REBECKA project homepage

What is REBECKA?

REBECKA stands for Regular Expression Based Editor with Coloring Keywords Ability. It is an editor, which is specially useful for programmers and users of different hypertext and graphical languages, such as LaTeX, HTML, XML and Postscript. It can analyze and color the syntax, which can be user defined with an easy-to-use GUI. Users can define their own hotkeys scheme, associated files and shell commands, that can be used from REBECKA menus. For each type of file (c, cpp, html, latex), a separate configuration can be defined and saved. Users can also choose the background image for each type of file which will scroll along with the text. There can also be several views of the same document. Of course, it also offers other features that an editor should have, such as: clipboard operations, find/replace engine, file manipulation unit, optional autosave, unlimited undo/redo, etc.

Related software

Software products, that are most similar to REBECKA are for sure Emacs and Kate. Both are very useful editors. However, for defining your own scheme of syntax highlighting AFAIK, you have to be familiar with LISP in case of Emacs, or you have to write your own plugins in C++ in case of Kate. REBECKA offers an easy GUI to define your own syntax highlighting scheme for each type of file. Further, for each type of file you can define your own scheme of hotkeys, associated files, shell commands and background image with any amount of transparency, which is then scrolled with the text. These things (AFAIK) are not possible or at least not easy to achieve in Emacs and Kate.

Screenshots

Editing C++ file with REBECKA
Editing HTML document with REBECKA
Editing LaTeX document with the line numbering turned on
Editing Postscript file with REBECKA
Editing pascal program with REBECKA

Download

You can download the latest version of REBECKA here. There are configuration files for C++ (for extensions C, cpp and h), LaTeX (tex), HTML (html) and Postscript (ps) already included (in the config directory, when you untar the tarball). If you would like to use them, copy them into $(HOME)/.rebecka directory. From version 0.9.7 on, REBECKA checks for new configuration files in the $(KDEDIR)/share/apps/REBECKA/config directory and eventually (if any new configuration file is found) asks user which ones should be installed into $(HOME)/.rebecka directory. The configuration files all have the .rcf filename extension.
Current REBECKA version is 0.9.15.

Installation

You need Qt-3.* to install REBECKA. You can get it at www.trolltech.com. You also need KDEDIR variable set to the KDE main directory, since this is where the configuration files, icons and the documentation is stored.

From version 0.9.7 on, REBECKA is ported to Automake/Autoconf framework, so the standard ./configure, make, make install installation procedure applies. For those not familiar enough with it, here are the detailed installation instructions:

Download REBECKA tarball.
Unzip and untar the tarball.
Change directory to the REBECKA main directory and type:

./configure

in the console.
Then type:

make

in the console and wait for the application to compile and link.
When the compilation and linking is done, type:

make install

in the console. This will move rebecka executable and configuration files, documentation and icons to the appropriate places on your harddrive. You need to have system administrator rights to do that.
You can now run REBECKA by typing:

rebecka

in the console.
Should you experience any problems compiling or using REBECKA, do not hesitate to contact me at bojank@lrv.fri.uni-lj.si.

User manual

Click here to see REBECKA online user manual.

Technical details

Click here to see the technical details about REBECKA rendering engine.

Class documentation

Click here to see the REBECKA class documentation.

Back to my homepage. Last update: 30th of June, 2003