How to Install Pluma Text Editor on Linux Mint

In this article, we will discuss the basic steps of how to install the Pluma text editor on Linux Mint. And why this particular text editor has become a community favorite.

If you weren’t aware, Pluma is a compact and lightweight UTF-8 text editor for the MATE environment. It fully uses the Unicode UTF-8 encoding for non-Latin characters, which facilitates working with many languages. If you’re looking for a simple-to-use, all-purpose editor, Pluma is an excellent option.

This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with Linux at least, can operate a shell, and host your website on a VPS of your own. The installation process is very straightforward and implies that you are running in the root account. Otherwise, you might need to add “sudo” to the instructions to gain root rights.

Introduction to Pluma text editor

The Pluma text editor is forked from the gedit tool. It is the default text editor for MATE. The following are the main features of this editor:

• It is a small and lightweight UTF-8 encoding-based text editor.
• Because it is based on UTF-8, it can be used for editing in many languages.
• The editor provides all the support for basic editing. In addition, it can be used for spell checking, comparing files, viewing CVS change logs, and adjusting indentation levels.
• It can be used for editing code in a variety of programming languages. The features for editing in programming language include syntax highlighting and auto-indentation.
• It provides a multiple-document interface (MDI) for editing multiple documents simultaneously. In addition, it includes features for printing and print preview.
• Its extensible architecture allows using a wide range of plugins to extend the editor’s features.
• It is equipped with several themes to modify the look and feel of the editor.

Note: MATE is a desktop environment for Linux operating system. It is generally packaged with Linux Mint.

How to Install Pluma Text Editor on Linux Mint

This section will discuss the installation steps for the Pluma text editor. But before installing the editor, secure the following prerequisites:

• You should have access as a root user
• If you are not a root user, you should have a user with access to the sudo command
• You should have Ubuntu installed on your system

Update the repository

In the first step, we will update the repository in the first step using the following command. Type the following command on your terminal window.

$apt-get update

Note: Terminal window can be opened by clicking on the system menu and selecting terminal.

Installation of the editor

Then, you can install the Pluma text editor using the following command:

$apt-get install pluma -y

Tip: In addition to installing the Pluma editor from the repository, you can also build Pluma from the source. The basic steps are very similar to building and installing software from source in Ubuntu

Launching the Pluma editor

After the installation, you can start the editor from the menu item available in the system menu. The following figure illustrates the Pluma menu item in the system menu.

Figure 1: Running Pluma from the system menu

The primary interface of the Pluma text editor can also be seen here. Pluma is an excellent editor for easy-to-use general-purpose editing of documents.

Figure 2: Basic graphical user interface for Pluma editor

In addition to using the basic graphical user interface (GUI) for launching the Pluma editor, you can also launch the tool using the command line interface. Open the terminal and run the following command:

$pluma

Installation of plugins for Pluma

Pluma has support for a wide range of plugins. These plugins are also available from the GitHub repository. You can install them from the command line interface. Run the following command on the terminal:

$./configure --with-plugins=pl1,pl2,...

Here, you can specify pl1 and pl2 as different plugins. Below we discuss some of the plugins available with Pluma:

• Bookmarks – To add bookmarks to your document
• Bracketcompletion – Automatically complete brackets in the code
• Charmap – Using this plugin, you can insert special characters by just clicking on them
• Codecomment – Comment and uncomment a block of codes easily
• Colorpicker – Select a color from the dialog box, and the editor will insert its Hexa decimal representation
• Commander – Issue commands to Pluma via a command line interface
• Drawspaces – This can be used to draw spaces and tabs
• Joinlines – This can be used to join several lines or split one long line into several
• Multiedit – Edit multiple documents in one place
• Sessionsaver – Your current session can be saved on the hard disk and restored at a later time
• Showtabbar – This will add a menu item to show the hide tab bar
• Smartspaces – After this installation, you can forget you are tabulations
• Terminal – Embed a terminal into the editor window at the bottom
• Wordcompletion – You can complete the word as your type
• Synctex – SyncTeX synchronization of TeX and portable document format (PDF) files

For instance, if you want to install a bookmarks plugin, you can use the following command:

$./configure --with-plugins=bookmark

For installing multiple plugins, you just need to provide the names of each plugin separated by a comma as follows:

$./configure --with-plugins=bookmark, drawspaces

If you want to install all the plugins, you can use the following command on the terminal:

$./configure --with-plugins=all

In this article, we briefly discussed the Pluma text editor. We started with a brief introduction, then proceeded with the editor’s installation process. Then we also tackled the plugins that can be used with the Pluma editor. For more information about the editor, you can check its official website.

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