the same renderer as Chromium. This means that it will render your HTML file the same way as Chromium would.
If you want to run a file that Prismblue doesn't support, you can use the "Ignore Extensions" feature. In the Run menu there is a button called "Toggle ResExt". Clicking on it will toggle Extension Restrictions. When the feature is enabled, file extensions will be checked before attempting to run the code, and the file will use the default run command for the extension. When the feature is disabled, file extensions will be ignored and the file will use the custom run command you can set in the Set Run Command button.
If you want to run a file with a custom command, you can use the "Set Run Command" feature. In the Run menu there is a button called "Set Run Command", which appears only when the "Extension Restrictions" feature is disabled. Clicking on it will open a modal where you can set the run command for the file you're working on. The run command will be saved and will be used every time you run the file. To allow you to customize the run command even more, Prismblue supports the following placeholders:
{filename}- The name of the file you're working on{filename-no-ext}- The name of the file you're working on without the extension
Soon enough, Prismblue will support more placeholders, such as {filedir} and {fileext}.
When "Extension Restrictions" is disabled, the Preview MD/HTML button will be split into two buttons - Preview MD and Preview HTML. Clicking on the Preview MD button will open the Markdown Previewer and clicking on the Preview HTML button will open the HTML Previewer. The point here is that you can preview any file you want, not just Markdown and HTML files. (Useful when you have Markdown/HTML content in a file with a different extension.)
If you want to reset your preferences, you can use the "Reset Preferences" feature. In the Edit menu there is a button called "Reset Preferences". Clicking on it will reset all your preferences to their default values.
Warning
This action is irreversible! Once you reset your preferences, you won't be able to restore them. The window will close and Prismblue will restart.
Caution
This action will close Prismblue! If you have unsaved changes, they will be lost. Make sure to save your changes before resetting your preferences.
Tip
If you want to reset your preferences, but you don't want to lose them, you can back them up by copying the preferences.json file from the prismblue directory to a safe place.
This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License. Please comply with the license when using the project, if you need more information please review the license file.
Thank you very much for considering contributing to this project! Please read the contributing guidelines before doing so. If you have any questions, feel free to open an issue or contact me on Discord (@lyubomirt). However, I'm usually active on my Discord Server so I believe I'll respond faster there.